SEIZED FUNDS A HOT-BUTTON ISSUE FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT

NORFOLK - The men at the mail center wanted to send an issue of Ebony
magazine to California overnight.

Melissa Scott, the Pak Mail employee who handled the package last February,
said something seemed weird.

"Do they not get Ebony magazine in California?" she asked.

The men chuckled but put the magazine, the March 2003 issue with Ashanti on
the cover, into an envelope and paid an extra fee to ship it across the
country by the next day.

That night, a police detective and a drug-sniffing dog paid a visit to the
center on 21st Street. Law-enforcement officers routinely use dogs for
random searches at parcel delivery services.

Detective Maurice S. Joseph said his dog, Ace, indicated the package with
the Ebony magazine smelled of drugs. "He said, 'We'll take this with us,'"
Scott said.

Police got a search warrant for the package and opened it. They found
$10,000 in money orders glued between the magazine's pages.

Joseph traced the money orders and watched the surveillance tapes from the
7-Eleven stores where they were purchased. That led him to get a search
warrant for the home of Lennox Pyle, the man who police believed bought the
money orders.

At Pyle's apartment in the 1300 block of E. Balview Ave., police found
$22,505 in cash wrapped in a wet towel in a washing machine.

They also found marijuana in the apartment, along with digital scales, a 9
mm handgun and money order receipts, according to the search warrant.

The evidence pointed to drug distribution and to a violation of federal
laws that require reporting of transactions greater than $10,000,
prosecutors said, yet Pyle was not convicted of any crime.

The state kept the money under a civil statute that allows police to
confiscate assets gained as a result of illegal activity. Pyle gave up his
claim to the cash during a Circuit Court hearing Wednesday.

The case is unusual for several reasons.

Often when police seize large amounts of money, the people near it claim to
know nothing about it. Rarely does someone suspected of criminal activity
try to lay claim to the cash, submitting to a court process that requires
proof, including bank and tax records. When someone does lay claim,
prosecutors rarely seize the cash without proving an accompanying criminal
charge.

Prosecutors said police lacked the evidence to go forward with criminal
charges against Pyle. Police could not prove the marijuana they found
belonged to Pyle, because it was not in plain sight in the apartment and
because Pyle shared the apartment with another man. In criminal court,
prosecutors must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt."

The civil case required a lower standard of proof - prosecutors only had to
show that it was more likely than not that the money came from illegal
activity.

"We proceeded with what we had," said Commonwealth's Attorney John R. Doyle
III. "It's tough for a drug dealer with $33,000 to come forward with a
plausible explanation of where the money came from, and he couldn't. The
fact it got settled means they thought the trier of fact was going to agree
with us."

William P. Robinson Jr., Pyle's lawyer, saw the case differently.

"It's a back-door way of punishing someone for something you can't prove,"
Robinson said. "The simplest way to put it is, it's not fair."

Law-enforcement organizations and prosecutors' offices get to keep portions
of assets seized under the forfeiture statute. Seventy-five percent goes to
the law-enforcement agency that seized it, 15 percent to the commonwealth's
attorney's office, and 10 percent to the Department of Criminal Justice
Services. The agencies can use the money for "nonbudgeted" items.

Doyle said his office received about $34,000 from asset forfeitures for the
fiscal year that ended in June. Law officers in Norfolk seized a total of
about $210,000 that year, according to the Department of Criminal Justice
Services.

Police have used the money to buy bullet-resistant vests and specialized
electronic equipment. Doyle said he has used forfeited money to pay for an
office renovation, to install wireless Internet access in the courthouse
and to buy videotaping equipment for the pediatric forensic program at the
Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters.

Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in
Virginia, said the process has caused concern that law officers might
pursue cases based on what might be forfeited, rather than what crime might
have been committed.

The ACLU contends that civil forfeiture laws amount to an erosion of the
Fourth Amendment, which guarantees people the right to be free from
"unreasonable searches and seizures."

"Civil forfeiture is a circumvention of the rules put in place to prevent
people from being unfairly prosecuted," Willis said.

Old Dominion University Professor James Oleson agreed and said the
forfeiture laws allow prosecutors to pursue criminals under a lower
standard of proof. However, he said, taking a suspected drug dealer's house
or car or money would put him out of business for a while.

"Through law-enforcement eyes, it's a powerful tool," he said. "It can help
reduce serious crime."

The February 2003 seizure marked the second time law officers took money
from Pyle.

In November 1999, police found marijuana, guns and about $18,000 cash in
another apartment where Pyle lived in Virginia Beach, according to a search
warrant affidavit and police.

The money was seized but later returned to him. Pyle argued that it was
part of the washing machine cache that police found in the February 2003
search , but he had no receipts or bank statements to prove it.

According to an affidavit taken from Pyle just days before the case ended,
he admitted he had not paid taxes in years.

Linda Bryant, the prosecutor who handled the case against Pyle, said that
if the commonwealth's attorney's office had decided not to go forward with
the case, the state tax collector would have.

That history is part of the reason prosecutors went ahead with the civil
case against Pyle, Bryant said.

"We're trying to hit drug dealers where it hurts," Bryant said. "The more
sophisticated drug dealers know how to cover their tracks. The things that
don't match up are financial."