SEIZING PROPERTY

Tightening laws is a good move when it means holding true to the Bill
of Rights.

The vote by Congress last week to make it harder for the government to
confiscate people's property before criminal charges are brought in a
variety of cases was long overdue -- by decades.

Asset forfeitures raised their constitutionally questionable heads
during the 1970s, when federal law changed to let government seize
assets of drug-dealing suspects prior to conviction.

The initial motive behind the law's creation -- a way to attack the
burgeoning drug trade -- may have been noble, but it wasn't long
before the use of the asset forfeiture statute swelled among law
enforcement agencies. Property was being seized on the narrowest of
tangential connections between crime suspects and their family
members, landlords and acquaintances.

Taking private property based only on "probable cause" became a
too-often employed crime fighting tool, even when no formal charges
had been filed and it later was determined that no crime had been committed.

"Probable cause" was not a very high hurdle to clear, especially when
compared to what innocent citizens had to go through in their attempts
to retrieve their belongings.

The legislation approved Tuesday, which garnered bipartisan support
and has President Clinton's promise of a signature, was first
introduced seven years ago by Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois. The delay
in its final passage just underscores how slow the wheels of justice
do grind.

But Congress' work isn't over yet. This law, which will flip the
burden of proof to the government and raise the legal standard for
seizure to a "preponderance of the evidence," is only a start on
remedying the injustice of a system that has existed for almost 30
years.

Legislators who are looking for just the right wording of a stronger
bill are encouraged to pull out their handy copies of the Constitution
- -- surely they each have one somewhere in their Washington offices --
and re-read the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. It's all right there.

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