FORFEITURES OFTEN HIT FAMILIES WHERE THEY LIVE -- LITERALLY

Seizure May Leave Relatives Broke, Children Homeless

Forfeitures don't hit just drug dealers in the pocket book.
They can also take a bite out of the assets of family members of those
accused of crimes.

James Davis of Pine Bluff says he showed up at his bank in 1992 and
discovered he couldn't withdraw any cash from the account he'd held
for nearly 20 years. His $6,000 was no longer his to spend.

The seizure was the result of his brother's arrest for trafficking
crack cocaine from Pine Bluff to Camden.

"It was my hard-earned money I had been saving through the years,"
Davis says. "My brother had no access to any of my accounts."

In June 1993, his brother, L.C. Davis, drew a 30-year prison sentence
for running a drug-trafficking ring. But the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
could find no convictions for James Davis.

The bank confirmed James Davis opened the account before 1976. He was
the sole person authorized to make withdrawals.

"I don't do drugs because I see what it does to this generation." he
says. "It's just tearing them up."

State law requires a prosecutor to send out a certified letter of
notification for a forfeiture -- a notification James Davis says he
never received.

Angered over the seizure of his account, Davis decided to fight back.
He filed a lawsuit against David Butler, the prosecuting attorney who
was in charge of the 13th Judicial District Drug Task Force, the
agency that arrested his brother.

More than four years later, the money finally was returned.

But Davis says the damage already had been done, and he was forced to
close his fledgling clothing business in Stuttgart because he could no
longer use the savings account as collateral to borrow money.

"This is the day and age that anything can happen," Davis now
says.

Butler doesn't recall the seizure of the bank account and thinks
another prosecutor must have been responsible. He says he eventually
wrote a letter that got the account released at Davis' behest.

Both federal and state forfeiture laws are supposed to provide
protections for "innocent owners," including landlords or those
unaware of a spouse's illegal activity.

In fact, U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr. of Little Rock issued
in 1995 a landmark ruling in which he found Hayes Clemons had no idea
his wife had been laundering drug proceeds.

The judge split the couple's Little Rock home in half, deeding
Josephine Clemons' portion to the federal government and the rest back
to her husband. The judge further ruled that the husband should
receive half of any profits from the house's sale or half of any rent
the house generated.

Hayes Clemons was one of the lucky ones, says David Smith, who in the
1980s set up the asset forfeiture section of the U.S. Justice
Department. Smith now is lobbying for the repeal of some of the same
forfeiture laws he helped draft, having seen too many abuses.

"We never imagined that once they got going it would be such a
juggernaut," he says. "It's sort of a runaway train.''

Now a defense lawyer in Alexandria, Va., Smith says innocent people
often get caught in a squeeze when prosecutors suspect
money-laundering.

"The government isn't all that careful before it seizes property," he
says. "There seems to be an attitude of, 'Let's seize it now and sort
it out later.' "

In one case Smith is handling, federal authorities seized all the
property of the extended family of a person charged with running an
illegal sports betting operation. Smith says some of the family
members protected the gambler's assets, but others had no idea what
was going on.

Other such cases have cropped up across the nation, including the 1991
seizure of a Hawaiian couple's home after their mentally ill son was
found to be growing marijuana in the yard.

More recently, five men, including a West Helena police officer, filed
a federal lawsuit this week in Little Rock alleging an Arkansas State
Police lieutenant illegally seized more than $500,000 worth of cars.

The state police have said the seizures were valid and occurred during
an investigation into a "chop shop operation." But the lawsuit alleges
the cars weren't stolen and were being rebuilt.

In Vermont in the 1990s, a coalition of residents, outraged by the
seizure of homes where little children lived, formed a grass-roots
coalition called Stop Forfeiture of Children's Homes.

Children also have lost out in the 13th Judicial District of
Arkansas.

That's what happened when Butler authorized the seizure of the small
frame Magnolia home of Eula Faye Harper Brown, who was convicted in
1995 of selling crack cocaine.

"He told my husband he wasn't even to take a toothbrush, and if he
did, he'd arrest him," she says. "He told me he was going to take
everything I had."

But the seizure also had implications for two of Brown's daughters,
Marshala, then 3; Tamika, then 14; and her grandson, Raylon, then 12.

"What can a 3-year-old, a 12-year-old and 14-year-old tell a grown
woman?" Brown wants to know. "I made a mistake, and I'm willing to pay
for that. But it was more than a notion to have to lay down not
knowing where my babies were laying at."

Her husband, Ronnie Brown, convinced another family to take in the
grandson. But there was nowhere for the rest of the family to go.

So Brown moved himself and the two daughters into an abandoned trailer
out behind the seized house, which police had padlocked. The trailer
had no windows, and in the winter he resorted to covering the window
frames with plastic trash bags to keep out the chill.

"I caught pneumonia twice within three months," he says. "It was just
miserable."

Meanwhile, Tamika's school grades plummeted.

Butler says he has no qualms about the house's seizure.

"It's true her children were hurt," he says. "But selling cocaine in a
residential area where there's lots and lots of children requires
action. I thought it was better for the neighborhood for her to be out
of the neighborhood."

The house has since been returned to Eula Faye Brown, now out of
prison. Court documents show that Brown, now 51, agreed to forfeit the
property as part of a plea agreement. But Butler says he never
finalized the deal because he neglected to file proper forfeiture
paperwork with the court.

Brown, who has filed a federal lawsuit over the seizure, has since
separated from her husband. She has been released from prison on
parole and has custody of the children.