FORFEITURE FIX A MUST

Willie Jones, a landscaper, booked a flight from Nashville to Houston. He
was carrying $9,000 in cash to buy nursery stock. He paid for his $267 plane
ticket in cash, whereupon he was detained by federal officers who told him
that anyone carrying that much cash had to be involved in drugs. They
confiscated his money and it took him more than two years to get it back.

Evidence of the misuse of the Comprehensive Forfeiture Act of 1984 is
compelling, and it's no surprise that this is so. This misbegotten statute
attacks fundamental constitutional rights. Under it, no law-abiding citizen
is safe from having his or her property seized by out-of-control
authorities.

The law makes it possible for a police officer to take all the money you are
carrying and the car you are driving when stopped on the mere suspicion that
you are a drug dealer, yet never charge you with a crime.

To get your property back, you must prove that the money and car are legally
yours and were never involved in a crime. In other words, you are presumed
guilty until you prove your innocence - and the government doesn't have to
prove anything. And you have to foot all the legal bills involved.

Obviously, this law tramples constitutional protections. That must not
continue, and some in Congress realize that.

The House of Representatives has given overwhelming approval to a bill
sponsored by Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., that would restore due process to
forfeiture laws. The bill, passed 375-48, is now before the Senate Judiciary
Committee.

The bill, titled the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, would require the
government to provide notice to owners before seizing their property. The
owners then would have 30 days, rather than the current 10 to 20 days, to
challenge a seizure in court.

Most important, the burden of proof would shift to the government.
Prosecu-tors would have to provide "clear and convincing" evidence that the
property in question was eligible for forfeiture. Nor would it be sufficient
for officials to merely allege criminality on the part of the property
owner. They would have to prove it in court.

"What started out as an attempt to curb large-scale crime and drug
trafficking has evolved into a corrupt system of intimidation," said Rep.
Ron Paul of our area's 14th Congressional District, when he signed up to be
one of 57 cosponsors of the Hyde bill. Given Paul's record as a stalwart on
the protection of individual rights, this is an issue that goes straight to
his core beliefs - and he's definitely on the right side.

That's not true of the Clinton administration, which opposes the
legislation, although the president has not yet threatened a veto. The White
House stand is supported by local law enforcement agencies which, under
federal law, share millions of dollars in seized assets with the federal
government.

That arrangement is one of the fundamental flaws in the federal asset
forfeiture law. Because the funds go directly into the coffers of the agency
that seizes the assets, officers have a tremendous economic incentive to
ignore property rights and trample all over due process. They then use the
money to buy new police cars, hire more law enforcement agents and, in some
instances, use ill-gained dollars to throw self-congratulatory parties or
buy trucks and sports cars for members of the law enforcement team to keep
as their own.

Should the Hyde bill become law, authorities still will have the power to
confiscate property from criminals. But they no longer will have what
constitutional scholar Leonard Levy accurately calls "a license to steal"
the property of innocent citizens.