GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT

Luther Ricks Sr., to put it mildly, is living the American Nightmare.
What else can you call it when police take your money because they're
suspicious you're selling drugs, then fail either to file charges or
to return your money?

Public pressure isn't likely to help Ricks get back what is his. Ricks
needs a lawyer - but the government has depleted his means of hiring
one. What he also needs is his congressman to try to intervene on his
behalf. U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, should involve himself in
pressing the FBI to return the money to his constituent.

The Lima Police Department, which originally seized Ricks' money,
cannot get it back from the FBI.

Two robbers broke into his home June 30, attacking Ricks and his son.
One of the robbers stabbed Ricks' son. Ricks broke free and shot to
death one of the attackers, 22-year-old Jyhno Rock.

A man's home is his castle, after all - well, at least when it's not
the government that's doing the busting in. The American Nightmare has
only begun.

Lima police took $402,767 Ricks had in his house because they found a
small amount of marijuana, which Ricks said he uses to manage pain
from arthritis, shingles and a hip replacement. Ricks, 63, said he and
his wife, Meredith, saved the money over their lifetimes, during which
both worked but never opened a bank account.

The American Nightmare continues.

The FBI then took the money from the Lima Police Department. Ricks has
not been charged with a crime for the marijuana. He has been cleared
in the shooting death of Rock. Yet the FBI doesn't intend to give him
his money back.

Jeff Gamso, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of
Ohio, told The Lima News that Ricks has a tough fight ahead of him.
"The law of forfeiture basically says you have to prove you're
innocent. It's a terrible, terrible law," Gamso said. That's not
hopeful - for Ricks or for the American tradition.

That stuff about innocent until government proves you're guilty?
Forget it in this police state that the federal government,
particularly the FBI, seems to believe we should be living in.

Never mind Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, which
stipulates, " The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of
Impeachment; shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the
State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not
committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places
as the Congress may by law have directed."

Ricks received no trial, but the government can just seize his money?
Based on what? The belief he might be guilty of something. It's up to
Ricks to provide evidence the money in his possession was his. So much
for being innocent until the government proves you're guilty.

Never mind that the same Constitution's Fifth Amendment states that no
person "shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law."

Again, the government is depriving Ricks of both property and the
liberty that money helps provide, based on a hunch it doesn't even
intend to attempt to prove.

This isn't about legalizing drugs, even for medicinal purposes.. This
is about whether the government should be able to take a hunch and
turn a constitutional right on its head by making the accused prove he
is innocent.

This is bad news for every one of us.