HOUSE APPROVES MEASURE THAT WOULD CURB GOVERNMENT'S AUTHORITY TO SEIZE
PROPERTY

WASHINGTON -- An unusual coalition of liberals and conservatives
persuaded the House of Representatives to approve legislation Thursday
to make it much harder for Federal and state law enforcement
authorities to confiscate property before they bring criminal charges
in narcotics and other cases.

By an unexpectedly lopsided vote of 375 to 48, the House for the first
time rolled back 30 years of criminal measures passed at the height of
Government "wars" on drugs and terrorism. Those measures substantially
broadened the power of Federal and state authorities to seize houses,
cars, cash, boats, planes and other assets before filing criminal
charges. But in recent years the seizure of property from people who
were never convicted -- and in some cases never even faced charges --
raised concerns among both liberals and conservatives that the powers
were being abused.

Stopping short of threatening a veto, the Clinton Administration
opposed Thursday's legislation, saying it would make it more difficult
to combat crime. A substitute measure diluting many of the central
features of the bill and supported by the White House was defeated
Thursday, 268 to 155. No similar legislation has been introduced yet
in the Senate.

The approved measure, which raises the legal standard for seizure in
Federal cases, expands legal defenses and provides lawyers to poor
property owners involved in such cases, attracted a remarkable
coalition of lawmakers and organizations across a broad ideological
spectrum.

Representative Henry J. Hyde, the Illinois Republican who has spent
six years trying to pass the measure, said it "puts civil liberties
back in our judicial system." Hyde, chairman of the House Judiciary
Committee, likened the system of confiscation before conviction to "a
throwback to the old Soviet Union."

Committee members who then rose to endorse the measure included
Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan; Representative
Bob Barr, Republican of Georgia; and Representative Barney Frank,
Democrat of Massachusetts.

What made their alliance so incongruous was that less than a year ago,
the four had been engaged in a bitter debate over the impeachment of
President Clinton, first in the Judiciary Committee and later on the
floor of the House. So divisive was the debate that many experts had
predicted that the lawmakers would never again be able to work
together to pass meaningful legislation.

The conservative Hyde and Frank, one of the committee's ranking
liberal Democrats, are often foils in law-enforcement matters and they
came to represent the two extremes in the consideration of Clinton's
future.

But Thursday they were unified not only in their support of the
measure but also in denouncing the Administration effort to substitute
the weaker measure.

Frank called the alternative an effort "to lower the standards too
low." He was joined in denouncing both current law and the
Administration's measure by Barr, another traditional opponent, who
said the law had "become the monetary tail wagging the law-enforcement
dog.

"Balancing the important needs of law enforcement," said Barr, a
former United States attorney in Atlanta involved in forfeiture cases,
"means striking the criminal where it hurts, in the pocket book, but
not with a blunderbuss."

But opponents of the measure said it went too far.

"Let us not turn back the clock on the war on drugs," said
Representative Jim Ramstad, Republican of Minnesota, a supporter of
the bill that failed.

With a growing number of cases in which people guilty of no crime have
had their assets seized, the lawmakers adopted a bill that would
require the Government to prove "by clear and convincing evidence"
that the property confiscated was subject to forfeiture because of
illegal use.

Under current law, the burden of proof is with the person whose
property is being seized; the Government has only to show "probable
cause" that the property is subject to forfeiture, an easy standard to
satisfy.

The legislation would continue to permit prosecutors to seize assets
before filing criminal charges, but it would broaden the available
defense to such seizures and eliminate the requirement that a property
owner post a 10 percent bond to challenge a seizure. It would also
require the Government to provide lawyers to property owners who could
not afford them and would give owners more time to challenge seizures.

Existing law, which gives wide discretion to Federal and state
law-enforcement officials to seize property, is the product of three
measures adopted since 1970, when Congress appeared less preoccupied
with civil liberties issues and more concerned about combating
terrorism and drug trafficking.

But in recent years public sentiment began to turn, reflected by the
breadth of the coalition pushing for Thursday's bill. The group
included the American Bar Association, the National Rifle Association,
the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Tax Reform, the
American Bankers Association, the National Association of Criminal
Defense Lawyers, the United States Chamber of Commerce and pilot,
boating, hotel and housing organizations.

Faced with that coalition and powerful anecdotal evidence of abusive
Government conduct, critics of the new legislation were unable to
counter the growing view that Federal forfeiture laws were being
stretched beyond reasonable limits.

Among the examples cited in the Congressional debate Thursday was the
case of a landscaper, Willie Jones, who went to a Nashville airport
with $9,000 in cash to travel to Houston to buy nursery stock. He was
detained after paying for his plane ticket in cash, and he had the
rest of his cash confiscated after officers told him that anyone
carrying that much money had to be involved in drugs.

Supporters of the bill also pointed to a 1997 case involving the
seizure of $506,231 in cash from the Congress Pizzeria in Chicago. A
Federal court ordered the return of the money to the owner, Anthony
Lombardo, and reminded the United States Attorney in Chicago that "the
Government may not seize money, even half a million dollars, based on
its bare assumption that most people do not have huge sums of money
lying about, and if they do, they must be involved in narcotics
trafficking or some other sinister activity."

Perhaps the most compelling example of abuses was the seizure by the
United States Attorney's office in Houston of the Red Carpet Motel
last year. There were no allegations that the hotel's owners had
participated in crimes. But prosecutors claimed the management had
failed to implement "security measures" dictated by law-enforcement
officials, including raising room rates to make them less affordable
to criminals.

In all three instances, the property was ultimately
returned.

The Administration, supported by local police groups who have reaped
millions of dollars in assets from the existing practice, has strongly
opposed the measure. The local law-enforcement organizations often
prefer the Federal forfeiture law because under many similar state
laws the assets seized do not go to law enforcement but to other state
agencies. The Federal law allows Federal authorities to share bounty
with local law-enforcement groups.

Forfeitures have been a significant source of revenue for the Federal
Government and for local authorities. At the end of last year, 24,903
seized assets valued at $1 billion were on deposit. They included
7,799 cash seizures, valued at $349 million; 1,181 real properties,
valued at $205 million; 45 businesses, valued at $49 million, and
15,878 other assets, valued at $398 million.

The Administration-backed proposal would have permitted forfeitures if
a "preponderance of the evidence" showed they were part of a criminal
act.