Federal Appeals Court: DRIVING WITH MONEY IS A CRIME

[kpete]

Federal Appeals Court: Driving With Money is a Crime

Eighth Circuit Appeals Court ruling says police may seize cash from motorists even in the absence of any evidence that a crime has been committed.

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that if a motorist is carrying large sums of money, it is automatically subject to confiscation. In the case entitled, "United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit took that amount of cash away from Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez, a man with a "lack of significant criminal history" neither accused nor convicted of any crime.

On May 28, 2003, a Nebraska state trooper signaled Gonzolez to pull over his rented Ford Taurus on Interstate 80. The trooper intended to issue a speeding ticket, but noticed the Gonzolez's name was not on the rental contract. The trooper then proceeded to question Gonzolez -- who did not speak English well -- and search the car. The trooper found a cooler containing $124,700 in cash, which he confiscated. A trained drug sniffing dog barked at the rental car and the cash. For the police, this was all the evidence needed to establish a drug crime that allows the force to keep the seized money.

Associates of Gonzolez testified in court that they had pooled their life savings to purchase a refrigerated truck to start a produce business. Gonzolez flew on a one-way ticket to Chicago to buy a truck, but it had sold by the time he had arrived. Without a credit card of his own, he had a third-party rent one for him. Gonzolez hid the money in a cooler to keep it from being noticed and stolen. He was scared when the troopers began questioning him about it. There was no evidence disputing Gonzolez's story.

Yesterday the Eighth Circuit summarily dismissed Gonzolez's story. It overturned a lower court ruling that had found no evidence of drug activity, stating, "We respectfully disagree and reach a different conclusion... Possession of a large sum of cash is 'strong evidence' of a connection to drug activity."

more at:
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/12/1296.asp
http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2006/moneyseize.pd...

[Pierre.Suave]

1. He needed

a better lawyer.

[bikesein]

7. It wouldn't have hurt

but they had all of his money!!!

[Occulus]

2. The courts......... are allowing open theft?

Am I reading this decision correctly?

[JHB]

12. Yep, all thanks to the War on (some) Drugs!

Read up on "Property- (or Asset-) Forfeiture Laws" for this little know but easily abused facet.

Here's a primer (and it's 10 years old!):

Before the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, money from federal civil forfeitures went into the general fund of the U.S. Treasury. Now it is deposited into the Justice Department's Asset Forfeiture Fund or the Treasury Department's Forfeiture Fund to be spent with little or no oversight by the same authorities who confiscated it. In 1985, one year after the Crime Control Act went into effect, $27 million was deposited in the Deptartment of Justice's Fund. Every year since 1989, deposits have exceeded $500 million (except for 1990, which was slightly less).

While law enforcement officials make a big deal out of the occasional large drug bust, the majority are relatively small-time dealers or users who do not have lots of valuable personal property. This means that lots of property must be confiscated to add up to the big bucks involved. For example, in Michigan in 1992 civil asset forfeiture was used in 9,770 instances netting, on average, only $1,434 in each case. Fifty-four private homes were taken with an average value of $15,881 and 807 cars worth $1,412 on average. No police department (out of 123 reporting) gave any evidence of convictions associated with the seizures.

Officers at the state and local level also get to keep much of the assets they seize which provides quite an incentive to “structure arrests” by setting up stings in valuable places rather than on a back road somewhere. (Although in practice homes, cars, etc. are seized even when drugs are not found in them -- all it takes is the statement of one informant to connect the property with drugs and it's gone.)

Brenda Grantland, a defense attorney specializing in forfeiture and President of FEAR (Forfeiture Endangers American Rights, a national organization committed to the reform of forfeiture laws and assisting in the defense of forfeiture's victims), states, “ began the war on the private property of innocent Americans -- not just the “proceeds of crime” or the assets of convicted criminals. Armed with statutory authorization...and with no legislative oversight over how they spent it, the popularity of asset forfeiture immediately skyrocketed. This provision not only gave the police the power to terrorize innocent citizens -- it also allowed the police to finance their own new police state out of the property they seized.”
http://www.zmag.org/Zmag/articles/jan96meeker.htm

[donco6]

31. "And the money keeps rolling in (and out)"

From an accounting perspective, this is a HUGE red flag - in-and-out accounting.

[electropop]

32. Holy crap. The SS is now self-funded.

[lonestarnot]

33. You got that fucking right!

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Wow, I never thought I'd live to see the USA turn into a police state.

[Vincardog]

4. Are they going to start enforcing this policy in Beverly hills CA?

How about the diamond traders in NY? City? Or do you think this rulling anly applies to brown people in Nebraska?

[damntexdem]

22. No, no -- this was a case of driving in Nebraska ...

while Hispanic.

[wakeme2008]

5. This is BS... his story sounds OK to me

and without a crimmal history I would believe him... Driving While Brown with Money...

[bowens43]

14. It's really irrelevant whether or not his story is true.

Even if it was drug profits, if he wasn't convicted of a crime how can they justify taking his money?

[JHB]

24. Look at the name of the case...

It's not "The State vs. Some Guy", it's "The State vs. A Wad of Cash".

So they're not charging HIM with anything, except a lack of enough money to defend his money in this kangaroo court.

If they charge the property, not the man, they don't have to jump through any of those inconvenient "innocent until proven guilty" hoops. Good luck proving beyond a reasonable doubt that your seized property was entirely unconnected to drug trafficing.

The law was sold on the idea it would take druglords' playthings (yachts, limos, mansions, private jets, etc.) away from them, and civil libertarians' protests were for the ususal reasons ("But this is an EMERGENCY"), and as usual under such circumstances, the reality was a bait-and-switch.

[JHB]

56. Too late to fix a typo...

That last bit should read:

"civil libertarians' protests were ignored for the ususal reasons...

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

59. How the hell can an inanimate object be party to legal proceedings?

How the hell is that even possible?

[JHB]

60. Same answer as "How the hell can a corporation be a 'person'?"

Because the law was written/interpreted/misinterpreted that way, and courts have upheld it.

[Ezlivin]

6. The Drug War is nothing but bullshit

I've read of other similar stories. Usually it's someone who often gets paid in cash and is simply returning home with the "paycheck."

My wife runs an interior design firm and hires people all the time for different jobs. She hired a couple of (white) guys to do some painting. They did a good job, she paid them with a check and they left. They later headed into Oklahoma, towing their paint equipment trailer. The cops pulled them over, said that they suspected them of smuggling drugs and made them wait while they fetched the drug dogs. They then tore the truck and trailer all apart and scattered the stuff all along the side of the highway. Needless to say, when they were done there wasn't a damned thing in the vehicle or trailer; the men were as innocent as they'd claimed. Without apologizing, the officers left the scene, leaving the painters to reassemble their truck.

One more story. My niece was returning from California with her brother and her botanist boyfriend. They were stopped in South Dakota. Again, suspicion of drugs. They tore their vehicle apart and found a "grow light", but nothing else. When the boyfriend explained that he was a botanist, they ignored him, saying that the light "could be used to grow illegal drugs." That was all the proof they needed to arrest them.

Now it's down to having cash on you.

Yep, that $80 billion/year Drug War is working out just fine.

[donco6]

Eeek. I have a grow light. . .

I hope I don't have to go to prison because I like African violets.

[JHB]

30. No, but they might take your house...

...Don't think it hasn't happened.

[alfredo]

42. A friend of mine owns some very desirable land that

developers want. One day the local police found some wild hemp growing on his property. Our region was a big hemp producer during WW ll. Some escaped and is growing wild throughout the region. They threatened to seize his land, but he was able to get help from the local media and his congressman.

His farm covers 650 acres of prime farmland. It is also appears to be very appealing to some builders who want to build luxury townhouses there.

They could have taken it, then sold it to developers, kept the money for their city and not even charged him of a crime. He was lucky that he was smart, rich, and well connected. Him, his wife and kid would have been homeless.

[JHB]

44. Even worse, he could have ended up dead

There was a case in California similar to your friend's (valuable property, a couple of stray plants he might not have even known of) where (IIRC) the police no-knock raided his house in full SWAT regalia. The owner, woken in the middle of the night by crashing noises and thinking it was robbers, grabbed his pistol from his nightstand. Police kick open the bedroom door, he's there with a gun pointed at them...BOOM: one less "drug kingpin" in the world.

[alfredo]

49. Lot of people don't know that the police office that

confiscates property get to keep proceeds from the sale of the property. Need some new cruisers? accuse someone of dealing/growing drugs and seize their property and you got some easy money.


A few years ago a farmer had his land seized. He appealed the seizure but before the case was settled in his favor, the city had sold his land. He was an old man, poor and not that with it, so he stood little chance against the corrupt city.

[slaveplanet]

51. This is the bullshit way

while they fetched the drug dogs.

they get around warrants. When you refuse a consent search, they will bring a dog that keys on anything, not just drugs. a simple bark and voila, instant probable cause, no warrant necessary.

Anything they find is now theirs, if they want to make the slimmest connection to drugs.

Also they are now using laptops and other readers to run every plate on the freeway that they pass, if anything is out of order, like say your insurance just dropped and you haven't been notified and a warrant is instantly issued, then you're getting pulled and probably searched.

[kurth]

8. Immigrants buy cars with cash all the time

That's how it's done in many countries.

[WinkyDink]

17. I BUY my cars with cash! NEVER on credit! Yikes!

[Trillo]

9. This decision could lead to further

erosion of confidence in 'paper money.'

[The Deacon]

10. His Real Crime?

Being brown while possessing an amount of money only allowed to white folks - how dare he try to buy his way out of sweatshop or stoop labor!

[Lochloosa]

11. Comprehensive Crime Control Act in 1984

Drug War Forfeitures the dirty little secret in the closet.

It is also one of the main reasons that local police will never support responsible drug policies. They get the money!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/spe...
According to a report prepared for the Senate Judiciary Committee, at least 90 percent of the property that the federal government seeks to forfeit is pursued through civil asset forfeiture. And although forfeiture is intended as punishment for illegal activity, over 80% of the people whose property is seized under civil law are never even charged with a crime according to one study of over 500 federal cases by the Pittsburgh Press. For this reason, critics say, the system can run roughshod over the rights of innocent property owners--and fail to distinguish them from the guilty.

This potential for abuse is compounded by the strong financial incentive that law enforcement has to make seizures--since they benefit directly from forfeited property. It was the passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, part of the Reagan-era ramp-up in the war on drugs, that first made this possible. At a federal level, the law established two new forfeiture funds: one at the U.S. Department of Justice, which gets revenue from forfeitures done by agencies like the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and another now run by the U.S. Treasury, which gets revenue from agencies like Customs and the Coast Guard. These funds could now be used for forfeiture-related expenses, payments to informants, prison building, equipment purchase, and other general law enforcement purposes.

But equally important, local law enforcement would now get a piece of the pie. Within the 1984 Act was a provision for so-called "equitable sharing", which allows local law enforcement agencies to receive a portion of the net proceeds of forfeitures they help make under federal law--and under current policy, that can be up to 80%. Previously, seized assets had been handed over to the federal government in their entirety.

Immediately following passage of the Act, federal forfeitures increased dramatically. The amount of revenue deposited into the Department of Justice Assets Forfeiture Fund, for example, soared from $27 million in 1985 to $644 million in 1991--a more than twenty-fold increase. And as forfeitures increased, so did the amount of money flowing back to state and local law enforcement through equitable sharing.

[bowens43]

13. No crime involved, just confiscation.

He hasn't been charged with a crime still they took his money. This happens all the time. It's not an isolated case. Usually it's property, cars , houses etc.

[slampoet]

15. To everyone surprised by this......

Have you all been living under a rock for 20 years?

I read about this in 1988!!

Or doesn't anyone here actually read alternative media that doesn't have a modem attached?

[sui generis]

27. how to win friends and influence strangers by calling them retarded

and using the phrase "you all" in a disparaging sentence.



Yes we do. We all do. I guess whatever rings too close to home is what gets most of one's attention, and if most people didn't have hundreds of thousands in cash laying around or weren't into drugs or drug dealing there were probably other things we noticed, like arguing about trickle down economics and gawdawful trade deficits and whether it was appropriate to give China Most Favored Nation status and all that other boring crap.

Also DU wasn't around in 1988 and most people that were on the INTERNETS in 1988 were actually on a 900 or **gasp** screamingly fast 1200 baud modem, and speaking for myself I was way too busy downloading porn to be bothered with politics.

[LordLovesAWorkingMan]

16. I wonder what the judge's cut was

After the local cops took their slice.

[KansDem]

18. Does this mean that "Duke" Cunningham's $32,000 and dirty underwear...

...would get him in jail on a drug charge?

I mean, he was already going to prison, but would the money he left in a duffel bag in the driveway of his house (for his wife) be construed as a "drug deal" and result in more years added to his sentence?

[MisoWeaver]

19. This is total bullshit

And you'd be surprised at how often it happens.

The local police departments have a definiate conflict of interest in these cases because they get to keep every cent that they confiscate. It falls under civil law and the dispostion of whatever money is confiscated is decided by a judge.

There are countless local PDs that own vacation condos in Aspen, Hawaii... all over, all funded by thieft.

This country needs to be flushed!

[sui generis]

25. he needs a better lawyer

The IRS says you have to be able to account for receiving or earning or being gifted with every dollar you possess, but also has an audit limit.

HOW LONG WILL IT BE before they start doing this to your bank account?

In theory, if you only declare 40K in income, are middle aged, haven't won the lotto or a vast inheritance and you suddenly show up with a bunch of money in one of your bank accounts, it could be said that you got it through illegal means, or are preparing to use it illegally, not having declared or paid income tax on it.

In practice what that boneheaded dumbfuck of a judge just did was set precedent that the mere hearsay of intent of a crime is enough reason to confiscate cash from someone.

So what's to stop a cop from making you go to an ATM and show him your account balance? What if that guy had had all that money, but it was in an escrow account guaranteeing a cashier's check? Now they could have seized those funds.

What if they were telling the truth? I suppose hearsay has more weight than his friends and neighbors stepping forth to say they had contributed cash to buy a rig?

What if he really was going to deal drugs? SHOULD the government have the right to confiscate assets on suspicion alone?

That judge is the reason we need to recess appoint every single liberal judge in the first congressional recess after we take office - every last one of them. We cannot let our very own judiciary rot like this.

[JHB]

28. The Judge didn't set a precedent...

Read some of the links on this thread, and Google "Asset forfeiture abuse".

The precedent is already there, shameful as it is.

[sui generis]

35. I still think we need to recess appoint the entire vacancy list

after we're in office, and use Bush's abuse of the system as a justifiable precedent and rationale.

Paybacks really should be hell.

[JHB]

45. And HOW!

n/t

[damntexdem]

20. Hey, Halliburton has tens of thousands of times more money --

they must really be into drugs. Go confiscate all they have!

What idiocy our drug laws are!

[QuettaKid]

23. I have an idea. I propose that we test this out.

I will volunteer to be the driver.....if everyone on DU wants to send me some cash, nothing major, some small bills,$1,$5....

[JHB]

21. It's a stealth tax on the poor and working class

This sort of "asset forfeiture" (where the police don't actually have to prove anything to permanently seize property (and fund themselves with the proceeds) have become a regressive "stealth tax": why rile up local voters by levying taxes to pay for police when the police can pay for themselves by making "seizures" as part of the "war on drugs"?

[Jim__]

26. Possession of a large sum of cash is 'strong evidence' of a connection to

Possession of a large sum of cash is 'strong evidence' of a connection to drug activity.

Right. Unless your name happens to be Gates, or Hilton, or ... Possession of a large sum of money by certain "types" of people is strong evidence of a connection to drug activity. Shit like this led to a revolution a few hundred years ago. I wonder where it's going to lead now.

[Karenina]

29. Only if one is perceived as "brown"

by the LEO in question.

[LSK]

34. how could a dismissed case move to another court?

[MessiahRp]

36. I'd sue the Government big time on this and sue them for discrimination

This is theft and should not be tolerated. Having cash is indicative of drug sales? Ridiculous. I guess in our corporate culture if you don't trust the bank and their ripoff fees you are obviously a criminal.

Rp

[babylonsister]

37. So the drug dog barks and the man is guilty? I've read trace

evidence of cocaine is on most bills.
And if these drug dogs are anything like the recent bomb-sniffing dogs...

This stinks on so many levels.

[One_Life_To_Give]

38. Real Crime, failure to use tracable funds

Can't have people using Legal Tender, no way to trace it. By forcing everyone to use credit/debit cards, your government can know what you bought and what you forgot to buy even before you do.

As one study many years ago determined. The best way to monitor and control people is thru the use of credit card type transactions required for all purchases.

[Gregorian]

39. My god, I have a friend who cashes checks at his grocery store.

Thirty years ago I recall driving to the bank with $30,000 in cash in my lap. He gets nearly all cash purchases during the day. And goes to the bank each night. But he also keeps cash for check cashing purposes.

This is a total crock of shit. Just another erosion of liberty.


Freedom isn't given, it's taken. Don't forget that. We may have to take it back some day.

[Jed Dilligan]

40. Just fucking disgusting

Thugs with badges or gavels are still thugs.

[arikara]

41. Why doesn't this surprise me?

Unfortunately this type of thing has always happened with so called "law enforcement" on some level or another. In my younger party days I used to hang out with the cops. One of the bachelors who had his own house used to ply us with any kind of booze we wanted, as much as we wanted. We knew he wasn't paying for it, but we weren't complaining. And who knows what else he was confiscating and keeping?

The cops were always the best party animals around. And if you were a cute young thing that got "in" with them you were safe from drunk driving and any other charges that may come up.

One time I got my hands on some shine and gave a sample to the cop with the booze. He got all excited and said, "I don't want to know where you got it from but get some for me."

[lostnfound]

43. Wonder if this applies to politicians like Bob Dole

Isn't he the one that's known for carrying around large sums of cash?

[depakid]

46. That's about as Facist as it gets

Can't say tht I'm surprised though. That's the sort of judges that the far right nominates- and the Dems roll over and pass on.

[baldguy]

47. Bye, bye Fifth Amendment

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

Is cash money not property?

[Marie26]

48. Correction:

A Minority Driving With Money is now a crime. Fixed. I don't think they'll be enforcing this law against middle-aged big-shot attorneys in their BMW's anytime soon.

[earth mom]

50. Another step toward a cashless society. Fingerprint payment

is already in place. How long before we're all microchipped?

[tgnyc]

52. How much is a large sum? $20,000? $15,000?

[JHB]

57. Doesn't need to be nearly that much...

$2000, $1000, a couple hundred. If they want to push it, think in amounts comparable to a family's weekly grocery bill.

Seizures have been made from people making out of state buying trips for their businesses with "large" sums of cash in that ballpark.

[Art_from_Ark]

53. "Trained drug sniffing dog"

I ran into one of these at a Japanese airport once after coming back from the States. The dog couldn't get enough of sniffing me, and the customs guys were all eying me. So they pulled me out of the line and asked me to go into a room to have all my bags searched. Of course, they didn't find anything, because I didn't have any contraband. But I did have the smell of my parents' dogs on me (I had been petting them before I left), and that is what attracted the "drug sniffer's" attention.

[alcibiades_mystery]

54. The NYPD be hatin'..they gonna try to catch me RIDING DIRTY

try to catch me RIDING DIRTY
try to catch me RIDING DIRTY
try to catch me RIDING DIRTY
try to catch me RIDING DIRTY

[madmusic]

55. Currency sniffs

CURRENCY SNIFFS:

Summary:

There is debate among the courts that a positive canine alert to currency may not be probable cause due to wide spread contamination of money with drug residue.

The dog sniff must be coupled with other supporting factors, such as potential indicators of drug trafficking or use, etc.

Currency sniffs are the only area where a positive canine alert is not probable cause, it is a reasonable suspicion factor or “strong evidence.”

Narcotic detector dogs alert to odor, not residue.

Currency in circulation does not contain enough odor for a narcotic detector dog to alert to.

Only currency tainted with the odor of controlled substances in a requisite level of contamination will trigger a positive canine alert.

http://www.k9fleck.org/nlu09.htm

Does anyone else kinda miss the writ of habeas corpus?

[sui generis]

61. well gosh

I guess they just used the cash to set all the loose cocaine on to keep it off the floor.

What are those people smoking? Parsing residue and odor as if there were some factor differentiating the two? I guess those pesky drug kingpins were using crack to lubricate their bill counters, just like in the movies.

Dur.

"Requisite Level" - another red herring pseudoscience phrase. Do they mean by, uh, gas chromatography? Some other spec? Do they feed those delicate threshold parms into a dogs nose? What would constitute a false positive? Are the K9fleck guys saying there is no such thing as a false positive or that they can't imagine a circumstance under which the "requisite level" would be exceeded?

[symbolman]

58. Taxation without Representation

they through boxes of Tea into the Boston Harbor over shit like this..

When I was in the USAF, the Security Police (AKA "Space Pigs") used to pull the fire alarms in the middle of the night, herd us all into the day room in our underwear and then search our bunk rooms one at a time with dogs.. they did this unnannounced on a regular basis, we started calling them "storm troopers"..

one trick we learned is to spread cayenne powder all over the bottom of the door frame..

The dogs would hit the floor with their noses at the door, suck this shit up into their sinuses and start sneezing Blood.. I know it sounds cruel, but we weren't going to jail on bogus charges.

We'd stand there and look the cops in the eye and say, "Man, it looks to me like your dog doesn't have the capability of Smelling it's own SHIT.."

And we'd get off every time. Funny thing was is that the best drugs came FROM the Space Pigs.. those in long enough and knew the Pigs were safe, as the dog wouldn't "smell" anything in your room.. when they alarm went off you'd see all the dope go flying out the dorm windows, and two SPs would sweep that area and pick it up, only to sell it BACK to people the next day.. total scam..

Maybe this person should have tossed a bunch of red pepper in the cooler and seen how that worked for him.