CONGRESS RAISES BURDEN OF PROOF ON ASSET SEIZURES

WASHINGTON, April 11 -- After years of complaints about abusive
government conduct, Congress completed legislation today
that would make it harder for the federal government to confiscate
property from people before it actually brings charges in criminal
cases.

Administration officials said President Clinton would sign the
legislation, a compromise measure approved unanimously by the House of
Representatives today and by the Senate two weeks ago. The legislation
adds significant safeguards that will make it more difficult for
prosecutors to seize homes, money, cars, boats and other property
before trials begin. But it also expands the government's authority to
discover tainted assets and confiscate them after convictions.

The United States Supreme Court and other courts have criticized the
current law, saying that lax standards had repeatedly allowed
prosecutors to confiscate the assets of innocent people long before
criminal trials began. Congressional hearings documented many
instances where the seizures created enormous hardships for people and
required that they engage in onerous litigation to try to win back
money, cars, homes and businesses that were never part of a criminal
scheme.

Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, the Republican chairman of
the House Judiciary Committee who introduced the first bill to change
forfeiture laws seven years ago and co-sponsored the latest bill, said
the legislation approved today struck a fair balance between
protecting property owners and continuing to permit the government to
confiscate assets that it can show may have been part of a crime.

"This bill is one we can all be proud of," Mr. Hyde said. "It returns
civil asset forfeiture to the ranks of respected law-enforcement tools
that can be used without risk to the civil liberties and property
rights of American citizens. We are all better off that this is so."

The current laws were enacted as part of a trend that began 30 years
ago to expand the authority of law enforcement at the height of
efforts to combat drugs and terrorism.

Those laws were challenged by a remarkable coalition of liberal and
conservative members of Congress and a diverse collection of
organizations.

The critics of the current law included the American Civil Liberties
Union, the National Rifle Association, the American Bankers
Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the
United States Chamber of Commerce, the Americans for Tax Reform, and
organizations representing pilots, boaters and hoteliers.

While most of the groups generally applauded Congress today for taking
an important first step to make it more difficult for the government
to confiscate assets without sufficient evidence of wrongdoing, some
said additional legislation was necessary to remedy previous abuses.

"The situation is so bad that even modest reforms are important," said
Rachel King, legislative counsel of the A.C.L.U. "We think this just
begins to address the problem."

The legislation both shifts the burden of proof to the government and
raises the legal standard for seizures before a conviction.

Under the existing law, once the government can show probable cause
that the property is subject to civil forfeiture -- the same standard
required for a search warrant -- the onus shifts to the owner to
establish that the property is "innocent." This standard has its roots
in a legal fiction that objects can be "guilty" of wrongdoing, a
belief that grew out of English common law and was adopted by Congress
in 1789.

Last year, nearly $500 million worth of property was
confiscated.

The government can seize property at any time -- before or after an
arrest or an indictment. Moreover, an owner is not automatically
entitled to recover the property even if ultimately acquitted of a
crime because the standard of proof for a conviction is much higher
than the standard for property seizures.

But under the new legislation, the government can confiscate property
only if it first shows there is a substantial connection between the
property and the crime "by a preponderance of the evidence," a higher
burden than probable cause.

The new legislation expands possible legal defenses, awards lawyers'
fees to owners who successfully challenge property seizures and, in
some cases, provides government-paid lawyers to indigent property
owners. It allows federal judges to release property to the owner if
confiscation by the government causes substantial hardship to the
owner, and it extends the time an owner has to challenge the seizure
of an asset.

The legislation also eliminates a provision that required property
owners to post a bond when they contested the forfeiture.

But the legislation also offers some benefits to law-enforcement
officials, which was necessary to win the support of the Justice
Department. It would make it easier, for instance, for prosecutors to
seize property after criminal convictions. It also sets up a new
procedure for federal courts to enforce the forfeiture judgments of
foreign nations. And it gives the government greater access to
financial records in instances where the assets may be held in secret
accounts overseas.

Those provisions favorable to law enforcement helped the chief
sponsors of the legislation in the House, Mr. Hyde and John Conyers,
Democrat of Michigan, and in the Senate, Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of
Utah, and Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, win the support of
the Clinton administration. At the urging of the Justice Department
and local law-enforcement groups, the White House had opposed a House
bill passed last June that would have imposed even more restraints on
law-enforcement authorities.