Drug War Injustice and Us: Who's Fighting Wildfires?#links

Drug War Injustice and Us: Who's Fighting Wildfires?#links

Drug War Injustice and Us: Who's Fighting Wildfires?#links

Drug War Injustice and Us: Who's Fighting Wildfires?#links

WOMEN DRUG USERS AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
by Alasdair Cant.
It is impossible to put an exact figure on the number of drug using women who come into contact with the criminal justice system, for the same reason that it is impossible to assess the exact proportion of drug users - because of the illegal and stigmatised nature of drug use. However, there are findings, both anecdotal and researched that give us some indication as to how drug using women are faring in the criminal justice system.
About prisons, Oscar Wilde said:
"..every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim."
The term brothers in the last line is interesting. Historically, it is a true reflection of the gender imbalance in the prison population. Increasingly, however, 'brothers and sisters' would be more accurate. Although there are still far more men imprisoned than women, approximately four per cent of the adult prison population in the UK are women, the number of women in prison has been rising steadily in recent years.
In England and Wales, sentencing has become harsher, and women have been caught up by this trend. The 17 per cent rise in the number of women in prison compared to this time last year, reflects an overall trend in sentencing. The female prison population in March, stood at just under 2,000, an increase of around 11 per cent in 12 months. Contrary to popular belief, this is not due to any rising tide of female violence, least of all 'girl gangs'. This is, if I may use a little more alliteration, a media myth. According to the Prison Service, the number of women sent to prison for motoring offences has doubled in the past year, while those imprisoned for drug-related crimes has fallen by one third. The biggest single factor that results in women being given custodial sentences, is still that of non-payment of fines, which accounts for about a third of the women being jailed.
I wish to look at the thorny issue of sentencing, and in particular at the disparity in sentencing between men and women. We have to look carefully at this whole question, because the danger is to give a simplistic answer, which could then give rise to wrong assumptions.
The extent to which sentencers, and especially judges are predominantly men, is well catalogued. This situation has not improved much over the last few years, in spite of much publicity over this discrepancy. The scenario runs much along these lines:
A woman appears in the dock, looking down at heel, and evidently an established drug user. The male sentencer (wearing de rigueur half moon spectacles) is shocked at extent to which this woman has deviated from the 'normal path'. Normal to him, is a subjective judgement about how women should appear and behave. Hence he gives a harsher sentence than he might give to an equivalent male defendant.
Is this borne out by research and observation? Release has certainly observed that, in terms of sentencing alone, women are discriminated against in the courts on occasions, but not always. There have been instances, especially for first time offenders, where women drug users have seemed to get particularly harsh sentences. So, yes, this scenario does occur- in a variety of different shades and variations. But as in many situations where stereotyping is prevalent, it is not the whole picture.
Conversely, the Release legal advisers are aware that women do sometimes get treated more leniently by the courts. There may be convincing reasons why she should not go to prison, and in circumstances where it hangs in the balance, good legal representation and effective court report writing has made all the difference. Anyone who has been in a court of law will recognise that it is an artificial setting, designed to raise the stature of some, and humble the others. In blunt terms, it is something of a 'game', and I use this word with caution, because I don't wish to trivialise the seriousness of attending court, but rather draw attention to the fact that doing and saying the correct things is often in the best interests of the defendant. Women do seem to take on board better than men the hidden rules of attending a court - deferring to the court, dressing smartly, being polite to the bench and so on. However, this is anecdotal observation. What about evidence in research?
Criminal statistics across time and cultures, show that an overwhelming majority of those caught, convicted and sentenced by the courts are male. As well as this, numerous pieces of research, including findings from feminist criminology, suggest that men are more likely than women to receive custodial sentences for equivalent offences. According to most recent Home Office statistics, however, the notable exception to this is for drug offences, where the proportion of males to females sentenced to custody is roughly equal.
In the case of cautioning, the same situation seems to apply, where a conviction is the most common outcome for female offenders. In 1992, 61 per cent of all females convicted or cautioned for indictable offences received a caution, compared with 36 per cent of males. Women had higher cautioning rates across all age groups and most offences, but yet again, the exception to this was where drugs are involved.
So what do we make of this? Statistically, it does seem that where drugs and women are concerned, they buck the overall trend of women getting more lenient sentences from the courts. However, we must be very wary of drawing immediate conclusions from this. There are still too many unknowns. To properly research sentencing, many more factors must be taken into account, such as a detailed analysis of each case, taking previous offending, aggravating/mitigating circumstances and so on into account. My own observation in our local magistrates court makes me a little sceptical of research. The reason is that the character of the magistrates sentencing is as different as you are likely to find anywhere in London. One magistrate is renown for his harsh sentencing, and indeed demonstrated how in touch with reality he was by stopping court proceedings to ask what a can of Lilt is! The other is much more lenient, and I have heard him once suggesting to one defendent that he felt 10 pounds a week was too much to pay, and 5 per week over a longer period was much more realistic. Hence, someone tried in court on Monday afternoon might get a very different sentence from someone tried in court on Tuesday morning for exactly the same offence. Such factors must surely make accurate research nigh on impossible.
In trying to analyse the significance of data about women drug users in the criminal justice system, it is easy to lose sight of important overall concerns. It does seem for example that female drug users are discriminated against in the courts, but drug users generally are misrepresented and discriminated against in our society. Where should we direct our energies and resources to counter this?
Secondly, is there equally suitable provision for women as for men throughout the criminal justice system? In a system which deals largely with male offenders, the needs of women offenders are often not effectively addressed. An investigation by HM Inspectorate of Probation in 1991 found that a limited range of community penalties are available for women in some areas. This has been an on-going situation and probation officers often complain to me about the lack of provision for women. There are only a handful of bail hostels in the country that are for women only. There is Crowley House in Birmingham, where women are taken with children, but this serves a massive area. There is also Adelaide House in Liverpool and Kelley House in Camden, London. That is pitifully little provision for the whole of England and Wales. Proximity to men in custody, whether in a bail hostel or in prison, can be very distressing. The men may have records of violence, and research by the charity Women in Prison, shows that a high proportion of women prisoners have been victimised and abused by men. In mixed bail hostels, for example, out of 26 residents, it is quite usual for there to be only about four women
It is little wonder then, that where the question of custody hangs in the balance for drug using women, it often swings towards custody because of inadequate provision outside. Imaginative remand schemes that divert women from crime and custody by developing community-based programmes must be encouraged. I can cite one example as the Holloway Remand Scheme in London. Its function is to closely match and utilise community resources for selected women offenders. These resources include residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes, but we are all too aware that one of the difficulties facing field probation officers is finding suitable resources for women in the community.
In considering prisons, the report on Styal prison and young offender institution for women, received a lot of publicity. The fact that drugs are used in prison is no longer headline news, but when this report was released, it received a lot of attention. In fact, it received more media attention in one week than the plight of foreign nationals being held in custody for drug trafficking offences (a staggering 35 per cent in one of the largest women's prisons in England) received over 18 months. I believe the reason for such interest in drugs in Styal was for two reasons. Firstly, the public is not aware of the extent of drug use among women, as it conflicts with the stereotyped image. Secondly, the extent of use as reported, took everyone by surprise, including those in the drugs field. The report by Dr Malcolm Faulk states:
"Inmates asserted, and staff agreed, that drugs were freely available in Styal, mainly brought in by visitors and by inmates who had been on home leave. They said that almost all inmates used cannabis, in addition to which 80 per cent used opiates (mainly heroin), 50 per cent cocaine/crack,15-20 per cent amphetamines, ten per cent LSD occasionally and 60 per cent benzodiazepines (mainly Temazepam). It was believed that 60 per cent of those who injected used shared needles. Inmates were aware of the risk of contaminated needles. Detergent was available but not bleach." (Extract from report of an unannounced short inspection of Styal.)
Styal prison had 207 female prisoners at the time of the inspection, 52 of whom had been convicted of, or were charged with drug-related offences. That works out at around 25 per cent, yet health care staff at the prison estimated that up to 90 per cent of inmates were using drugs during their stay at Styal. Yet there was no detoxification process, and little rehabilitation.
What conclusions can we draw from this? The overriding concern Release has, is that women are actually being put at risk by the state. This is not simply conjecture. On 4 February 1995, the British Medical Journal published an abstract of the first report of an outbreak of HIV infection occurring within a prison.
At Glenochil prison in Scotland, of a total of 378 male inmates, 227 (60 per cent) were counselled and 162 (43 per cent) tested for H IV. Twelve (seven per cent) of those tested were HIV positive. One third (76) of those counselled had injected drugs at some time, of whom 33 (43 per cent) had injected in Glenochil; all 12 seropositive men belonged to this group, and 32 of the 33 had shared needles and syringes in the prison. Evidence based on sequential results and time of entry into prison indicated that eight transmissions definitely occurred within the prison in the first half of 1993.
Release, along with many other organisations has plenty of anecdotal evidence that there is a high likelyhood of HIV infection occurring within a prison. For many years we have actively supported the view that at very least clean needles should be supplied in prisons. The findings at Styal were extremely alarming. But it is even more alarming that a significant piece of research should follow so quickly to confirm that in a similar environment "restricted access to injecting equipment resulted in random sharing and resulted in an outbreak of HIV infection".
In conclusion, since most women are not seen to posethreat to the community, and drug using women would be generally included in this, there is a strong argument for abolishing prison as a punishment for such offenders altogether. Added to this, there is now no question that the lives of many women in custody are at risk, and we wholeheartedly support the view of the academics academedics involved in the Glenochil prison research, that in the short term at very least, measures to prevent further spread of infection among prison injectors are urgently required.
But to give the final word to a woman prisoner:
"I don't think anything can be done that's going to be constructive until they get rid of the way they treat women and see women. If you're not like their women - Ah then we've got you like our women".
Alasdair Cant is training manager at Release.

Part One: The Overview
Government Seizures Victimize Innocent
February 27, 1991.
Willie Jones, a second-generation nursery man in his family's Nashville business, bundles up money from last year's profits and heads off to buy flowers and shrubs in Houston. He makes this trip twice a year using cash, which the small growers prefer.
But this time, as he waits at the American Airlines gate in Nashville Metro Airport, he's flanked by two police officers who escort him into a small office, search him and seize the $9,600 he's carrying. A ticket agent had alerted the officers that a large black man had paid for his ticket in bills, unusual these days. Because of the cash, and the fact that he fit a "profile" of what drug dealers supposedly look like, they believed he was buying or selling drugs.
He's free to go, he's told. But they keep his money -- his livelihood -- and give him a receipt in its place.
No evidence of wrongdoing was ever produced. No charges were ever filed. As far as anyone knows, Willie Jones neither uses drugs, nor buys or sells them. He is a gardening contractor who bought an airplane ticket. Who lost his hard-earned money to the cops. And can't get it back.
That same day, an ocean away in Hawaii, federal drug agents arrive at the Maui home of retirees Joseph and Frances Lopes and claim it for the U.S. government.
For 49 years, Lopes worked on a sugar plantation, living in its camp housing before buying a modest home for himself, his wife, and their adult, mentally disturbed son, Thomas.
For a while, Thomas grew marijuana in the back yard -- and threatened to kill himself every time his parents tried to cut it down. In 1987, the police caught Thomas, then 28. He pleaded guilty, got probation for his first offense and was ordered to see a psychologist once a week. He has, and never again has grown dope or been arrested. The family thought this episode was behind them.
But earlier this year, a detective scouring old arrest records for forfeiture opportunities realized the Lopes house could be taken away because they had admitted they knew about the marijuana.
The police department stands to make a bundle. If the house is sold, the police get the proceeds.
Jones and the Lopes family are among the thousands of Americans each year victimized by the federal seizure law -- a law meant to curb drugs by causing financial hardship to dealers.
A 10-month study by The Pittsburgh Press shows the law has run amok. In their zeal to curb drugs and sometimes fill their coffers with the proceeds of what they take, local cops, federal agents and the courts have curbed innocent Americans' civil rights. From Maine to Hawaii, people who are never charged with a crime had cars, boats, money and homes taken away.
In fact, 80 percent of the people who lost property to the federal government were never charged. And most of the seized items weren't the luxurious playthings of drug barons, but modest homes and simple cars and hard-earned savings of ordinary people.
But those goods generated $2 billion for the police departments that took them.
The owners' only crimes in many of these cases: They "looked" like drug dealers. They were black, Hispanic or flashily dressed.
Others, like the Lopeses, have been connected to a crime by circumstances beyond their control.
Says Eric Sterling, who helped write the law a decade ago as a awyer on a congressional committee: "The innocent-until-proven- guilty concept is gone out the window.
Airport drug team sieze cash from travelers suspected of being couriers
The Law: Guilt Doesn't Matter
Rooted in English common law, forfeiture has surfaced just twice in the United States since colonial times.
In 1862, Congress permitted the president to seize estates of Confederate soldiers. Then, in 1970, it resurrected forfeiture for the civil war on drugs with the passage of racketeering laws that targeted the assets of criminals.
In 1984 however, the nature of the law was radically changed to allow government to take possession without first charging, let alone convicting the owner. That was done in an effort to make it easier to strike at the heart of the major drug dealers. Cops knew that drug dealers consider prison time an inevitable cost of doing business. It rarely deters them. Profits and playthings, though, are their passions. Losing them hurts.
And there was a bonus in the law. the proceeds would flow back to law enforcement to finance more investigations. It was to be the ultimate poetic justice, with criminals financing their own undoing.
But eliminating the necessity of charging or proving a crime has moved most of the action to civil court, where the government accuses the item -- not the owner -- of being tainted by a crime.
This oddity has court dockets looking like purchase orders: United States of America vs. 9.6 acres of land and lake; U.S. vs. 667 bottles of wine. But it's more than just a labeling change. Because money and property are at stake instead of life and liberty, the constitutional safeguards in criminal proceedings do not apply.
The result is that "jury trials can be refused; illegal searches condoned; rules of evidence ignored," says Louisville, Ky. defense lawyer Donald Heavrin. The "frenzied quest for cash," he says, is "destroying the judicial system."
Every crime package passed since 1984 has expanded the uses of forfeiture, and now there are more than 100 statutes in place at the state and federal level. Not just for drug cases anymore, forfeiture covers the likes of money laundering, fraud, gambling, importing tainted meats and carrying intoxicants onto Indian land.
The White House, Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Administration say they've made the most of the expanded law in getting the big-time criminals, and they boast of seizing mansions, planes and millions in cash. But the Pittsburgh Press in just 10 months was able to document 510 current cases that involved innocent people -- or those possessing a very small amount of drugs -- who lost their possessions.
And DEA's own database contradicts the official line. It showed that big-ticket items -- valued at more than $50,000 -- were only 17 percent of the total 25,297 items seized by DEA during the 18 months that ended last December.
"If you want to use that 'war on drugs' analogy, the forfeiture is like giving the troops permission to loot," says Thomas Lorenzi, presidentelect of the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
The near-obsession with forfeiture continues without any proof that it curbs drug crime -- its original target.
"The reality is, it's very difficult to tell what the impact of drug seizure is," says Stanley Morris, deputy director of the federal drug czar's office.

Police Forces Keep the Take
The "loot" that's coming back to police forces all over the nation has redefined law-enforcement success. It now has a dollar sign in front of it.
For nearly eighteen months, undercover Arizona State Troopers worked as drug couriers driving nearly 13 tons of marijuana from the Mexican border to stash houses around Tucson. They hoped to catch the Mexican suppliers and distributors on the American side before the dope got on the streets.
But they overestimated their ability to control the distribution. Almost every ounce was sold the minute they dropped it at the houses.
Even though the troopers were responsible for tons of drugs getting loose in Tucson, the man who supervised the setup still believes it was worthwhile. It was "a success from a cost-benefit standpoint," says former assistant attorney-general John Davis. His reasoning: It netted 20 arrests and at least $3 million for the state forfeiture fund.
"That kind of thinking is what frightens me," says Steve Sherick, a Tucson attorney. "The government's thirst for dollars is overcoming any long-range view of what it is supposed to be doing, which is fighting crime."
George Terwilliger III, associate deputy attorney general in charge of the U.S. Justice Department's program emphasizes that forfeiture does fight crime, and "we're not at all apologetic about the fact that we do benefit (financially) from it."
In fact, Terwilliger wrote about how the forfeiture program financially benefits police departments in the 1991 Police Buyer's Guide of Police Chief Magazine.
Between 1986 and 1990, the U.S. Justice Department generated $1.5 billion from forfeiture and estimates that it will take in $500 million this year, five times the amount it collected in 1986.
District attorney's offices throughout Pennsylvania handled $4.5 million in forfeitures last year; Allegheny County (ED: Pgh is in Allegheny County) $218,000, and the city of Pittsburgh, $191,000 -- up from $9,000 four years ago.
Forfeiture pads the smallest towns coffers. In Lexana, Kan, a Kansas City suburb of 29,000, "we've got about $250,000 moving in court right now," says narcotic detective Don Crohn.
Despite the huge amounts flowing to police departments, there are few public accounting procedures. Police who get a cut of the federal forfeiture funds must sign a form saying merely they will use it for "law enforcement purposes."
To Philadelphia police that meant new air conditioning. In Warren County, N.J., it meant use of a forfeited yellow Corvette for the chief assistant prosecutor.
Judy Mulford, 31, and her 13-year old twins, Chris, left, and Jason, are down to essentials in their Lake Park, Fla., home, which the government took in 1989 after claiming her husband, Joseph, stored cocaine there. Neither parent has been criminally charged, but in April a forfeiture jury said Mrs. Mulford must forfeit the house she bought herself with an insurance settlement. The Mulfords have divorced, and she has sold most of her belongings to cover legal bills. She's asked for a new trial and lives in the near-empty house pending a decision.

'Looking' Like a Criminal
Ethel Hylton of New York City has yet to regain her financial independence after losing $39,110 in a search nearly three years ago in Hobby Airport in Houston.
Shortly after she arrived from New York, a Houston officer and Drug Enforcement Administration agent stopped the 46-year-old woman in the baggage area and told her she was under arrest because a drug dog had scratched at her luggage. The dog wasn't with them, and when Miss Hylton asked to see it, the officers refused to bring it out.
The agents searched her bags, and ordered a strip search of Miss Hylton, but found no contraband.
In her purse they found the cash Miss Hylton carried because she planned to buy a house to escape the New York winters which exacerbated her diabetes. It was the settlement from an insurance claim, and her life's savings, gathered through more than 20 years of work as a hotel housekeeper and hospital night janitor.
The police seized all but $10 of the cash and sent Miss Hylton on her way, keeping the money because of its alleged drug connection. But they never charged her with a crime.
The Pittsburgh Press verified her jobs, reviewed her bank statements and substantiated her claim she had $18,000 from an insurance settlement. It also found no criminal record for her in New York City.
With the mix of outrage and resignation voiced by other victims of searches, she says: "The money they took was mine. I'm allowed to have it. I earned it."
Miss Hylton became a U.S. citizen six years ago. She asks, "Why did they stop me? Is it because I'm black or because I'm Jamaican?"
Probably, both -- although Houston police haven't said.
Drug teams interviewed in dozens of airports, train stations and bus terminals and along other major highways repeatedly said they didn't stop travellers based on race. But a Pittsburgh Press examination of 121 travellers' cases in which police found no dope, made no arrest, but seized money anyway showed that 77 percent of the people stopped were black, Hispanic, or Asian.
In April, 1989, deputies from Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana, seized $23,000 from Johnny Sotello, a Mexican-American whose truck overheated on a highway.
They offered help, he accepted. They asked to search his truck. He agreed. They asked if he was carrying cash. He said he was because he was scouting heavy equipment auctions.
They then pulled a door panel from the truck, said the space behind it could have hidden drugs, and seized the money and the truck, court records show. Police did not arrest Sotello but told him he would have to go to court to recover his property.
Sotello sent auctioneer's receipts to police which showed he was a licensed buyer. the sheriff offered to settle the case, and with his legal bills mounting after two years, Sotello accepted. In a deal cut last March, he got his truck, but only half his money. The cops kept $11,500.
"I was more afraid of the banks than anything -- that's one reason I carry cash," says Sotello. "But a lot of places won't take checks, only cash, or cashier's checks for the exact amount. I never heard of anybody saying you couldn't carry cash."
Affidavits show the same deputy who stopped Sotello routinely stopped the cars or black and Hispanic drivers, exacting "donations" from some.
After another of the deputy's stops, two black men from Atlanta handed over $1,000 for a "drug fund" after being detained for hours, according to a hand-written receipt reviewed by the Pittsburgh Press.
The driver got a ticket for "following too close." Back home, they got a lawyer.
Their attorney, in a letter to the Sheriff's department, said deputies had made the men "fear for their safety, and in direct exploitation of that fear a purported donation of $1000 was extracted..."
If they "were kind enough to give the money to the sheriff's office," the letter said, "then you can be kind enough to give it back." If they gave the money "under other circumstances, then give the money back so we can avoid litigation."
Six days later, the sheriff's department mailed the men a $1,000 check.
Last year, the 72 deputies of Jefferson Davis Parish led the state in forfeitures, gathering $1 million -- more than their colleagues in New Orleans, a city 17 times larger than the parish.
Like most states, Louisiana returns the money to law enforcement agencies, but it has one of the more unusual distributions: 60 percent goes to the police bringing a case, 20 percent to the district attorney's office prosecuting it and 20 percent to the court fund of the judge signing the forfeiture order.
"The highway stops aren't much different from a smash-and-grab ring," says Lorenzi, of the Louisiana Defense Lawyers Association.
George Terwillger, who helps set justice Department's forfeiture policy, calls the law "effective."
Paying For Your Innocence
The Justice Department's Terwilliger says that in some cases "dumb judgement" may occasionally cause problems, but he believes there is an adequate solution. "That's why we have courts."
But the notion that courts are a safeguard for citizens wrongly accused "is way off," says Thomas Kerner, a forfeiture lawyer in Boston. "Compared to forfeiture, David and Goliath was a fair fight."
Starting from the moment that the government serves notice that it intends to take an item, until any court challenge is completed, "the government gets all the breaks," says Kerner.
The government need only show probable cause for a seizure, a standard no greater than what is needed to get a search warrant. The lower standard means the government can take a home without any more evidence than it normally needs to take a look inside.
Clients who challenge the government, says attorney Edward Hinson of Charlotte, N.C., "have the choice of fighting the full resources of the U.S. treasury or caving in."
Barry Kolin caved in.
Kolin watched Portland, Ore., police padlock the doors of Harvey's, his bar and restaurant for bookmaking on March 2.
Earlier that day, eight police officers and Amy Holmes Hehn, the Multnomah County deputy district attorney, had swept into the bar, shooed out waitresses and customers and arrested Mike Kolin, Barry's brother and bartender, on suspicion of bookmaking.
Nothing in the police documents mentioned Barry Kolin, and so the 40-year-old was stunned when authorities took his business, saying they believe he knew about the betting. He denied it.
Hehn concedes she did not have the evidence to press a criminal case against Barry Kolin, "so we seized the business civilly."
During a recess in a hearing on the seizures weeks later, "the deputy DA says if I paid them $30,000 I could open up again," Kolin recalls. When the deal dropped to $10,000, Kolin took it.
Kolin's lawyer, Jenny Cooke, calls the seizure "extortion." She says: "There is no difference between what the police did to Barry Kolin or what Al Capone did in Chicago when he walked in and said, 'This is a nice little bar and it's mine.' the only difference is today they call this civil forfeiture."

Minor Crimes, Major Penalties
Forfeiture's tremendous clout helps make it "one of the most effective tools that we have," says Terwilliger.
The clout, though, puts property owners at risk of losing more under forfeiture that they would in a criminal case under the same circumstances.
Criminal charges in federal and many state courts carry maximum sentences. But there's no dollar cap on forfeiture, leaving citizens open to punishment that far exceeds the crime.
Robert Brewer of Irwin, Idaho, is dying of prostate cancer, and uses marijuana to ease the pain and nausea that comes with radiation treatments.
Last Oct. 10, a dozen deputies and Idaho tax agents walked into the Brewer's living room with guns drawn and said they had a warrant to search.
The Brewers, Robert, 61, and Bonita, 44, both retired form the postal service, moved from Kansas City, Mo., to the tranquil, wooded valley of Irwin in 1989. Six months later, he was diagnosed.
According to police reports, an informant told authorities Brewer ran a major marijuana operation.
The drug SWAT team found eight plants in the basement under a grow light and a half-pound of marijuana. The Brewers were charged with two felony narcotics counts and two charges for failing to buy state tax stamps for the dope.
"I didn't like the idea of the marijuana, but it was the only thing that controlled his pain," Mrs. Brewer says.
The government seized the couples five-year-old Ford van that allowed him to lie down during his twice-a-month trips for cancer treatment at a Salt Lake City hospital, 270 miles away. Now they must go by car.
"That's a long painful ride for him ... He needed that van, and the government took it," Mrs. Brewer says. "It looks like they can punish people any way they see fit."
The Brewers know nothing about the informant who turned them in, but informants play a big role in forfeiture. Many of them are paid, targeting property in return for a cut of anything that is taken.
The Justice Department's asset forfeiture fund paid $24 mil. to informants in 1990 and has $22 million allocated this year.
Private citizens who snitch for a fee are everywhere. Some airline counter clerks receive cash awards for alerting drug agents to "suspicious" travellers. The practice netted Melissa Furtner, a Continental Airlines clerk in Denver, at least $5,800 between 1989 and 1990, photocopies of checks show.
Increased surveillance, recruitment of citizen-cops, and expansion of forfeiture sweeps are all part of a take-now, litigate-later syndrome that builds prosecutors careers, says a former federal prosecutor.
"Federal law enforcement people are the most ambitious I've ever met, and to get ahead they need visible results. Visible results are convictions, and, now, forfeitures," says Don Lewis of Meadville, Crawford County. (ED: a Pa county north of Pgh by two counties.)
Lewis spent 17 years as a prosecutor, serving as an assistant U.S. attorney in Tampa as recently as 1988. He left the Tampa Job -- and became a defense lawyer -- when "I found myself tempted to do things I wouldn't have thought about doing years ago."
Terwilliger insists U.S. attorneys would never be evaluated on "something as unprofessional as dollars."
Which is not to say Justice doesn't watch the bottom line.
Cary Copeland, director of the department' Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture, says they tried to "squeeze the pipeline" in 1990 when the amount forfeited lagged behind Justice's budget projections.
He said this was done by speeding up the process, not by doing a "whole lot of seizures."
Ending the Abuse
While defense lawyers talk of reforming the law, agencies that initiate forfeiture scarcely talk at all.
DEA headquarters makes a spectacle of busts like the seizure of fraternity houses at the University of Virginia in March. But it refuses to supply detailed information on the small cases that account for most of its activity.
Local prosecutors are just as tight-lipped. Thomas Corbett, U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania, seals court documents on forfeitures because "there are just some things I don't want to publicize. the person whose assets we seize will eventually know, and who else has to?"
Although some investigations need to be protected, there is an "inappropriate secrecy" spreading throughout the country, says Jeffrey Weiner, president-elect of the 25,000 member National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
"The Justice Department boasts of the few big fish they catch. But they throw a cloak of secrecy over the information on how many innocent people are getting swept up in the same seizure net, so no one can see the enormity of the atrocity."
Terwilliger says the net catches the right people: "bad guys" as he calls them.
But a 1990 Justice report on drug task forces in 15 states found they stayed away from the in-depth financial investigations needed to cripple major traffickers. Instead, "they're going for the easy stuff," says James "Chip" Coldren, Jr., executive director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, a research arm of the federal Justice Department.
Lawyers who say the law needs to be changed start with the basics: The government shouldn't be allowed to take property until after it proves the owner guilty of a crime.
But they go on to list other improvements, including having police abide by their state laws, which often don't give police as much latitude as the federal law. Now they can use federal courts to circumvent the state.
Tracy Thomas is caught in that very bind.
A jurisprudence version of the shell game hides roughly $13,000 taken from Thomas, a resident of Chester, near Philadelphia.
Thomas was visiting in his godson's home on Memorial Day, 1990, when local police entered looking for drugs allegedly sold by the godson. They found none and didn't file a criminal charge in the incident. But they seized $13,000 from Thomas, who works as a $70,000-a-year engineer, says his attorney, Clinton Johnson.
The cash was left over from a Sheriff's sale he'd attended a few days before, court records show. the sale required cash -- much like the government's own auctions.
During a hearing over the seized money, Thomas presented a withdrawal slip showing he'd removed money from his credit union shortly before the trip and a receipt showing how much he had paid for the property he'd bought at the sale. The balance was $13,000.
On June 22, 1990, a state judge ordered Chester police to return Thomas' cash.
They haven't.
Just before the court order was issued, the police turned over the cash to the DEA for processing as a federal case, forcing Thomas to fight another level of government. Thomas is now suing the Chester police, the arresting officer, and the DEA.
"When DEA took over that money, what they in effect told a local police department is that it's OK to break the law," says Clinton Johnson, attorney for Thomas.
Police manipulate the courts not only to make it harder on owners to recover property, but to make it easier for police to get a hefty share of any forfeited goods. In federal court, local police are guaranteed up to 80 percent of the take -- a percentage that may be more than they'd receive under state law.
Pennsylvania's leading police agency-- the state police -- and the state's lead prosecutor -- the Attorney General -- bickered for two years over state police taking cases to federal court, an arrangement that cut the Attorney General out of the sharing.
The two state agencies now have a written agreement on how to divvy the take.
The same debate is heard around the nation.
The hallways outside Cleveland courtrooms ring with arguments over who will get what, says Jay Milano, a Cleveland criminal defense attorney.
"It's causing a feeding frenzy."
GOVERNMENT SEIZED HOME OF MAN WHO WAS GOING BLIND
James Burton says he loves America and wants to come home. But he can't. If he does, he'll wind up in prison, go blind, or both. Burton and his wife, Linda, live in an austere, concrete-slab apartment furnished with lawn chairs near Rotterdam in the Netherlands. It is home much different from the large house and 90-acre farm they owned near Bowling Green, Ky., before the government seized both.
For Burton, who has glaucoma, home-grown marijuana provided his relief - and his undoing.
Since 1972, federal health secretaries have reported to Congress that marijuana is beneficial in the treatment of glaucoma and several other medical conditions.
Yet while some officials within the Drug Enforcement Administration have acknowledged that medical value of marijuana, drug agents continue to seize property where chronically ill people grow it.
"Because of the emotional rhetoric connected with the marijuana issue, a doctor who can prescribe cocaine, morphine, amphetamines, and barbiturates cannot prescribe marijuana, which is the safest therapeutically active drug known to man," Francis Young, administrative law judge for DEA, was quoted as saying in Burton's trial.
In an interview this past July 4, Burton said, "We don't really have any choice right now but to stay" in the Netherlands, where they moved after he completed a one-year jail term for three counts of marijuana possession. "I can buy or grow marijuana here legally, and if I don't have the marijuana, I'll go blind.
Burton, a 43-year-old Vietnam War veteran, has a rare form of hereditary, low-tension glaucoma. All of the men on his mother's side of the family have the disease, and several already are blind. It does not respond to traditional medications.
At the time of Burton's arrest, N.C. ophthalmologist Dr. John Merritt was the only physician authorized by he government to test marijuana in the treatment of glaucoma patients. Merritt testified at Burton's trial that marijuana was "the only medication' that could keep him from going blind.
On July 7, 1987 Kentucky state police raided Burton's farm and found 138 marijuana plants and two pounds of raw marijuana. "It was the kickoff of Kentucky drug awareness month, and I was their special kickoff feature. It was all over television," Burton said.
Burton admitted growing enough marijuana to produce about a pound a month for the 10 to 15 cigarettes he uses each day to reduce pressure in his eye.
A jury decided he grew the dope for his own use - not to sell, as the government contended - and in March 1988 found him guilty of three counts of simple possession.
The pre-sentence report on Burton shows he had no previous arrests. The judge sentenced him to a year in a federal maximum security prison, with no parole.
On top of that, the government took his farm: 90 rolling, wooded acres in Warren Country purchased for $34,701 in 1980 and assessed at twice that amount when it was taken.
On March 27, 1989, U.S. District Judge Ronald Meredith - without hearing any witnesses and without allowing Burton to testify in his own behalf - ordered the farm forfeited and gave the Burtons 10 days to get off the land. When owners of property live at a site while marijuana is growing in their presence, there is no defense to forfeiture," Meredith ruled.
"I never got to say two words in defense of keeping my home, something we worked and saved for for 18 years," said Burton, who was a master electrical technician. Linda, 41, worked for an insurance company. "On a serious matter like taking a person's home, you'd think the government would give you a chance to defend it."
Joe Whittle, the U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the Burton case, says he didn't know about the glaucoma until Burton's lawyer raised the issue in court. His office has "taken a lot of heat on this case and what happened to that poor guy," Whittle says. "But we did nothing improper."
"Congress passed these laws, and we have to follow them. If the American people wanted to exempt certain marijuana activity - these mom and pop or personal use or medical cases - they should speak through their duly elected officials and change the laws. Until those laws are changed, we must enforce them to the full extent of our resources."
The action was "an unequaled and outrageous example of government abuse," says Louisville lawyer Donald Heavrin, who failed to get the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.
"To send a man trying to save his vision to prison, and steal the home and land that he and his wife had worked decades for, should have the authors of the Constitution spinning in their graves."

Part Three: INNOCENT OWNERS
Police profit by seizing homes of innocent
by Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty
Four years after their son's marijuana arrest, police seized Hawaii home of Joseph and Frances Lopes
The second time police came to the Hawaii home of Joseph and Frances Lopes, they came to take it.
"They were in a car and a van, I was in the garage. They said, 'Mrs. Lopes, let's go into the house, and we will explain things to you.' They sat in the dining room and told me they were taking the house. It made my heart beat very fast."
For the rest of the day, 60-year old Frances Lopes and her 65-year-old husband, Joseph, trailed federal agents as they walked through every room of the Maui house, the agents recording the position of each piece of furniture on a video tape that serves as the government's inventory.
Four years after their mentally unstable adult son pleaded guilty to growing marijuana in their back yard for his own use, the Lopeses face the loss of their home. A Maui detective trolling for missed forfeiture opportunities spotted the old case. He recognized that the law allowed him to take away their property because they knew their son had committed a crime on it.
A forfeiture law intended to strip drug traffickers of ill-gotten gains often is turned on people, like the Lopeses, who have not committed a crime. The incentive for the police to do that is financial, since the federal government and most states let the police departments keep the proceeds from what they take.
The law tries to temper money making temptations with protections for innocent owners, including lien holders, landlords whose tenants misuse property, or people unaware of their spouse's misdeeds. The protection is supposed to cover anyone with an interest in a property who can prove he did not know about the alleged illegal activity, did not consent to it, or took all reasonable steps to prevent it.
But a Pittsburgh Press investigation found that those supposed safeguards do not come into play until after the government takes an asset, forcing innocent owners to hire attorneys to get their property back - if they ever do.
"As if the law weren't bad enough they just clobber you financially," says Wayne Davis, an attorney from Little Rock, Ark.
FEARED FOR THEIR SON
In 1987, Thomas Lopes, who was then 28 and living in his parents' home, pleaded guilty to growing marijuana in their back yard. Officers spotted it from a helicopter.
Because it was his first offense, Thomas received probation and an order to see a psychologist. From the time he was young, mental problems tormented Thomas, and though he visited a psychologist as a teen , he had refused to continue as he grew older, his parents say.
Instead, he cloistered himself in his bedroom, leaving only to tend the garden.
His parents concede they knew he grew the marijuana.
"We did ask him to stop, and he would say, 'Don't touch it', or he would do something to himself," says the elder Lopes, who worked for 49 years on a sugar plantation and lived in its rented camp housing for 30 years while he saved to buy his own home.
Given Thomas' history and a family history of mental problems that caused a grandparent and an uncle to be committed to institutions, the threats stymied his parents.
The Lopeses, says their attorney Matthew Menzer, "were under duress. Everyone who has been diagnosed in this family ended up being taken away. They could not conceive of any way to get rid of the dope without getting rid of their son or losing him forever."
When police arrived to arrest Thomas, "I was so happy because I knew he would get care," says his mother. He did, and he continues weekly doctor's visits. His mood is better, Mrs. Lopes says, and he has never again grown marijuana or been arrested.
But his guilty plea haunts his family.
Because his parents admitted they knew what he was doing, their home was vulnerable to forfeiture.
Back when Thomas was arrested, police rarely took homes. But since, agencies have learned how to use the law and have seen the financial payoff, says Assistant U.S. Attorney Marshall Silverberg of Honolulu.
They also carefully review old cases for overlooked forfeiture possibilities, he says. The detective who uncovered the Lopes case started a forfeiture action in February - just under the five-year deadline for staking such a claim.
"I concede the time lapse on this case is longer than most, but there was a violation of the law, and that makes this appropriate, not money-grubbing," says Silverberg. "The other way to look at this, you know, is that the Lopeses could be happy we let them live there as long as we did." They don't see it that way.
Neither does their attorney, who says his firm now has about eight similar forfeiture cases, all of them stemming from small-time crimes that occurred years ago but were resurrected. "Digging these cases out now is a business proposition, not law enforcement," Menzer says.
"We thought it was all behind us," says Lopes. Now, "there isn't a day I don't think about what will happen to us."
They remain in the house, paying taxes and the mortgage, until the forfeiture case is resolved. Given court backlogs, that likely won't be until the middle of next year, Menzer says.
They've been warned to leave everything as it was when the videotape was shot.
"When they were going out the door," Mrs. Lopes says of the police, "they told me to take good care of the yard. They said they would be coming back one day."
'DUMB JUDGMENT'
Protections for innocent owners are "a neglected issue in federal and state forfeiture law," concluded the Police Executive Research Forum in its March bulletin.
But a chief policy maker on forfeiture maintains that the system is actively interested in protecting the rights of the innocent.
George J. Terwilliger III, associate deputy attorney general in the Justice Department, admits that there may be instances of "dumb judgment." And says if there's a "systemic" problem, he'd like to know about it.
But attorneys who battle forfeiture cases say dumb judgment is the systemic problem. And they point to some of Terwilliger's own decisions as examples.
The forfeiture policy that Terwilliger crafts in the nation's capital he puts on use in his other federal job: U.S. attorney for Vermont.
A coalition of Vermont residents, outraged by Terwilliger's forfeitures of homes in which small children live, launched a grass roots movement called "Stop Forfeiture of Children's Homes." Three months old, the group has about 70 members, from school principals to local medical societies.
Forfeitures are a particularly sensitive issue in Vermont where state law forbids taking a person's primary home. That restriction appears nowhere in federal law, which means Vermont police departments can circumvent the state constraint by taking forfeiture cases through federal courts.
The playmaker for that end-run: Terwilliger.
"It's government-sponsored child abuse that's destroying the future of children all over this state in the name of fighting the drug war," says Dr. Kathleen DePierro, a family practitioner who works at Vermont State hospital, a psychiatric facility in Waterbury.
The children of Karen and Reggie Lavalle, ages 6, 9 and 11, are precisely the type of victims over which the Vermonters agonize. Reggie Lavalle is serving a 10-year sentence in a federal prison in Minnesota for cocaine possession.
Because police said he had been involved with drug trafficking, his conviction cost his family their ranch house on 2 acres in a small village 20 miles east of Burlington. For the first time, the family is on welfare, in a rented duplex.
"I don't condone what my husband did, but why victimize my children because of his actions ? That house wasn't much, but it was ours. It was a home for the children, with rabbits, chicken, turkeys and a vegetable garden. Their friends were there, and they liked the school," says Mrs. Lavalle, 29.
After the eviction, "every night for months, Amber cried because she couldn't see her friends. I'd like to see the government tell this 9-year-old that this isn't cruel and unusual punishment."
Terwilliger's dual role particularly troubles DePierro. "It's horrifying to know he is setting policy that could expand this type of terror and abuse to kids in every state in the nation."
Terwilliger calls the group's allegations absurd. "If there was some one to blame, it would be the parents and not the government."
Lawyers like John MacFadyen, a defense attorney in Providence, R.I., find it harder to fix blame.
"The flaw with the innocent owner thing is that life doesn't paint itself in black and white. It's often times gray, and there is no room for gray in these laws," MacFadyen says. As a consequence, prosecutors presume everyone guilty and leave it to them to show otherwise. "That's not good judgment. In fact, it defies common sense."
PROVING INNOCENCE
Innocent owners who defend their interests expose themselves to questioning that bores deep into their private affairs. Because the forfeiture law is civil, they also have no protection against self-incrimination, which means that they risk having anything they say used against them later.
The documentation required of innocent owner Loretta Stearns illustrates how deeply the government plumbs.
The Connecticut woman lent her adult son $40,000 in 1988 to buy a home in Tequesta, Fla, court documents show.
Unlike many parents who treat such transactions informally, she had the foresight to record the loan as a mortgage with Palm Beach County. Her action ultimately protected her interest in the house after the federal government seized it, claiming her son stored cocaine there. He has not been charged criminally.
The seizure occurred in November 1989, and it took until last May before Mrs. Stearns convinced the government she had a legitimate interest in the house.
To prove herself an innocent owner, Mrs. Stearns met 14 requests for information, including providing "all documents of any kind whatsoever pertaining to your mortgage, including but not limited to loan application, credit reports, record of mortgages and mortgage payments, title reports, appraisal reports, closing documents, records of any liens, attachments on the defendant property, records of payments, canceled checks, internal correspondence or notes (hand-written or typed) relating to any of the above and opinion letter from borrower's or lender's counsel relating to any of the above."
And that was just question No. 1.
Karen Lavalee and her 3 children are the type of forfeiture victims that concern a Vermont group trying to stop government seizure of homes of children whose parents face drug charges
LANDLORD AS COP
Innocent owners are supposed to be shielded in forfeitures, but at times they've been expected to become virtual cops in order to protect their property from seizure.
T.T. Masonry Inc. owns a 36-unit apartment building in Milwaukee, Wis., that's plagued by dope dealing. Between January 1990, when it bought the building, and July 1990, when the city formally warned it about problems, the landlord evicted 10 tenants suspected of drug use, gave a master key to local beat and vice cops, forwarded tips to police and hired two security firms - including an off-duty city police officer - to patrol the building.
Despite that effort, the city sized the property. Assistant City Attorney David Stanosz says, "once a property develops a reputation as a place to buy drugs, the only way to fix that is to leave it totally vacant for a number of months. This landlord doesn't want to do that."
Correct, says Jermome Buting, attorney for Tom Torp of Masonry. "If this building is such a target for dealers, use that fact," says Buting. "Let undercover people go in. But when I raised that, the answer was they were short of officers and resources."
IT LOOKS LIKE COKE
Grady McClendon, 53, his wife, tow of their adult children and two grandchildren - 7 and 8 - were in a rented car headed to their Florida home in August 1989. They were returning from a family reunion in Dublin, Ga.
In Fitzgerald, Ga, McClendon made a wrong turn on a one-way street. Local police stopped him, checked his identification and asked permission to serach the car. He agreed.
Within minutes, police pulled open suitcases and purses, emptying out jewelry and about 10 Florida state lottery tickets. They also found a registered handgun.
Then says McClendon, the police "started waving a little stick they said was cocaine. They told me to put on my glasses and take a good look. I told them I'd never seen cocaine for real but that it didn't look like TV."
For about six hours, police detained the McClendon family at the police station where officers seized $2,300 in cash and other items, as "instruments of drug activity and gambling paraphernalia" - a reference to the lottery tickets.
Finally, they gave McClendon a traffic ticket and released them, but kept the family's possessions.
For 11 months, McClendon's attorney argued with the state, finally forcing it to produce lab tests results on the "cocaine".
James E. Turk, the prosecutor who handled the case will say only "it came back negative."
"That's because it was bubble gum," says Jerry Froelich, McClendon's attorney. A Judge returned the McClendon's items.
Turk considers the search "a good stop. They had no proof of where they lived boyond drivers' licenses. They had jewelry that could have been contraband, but we couldn't prove it was stolen. And they had more cash than I would expect them to carry."
McClendon says: "I didn't see anything wrong with them asking me to search. That's their job. But the rest of it was wrong, wrong, wrong."
SELLER, BEWARE
Owners who press the government for damages are rare. Those who do are often helped by attorneys who forgo their usual fees because of their own indignation over the law.
For nearly a decade, the lives of Carl and Mary Shelden of Moraga, Calif., have been intertwined with the life of a convicted criminal who happened to buy their house.
The complex litigation began when the Sheldens sold their home in 1979, but took back a deed of trust from the buyer - an arrangement that made the Sheldens a mortgage holder on the house.
Four years later, the buyer was arrested and later convicted of running an interstate prostitution ring. His property, including the home on which the Sheldens held the mortgage, was forfeited. The criminal, pending his appeal, went to jail, but the government allowed his family to live in the home rent free.
Panicked when they read about the arrest in the newspaper, the Sheldens discovered they couldn't foreclose against the government and couldn't collect mortgage payments from the criminal.
After tortuous court appearances, the Sheldens got back the home in 1987, but discovered it was so severely damaged while in government control that they can now stick their hand between the bricks near the front door.
The home the Sheldens sold in 1979 for $289,000 was valued at $115,000 in 1989 and now needs nearly $500,000 in repairs, the Sheldens say, chiefly from uncorrected drainage problems that caused a retaining wall to let loose and twist apart the main house.
Disgusted, they returned to court, saying their Fifth Amendment rights had been violated. The amendment prohibits the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. Their attorney, Brenda Grantland of Washington, D.C., argues that when the government seized the property but failed to sell it promptly and pay off the Sheldens, it violated their rights.
Between 1983 and today, the Sheldens have defended their mortgage through every type of court: foreclosures , U.S. District Court, Bankruptcy, U.S. Claims.
In January 1990, a federal judge issued an opinion agreeing the Sheldens' rights had been violated. The government asked the judge to reconsider, and he agreed. A final opinion has not been issued.
"It's been a roller coaster," says Mrs. Shelden, 46. A secretary, she is the family's breadwinner. Shelden, 50, was permanently disabled when he broke his back in 1976 while repairing the house. Because he was unable to work, the couple couldn't afford the house, so they sold it - the act that pitched them into their decade-long legal quagmire.
They've tried to rent the damaged home to a family - a real estate agent showed it 27 times with no takers - then resorted to renting to college students, then room-by room boarders. Finally, they and their children, ages 21 and 16 moved back in.
"We owe Brenda (Grantland) thousands at this point, but she's really been a doll, " says Shelden. "Without people like her, people like us wouldn't stand a chance."
CIVIL FORFEITURES CAN THREATEN A COMPANY'S EXISTENCE
For businesses, civil forfeitures can be a big, big stick. Bad judgment, lack of knowledge or outright wrongdoing by one executive can put the company itself in jeopardy.
A San Antonio bank faces a $1 million loss and may close because it didn't know how to handle a huge cash transaction and got bad advice from government banking authorities, the bank says. The government says the bank knowingly laundered money for an alleged Mexican drug dealer.
The problems began when Mexican nationals came to Stone Oak National Bank, about 150 miles north of the border, to buy certificated of deposits with $300,000 cash. The Mexicans planned to start an American business, they said. They had drivers' licenses and passports.
Bank officers, who wanted guidance about the cash, called the Internal Revenue Service, Secret Service, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, and the Department of Treasury.
Federal banking regulators require banks to file CTRs - currency transaction reports - for cash deposits greater than $10,000.
That paper trail was created to develop leads about suspicious cash. Once the government was alerted, the thinking went, it could track the cash, put depositors under surveillance or set up a sting.
A tape-recorded phone line that Stone Oak, like many banks, uses for sensitive transactions captured a conversation between a Treasury official and then-bank president Herbert Pounds. According to transcripts, Pounds said: "We're a small bank. I've never had a transaction like that.....I talked to several of my banking friends. They've never had anybody bring in that much cash, and the guys say they've got a lot more where that came from."
Pounds asked for advice and was told to go through with the transaction. "That's fine...as long as you send the CTRs," the Treasury official said. "That's all you're responsible for."
The bank took the money and filed the form.
Between that first transaction in March 1987 and the government's March 1989 seizure of $850,000 in certificates of deposit, bank officials continued to file reports, according to photocopies reviewed by The Pittsburgh Press.
"The government had two years to come in and say, 'Hey, something smells bad here,' but it never did," says Sam Bayless, the bank's attorney.
But the government now charges that the bank customers were front men for Mario Alberto Salinas Trevino, who was indicted for drug trafficking in March 1989. Fourteen months later, the bank president and vice president were added to the indictment and charged with money laundering.
The bank never was criminally charged, and the officers' indictments were dismissed May 29.
The U.S. attorney's office in San Antonio said it would not discuss the case.
Because the Mexicans used their certificates as collateral for $1 million in loans from Stone Oak, the bank is worried it will lose the money. In addition, according to banking regulations, it must keep $1 million in reserve to cover that potential loss. For those reasons, it has asked the government for a hearing and has spent nearly $250,000 for lawyers' fees.
But the bank can't get a hearing because the forfeiture case is on hold pending the outcome of the criminal charges. And the criminal case has been indefinitely delayed because Salinas escaped six weeks after he was arrested.
Because the bank is so small, the $1 million set-aside puts it below capital requirements, meaning "regulatory authorities could well require Stone Oak National Bank to close before ever having the opportunity for its case to be heard," says its court brief.
To brace for a loss, Stone Oak closed one of its branches. "For the life of me," says Bayless, "I can't understand why the government would want to sink a bank. And, to boot, why would the government want another Texas bank?"
Bayless, who says, "I'm very conservative, I'm a bank lawyer, for heaven's sake," derides the federal action as "narco-McCarthyism."
Problems with paperwork also led to the seizure of $227,000 from a Colombian computer company.
The saga started in January, 1990 when Ricardo Alberto Camacho arrived in Miami with about $296,000 in cash to pay for an order of computers.
Camacho is a representative of Tandem Limitada, the authorized dealer in Colombia and Venezuela for VeriFone products, says VeriFone spokesman Tod Bottari. The cash covered a previously placed order for about 1,600 terminals.
Both the government and Camacho agree that when he arrived in Miami, he declared the amount he was carrying with Customs. They also agree that the breakdown of the amount - cash vs. other monetary instruments, such as checks - was incorrect on his declaration form.
Camacho and the government disagree about whether the incorrect entry was intentional - the government's position - or a mistake made by an airport employee.
The airport employee, in a deposition, said he had filled out the form and handed it to Camacho for him to initial, which he did. "Mr. Camacho assumed the agent had correctly written down the information provided to him," says Camacho's court filings over the subsequent seizure of the money. The government says Camacho deliberately misstated the facts to hide cash made form drug sales.
Camacho brought in the suitcase full of U.S. cash which he had purchased at a Bogata bank, because he thought it would speed delivery of his order, he told federal agents.
VeriFone lawyers directed Camacho to deposit the money in their account in Marietta, Ga, says Bottari. The final bill for the computers was $227,000.
VeriFone arranged for an employee to meet Camacho at the bank and told the bank he was coming, Bottari says, The bank notified U.S. Customs agents that it was expecting a large deposit. When Camacho arrived, federal agents were waiting with a drug-sniffing dog.
The agents asked Camacho if he would answer "a few questions about the currency." Camacho agreed.
The handler walked the dog past a row of boxes, including one containing some of Camacho's money. The dog reacted to that box.
At that point, the agents said they were taking the money to the local Customs office, where they retrieved information from the report Camacho had filed in Miami.
The reporting discrepancy, and the dog's reaction, prompted the government to take the cash.
Although the computer deal went through several weeks later when Tandem wired another $227,000, that wasn't enough to convince Albert L. Kemp Jr., the assistant U.S. attorney on the case, that the first order was real.
After the seizure, Kemp said, the government checked Camacho's background. He is a naturalized American citizen who went to business school in California and then returned to help run several family businesses in Colombia.
He travels to the United States "four of five times a year," says Kemp. "He has filled out the currency reports correctly in the past, but now he says there was a mistake and he didn't know about it.
"C'mon," says Kemp. "In total his whole story doesn't wash with me."
"We believe the money is traceable to drugs, but we don't have the evidence. So instead of taking it for drugs, we're using a currency reporting violation to grab it."

Part Four: THE INFORMANTSby Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty
Crime pays big for informants in forfeiture drug cases
They snitch at all levels, from the Hell's Angel whose testimony across the country has made him a millionaire, to the Kirksville, Mo., informant who worked for the equivalent of a fast-food joint's hourly wage.
They snitch for all reasons, from criminals who do it in return for lighter sentences to private citizens motivated by civic-mindedness.
But it's only with the recent boom in forfeiture that paid informants began snitching for a hefty cut of the take.
With the spread of forfeiture actions has come a new, and some say, problematic, practice: guaranteeing police informants that if their tips result in a forfeiture, the informant will get a percentage of the proceeds.
And that makes crime pay. Big.
The Asset Forfeiture Fund of the U.S. Justice Department last year gave $24 Million to informants as their share of forfeited items. It has $22 million earmarked this year.
While plenty of those payments go to informants who match the stereotype of a shady, sinister opportunist, many are average people you could meet on any given day in an airport, bus terminal or train station.
In fact, if you travel often, you likely have met them - whether you know it or not.
Counter clerks notice how people buy tickets. Cash ? A one-way trip ?
Operators of X-ray machines watch for "suspicious" shadows and not only for outlines of weapons, which is what signs at checkpoints say they're scanning. They look for money, "suspicious" amounts that can be called to the attention of law enforcement - and maybe net a reward for the operator.
Police affidavits and court testimony in several cities show clerks for large package handlers, including United Parcel Service and Continental Airlines" Quick Pak, open "suspicious" packages and alert police to what they find. To do the same thing, police would need a search warrant.
Underground economy
At 16 major airports, drug agents, counter and baggage personnel, and management reveal an underground economy running off seizures and forfeitures.
All but one of the airports' drug interdiction teams reward private employees who pass along reports about suspicious activity. Typically, they get 10 percent of the value of whatever is found.
The Greater Pittsburgh International Airport team does not and questions the propriety of the practice.
Under federal and most states' laws, forfeiture proceeds return to the law enforcement agency that builds the case. Those agencies also control the rewards of informants.
The arrangement means both police and the informants on whom they rely now have a financial incentive to seize a person's goods - a mix that may be too intoxicating, says Lt. Norbert Kowalski.
He runs Greater Pitt's joint 11-person Allegheny County Police Pennsylvania State Police interdiction team.
"Obviously, we want all the help we can get in stopping these drug traffickers. But having a publicized program that pays airport or airline employees to in effect, be whistle-blowers, may be pushing what's proper law enforcement to the limit", he says.
He worries that the system might encourage unnecessary random searches.
His team checked passengers arriving from 4,230 flights last year. Yet even with its avowed cautious approach, the team stopped 527 people but netted only 49 arrests.
At Denver's Stapelton Airport - where most of the drug team's cases start with informant tips - officers also made 49 arrests last year. But they stopped about 2,000 people for questioning, estimates Capt. Rudy Sandoval, commander of the city's Vice and Drug Control Bureau.
As Kowalski sees it, the public vests authority in police with the expectation they will use it legally and judiciously. The public can't get those same assurances with police disignees, like counter clerks, says Kowalski.
With money as an inducement, "you run the risk of distorting the system, and that can infringe on the rights of innocent travelers. If someone knows they can get a good bit of money by turning someone in, then they may imagine seeing or hearing things that aren't there. What happens when you get to court?"
In Nashville, that's not much of an issue. Juries rarely get to hear from informants.
Police who work the airport deliberately delay paying informants until a case has been resolved "because we don't want these tipsters to have to testify. If we don't pay them until the case is closed they don't have to risk going to court," says Capt. Judy Bawcum, commander of the vice division for Nashville Police Department.
That means their motivation can't be questioned.
Bawcum says it may appear that airport informants are working solely for the money, but she believes there's more to it. "I admit these (X-ray) guards are getting paid less than burger flippers at McDonald's and the promise of 10 percent of $50,000 or whatever is attractive. But to refuse to help us is not a progressive way of thinking," says Bawcum. "This is a public service."
But not all companies share the view that their employees should be public servants. Package handling companies and Wackenhut, the X-ray checkpoint security firm, refuse to allow Nashville police to use their workers as informants.
"They're so fearful a promise of a reward will prompt their people to concentrate on looking for drugs and money instead of looking for weapons," says Bawcum.
Far from being uncomfortable with the notion of citizen-cops, Bawcum says her department relies on them. "We need airport employees working for us because we've only got a very small handful of officers at the airports", she says.
For her, the challenge comes in sustaining enthusiasm, especially when federal agencies like the DEA are "way too slow paying out." Civic duty carries only so far. "It's hard to keep them watching when they have to wait for those rewards. We can't lose that incentive."
The deals
Most drug teams hold tight the details of how their system works and how much individual informants earn, preferring to keep their public service private.
But in a Denver court case, attorney Alexander DeSalvo obtained photocopies of police affidavits about tipsters and copies of three checks payable to a Continental airline clerk, Melissa Furtner. The checks, from the U.S. Treasury and Denver County, total $5,834 for the period from September 1989 to August 1990.
Ms. Furtner, reached by phone at her home, was flustered by questions about the checks.
"What do you want to know about the rewards?" I can't talk about any of it. It's not something I'm supposed to talk about. I don't feel comfortable with this at all." She then hung up.
As hefty as the payments to private citizens can be, they are pin money compared to the paychecks drawn by professional informants.
Among the best paid of all: convicted drug dealers and self-confessed users.
Anthony Tait, a Hell's Angel and admitted drug user who has been a cooperating witness for the FBI since 1985, earned nearly $1 million for information he provided between 1985 and 1988, according to a copy of Tait's payment schedule and FBI contract obtained by the Pittsburgh Press.
Of his $1 million, $250,000 was his share of the value of assets forfeited as a result of his cooperation. His money came from four sources, FBI offices in Anchorage and San Francisco; the state of California and the federal forfeiture fund.
Likewise, in a November 1990 case in Pittsburgh, the government paid a former drug kingpin handsomely.
Testimony shows that Edward Vaughn of suburban San Francisco earned $40,000 in salary and expenses between August 1989 and October 1990 Working for DEA, drew and additional $500 a month from the U.S. Marshal Service and was promised a 25 percent cut of any forfeited goods.
Vaughn had run a multimillion dollar, international drug smuggling ring, been a federal fugitive, and twice served prison time before arranging an early parole and paid informant deal with the government, he said in court.
As an informant, he said, he preferred arranging deals for drug agents that are known as reverse stings: the law enforcement agents pose as sellers and the targets bring cash for the buy. Those deals take cash, but not dope, directly off the streets. In those stings, he said, the cash would be forfeited and Vaughn would get his pre-arranged quarter-share.
To pay or not to pay
His testimony in Pittsburgh resulted in one man being found guilty of conspiracy to distribute marijuana. The jury acquitted the other defendant saying they believed Vaughn had entrapped him by pursuing him so aggressively to make a dope deal.
The practice of giving informants a share of forfeited proceeds goes on so discreetly that Richard Wintory, an Oklahoma prosecutor recently headed the National Drug Prosecution Center in Alexandria, Va. says, "I'm not aware of any agency that pays commissions on forfeited items to informants."
Although the federal forfeiture program funnels millions of dollars to informants, it does not set policy at the top about how - or how much - to pay.
"Decisions about how to pursue investigations within the guidelines of appropriate and legal behavior are best left to people in the field," Says George Terwilliger III, the deputy attorney general who heads the Justice Department's forfeiture program.
That hands-off approach filters to local offices, such as Pittsburgh, where U.S. Attorney Thomas Corbett says the discussion of whether to give informants a cut of any take "is a philosophical argument. I won't put myself in the middle of it."
The absence of regulations spawns "privateers and junior G-men," says Steven Sherick, a defense attorney in Tucson, Ariz., who recently recovered $9,000 for John P. Gray of Rutland, Vt., after a UPS employee found it in a package and called police.
Gray, says Sherick, is "an eccentric older guy who doesn't use anything but cash." In March 1990, Gray mailed a friend hand-money for a piece of Arizona retirement property Gray had scouted during an earlier trip West, say court records. The court ordered the money returned because the state couldn't prove the cash was gained illegally.
Expanding payments to private citizens, particularly on a sliding scale rather than a fixed fee, raises unsavory possibilities, says Eric E. Sterling, head of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
Major racketeers and criminal enterprises were the initial targets of forfeiture, but its use has steadily expanded until now it catches people who never have been accused of a crime but lose their property anyway.
"You can win a forfeiture case without charging someone," says Sterling. "You can win even after they've been acquitted. And now, on top of that, you can have informants tailoring their tips to the quality of the thing that will be seized.
"What paid informant in their right mind is going to turn over a crack house - which may be destroying an inner city neighborhood - when he can turn over information about a nice, suburban spread that will pay off big when it comes tome to get his share?" asks Sterling.
35 ARRESTED DESPITE BUMBLING WAYS OF INFORMANTS
The Farrells face forfeiture of their Missouri farm
The undercover operation was called BAD. The main informant was named Mudd.
And the entire affair was....a bust.
The prosecutor in Adair County in Missouri's northeast corner chuckles now about the "bumbled" investigation.
But Sheri and Matthew Farrell, whose 60-acre farm remains tied up in a federal forfeiture action due to the bumbling, can't see the humor.
A paid police informant named Steve R. Mudd, who went under cover for $4.65 an hour in a marijuana investigation near Kirksville, Mo., accused Farrell of selling and cultivating marijuana on his land. Mudd was the only witness in the joint city-county drug investigation called Operation BAD - Bust a Dealer.
For a year starting in November 1989, Mudd worked for city and county police identifying alleged dealers around Kirksville, population 17,000. He received "buy money" and would return after his deals - minus the money and with what he said were drugs.
Mudd went to supposed traffickers' homes "but didn't wear a wire (tap) and didn't take any undercover officer with him. He said he was in a rut and didn't want a lot of supervision," says prosecutor Tom Hensley. When he came back to the office, Mudd would write reports - but the dates and times often didn't match what he would say later in depostions.
Mudd himself had gone through drug rehabilitation, and had drug sales and possession on his criminal record, says Hensley. Mudd also had a history of passing bad checks and was always near broke, wroking odd jobs.
Nevertheless, Mudd became the linchpin of Operation BAD.
Based on his word, police arrested 35 people in Adair County, including Farrell. As Mudd told it, Farrell had sold him marijuana and confided he used tractors outfitted with special night lights to harvest fields of dope.
He "whipped up quite the story. He had us out there at night banging around, renting big trucks to carry dope. There's no receipts, nothing to show that. And wouldn't someone have seen us?" asks Mrs. Farrell.
Hensley confirms that Farrell has no criminal record, yet on Mudd's allegation, the county sheriff first arrested Farrell then ordered his house and farm seized in November.
"They came out and searched everything. They took away tea, birdseed, they vacuumed our ashtrays in the truck and didn't find anything. Then they told us the house was seized and in governmental control. They told us to keep paying the taxes, but not to do anything else to the land," says Mrs. Farrell, 36, a U.S. Postal Service worker in Kirksville. Her husband, 38, runs a metal working shop out of his home.
Of the 35 cases initiated by Mudd, only Farrell's involved seized land.
Adair County kept the criminal cases in local court.
But to make the most of the seizure, the county turned the Farrell forfeiture case over to the federal government. Missouri state law directs that forfeiture proceeds go to the general fund where they are earmarked for public school support. Under federal regulations, though, the local police who bring a forfeiture case get back up to 80 percent of any proceeds.
"The federal sharing plan is what affected how the case was brought, sure," says Hensley. "Seizures are kind of like bounties anyway, so why shouldn't you take it to the feds so it comes back to the local law enforcement effort?"
With the forfeiture case firmly lodged in federal court, the county criminal cases began to be heard - and promptly fell apart.
All 35 cases "went down the tubes," says Hensley. At the first hearing, which included Farrell's case, Mudd failed to appear due to strep throat. It took him two months to regain his voice, says Hensley, and then he couldn't regain his memory.
"The dates he was saying didn't mesh with what he'd put down on reports. And I coldn't go out on the street without someone stopping to tell me a Mudd bad-check story. I decided my only witness was not worth a great deal, especially if he was having trouble with his recall."
The case crumbled into powder when the powder turned out to be Tylenol 3. Hensley said lab tests showed Mudd had brought back fake drugs as evidence.
Hensley withdrew the criminal charges against Farrell and the others.
Says Hensley of his star witness, "My honest impression is the guy is just dumb and watched too much 'Miami Vice.' You never see 'Miami Vice' guys write anything down, do you?"
The prosecutor doesn't feel Mudd "scammed us that bad. He took us once to a patch of dope growing along a country road across the state line in Iowa. It was out of the way, sh he had to know something. But he couldn't say for sure who was growing it."
Although Mudd was less than an ideal informant, local police relied on him "because there is marijuana use here and we had to get somebody. We don't get big enough cases to get the state police here to do an investigation up right."
Hensley says he "couldn't say how" Mudd might have come up with Farrell's name, but Mrs. Farrell has a theory. Several years ago, Mike Farrell, Matthew's brother, received probation for a marijuana possession charge - his only arrest. Hensley confirms that.
"I think he figured he could say 'Farrell' and it would stick," says Mrs. Farrell.
Though the criminal case has faded, the Farrells' forfeiture case rolls on.
Philosophically, Hensley agrees with the notion "that if you're not guilty or charges are dismissed then you ought to be off the hook on the forfeiture since no one could prove that case against you. But that isn't the was it works with the federal government."
He is not inclined "to call down to St. Louis and tell the U.S. attorney to drop it. I've got other things to do with my time. I don't want to sound malicious but this will all work out."
So far, it is merely working its way through federal court.
The prosecutor on the Farrell case verifies that the state case was adopted by the federal government which means "the facts of their criminal case are the same facts that underlie the forfeiture action, " says Daniel Meuleman, assistant U.S. attorney. "But that doesn't mean we can't go ahead because there are different standards of proof involved."
Different is lower. To get a criminal conviction, prosecutors need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. To pursue a federal forfeiture, they need only show a probable cause.
Meuleman refuses to say whether he will use Mudd as a witness.
Meanwhile, the Farrells wait.
Their attorney's bills already are $5,600 "and that put a crimp in our style. We were in shock for a good two months. Every day we thought something else might happen and we were scared in our own home."
"That's gotten a little better," says Mrs. Farrell, "But in a town this small there's still a lot of talk, you know."
WITH SKETCHY DATA, GOVERNMENT SEIZES HOUSE FROM MAN'S HEIRS
In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last summer, forfeiture reached beyond the grave, seizing the $250,000 home of a dead man.
A confidential informant told police that in 1988 the owner, George Gerhardt, took a $10,000 payment from drug dealers who used a dock at the house along a canal to unload cocaine.
The informant can't recall the exact date, the boat's name or the dealers' names, and the government candidly says in its court brief it "does not possess the facts necessary to be any more specific."
But its sketchy information convinced a judge to remove the house from heirs, who now must prove the police wrong.
"I was flabbergasted. I didn't think something like this could happen in this country,' said Gerhardt's cousin, Jeanne Horgan of Hartsdale, N.J. She, a friend of Gerhardt's from high school, and a home health aide who cared for Gerhardt while he was dying of cancer, are his heirs.
Gerhardt, who died at the age of 49, was an only child who inherited "substantial amounts" from his parents and lived in a home that had been in his family for 20 years, says Marc H. Gold, attorney for the heirs.
Gerhardt ran a marina until he was 38, then retired and lived off the estate left him by his parents.
"I've gone back through his tax returns and every penny is accounted for. I can't find an indication he ever was arrested or charged with anything in his life," says Gold.
The heirs have filed a motion to have the case dismissed.
While that request is pending, the government is renting the house to other tenants for roughly $2,200 a month which the government keeps.
Although the government had its tip six months before Gerhardt's death, it didn't file a charge against him. It also didn't seize his house until three months after he died.
The notice the government was taking the home came with a sharp rap on the door, and a piece of paper handed to Brad Marema, the heir who had cared for Gerhardt and moved into the house. The notice gave Marema a few days to pack up before the government changed the locks.
The point of trying to take the house, "is not so much to punish at this stage. The motivation really is to use the proceeds from the sale of the property to prevent other drug offenses," says Robyn Hermann, assistant chief of the civil section for the U.S. attorney's office in the Southern district of Florida.
The government's case depends on the informant's tip, says Ms. Hermann. "Even if I knew more about him (Gerhardt) I wouldn't say, but I don't think we do."
The answer to how heirs counter allegations against a dead man "is real easy," she says. "Answers are acquired through discovery," a procedure in which both sides respond to questions from the other. "We'll take depositions, they'll take depositions. That's when they get their answers."
But that isn't how the law is supposed to work, counters Gold.
Who am I supposed to subpoena ?
Where do I send an investigator ? The government is supposed to have a case a reason for kicking someone out of their home. It's not supposed to remove them, then build a case.

Part Five: CRIME AND PUNISHMENTby Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty
Crimes are small but 'justice' takes it all
A Vermont man was found guilty of growing six marijuana plants. He received a suspended sentence and was ordered to do 50 hours of community work. But there was an added penalty: He and his family nearly lost their 49-acre farm.
In Washington, where the maximum criminal penalty could have been a $10,000 fine, an elderly couple served 60 days for growing 35 marijuana plants - and lost their $100,000 house.
In Bismarck, N.D., a young couple received suspended sentences after pleading guilty to growing marijuana. The judge who ordered them to forfeit the three-bedroom house where they lived with their three children worried from the bench that he might be throwing them onto the welfare rolls. But he says he had no choice.
All three families are the victims of a federal law that allows the government to take homes, lands, vehicles and other possessions from Americans convicted of possessing drugs or violating a host of other statutes.
The law was intended to penalize major drug dealers and organized crime figures by taking their property, selling it and returning the proceeds to the cops for other investigations. But the dollar return to the cops has been so great that it's now being used for scores of crimes, some no more than misdemeanors by first-time law-breakers.
Because of the law, more and more people are losing their property. For many, the punishment no longer fits the crime.
TOWN: BACK OFF
Community outrage helped Robert Machin and Joann Lidell keep their farm in South Washington, Vt., after the federal government tried to seize it in 1989.
Signs decrying "Cruel and unusual punishment - remember the Eighth Amendment" were posted along local roads. Lawmakers and politicians got involved. Nearly all their neighbors signed petitions.
Machin and Lidell, advocates of the back-to-nature movement, support themselves and their three children off their 49 acres. They boil maple sap into syrup, press apples into cider and educate their children in the rustic, gas-lit rooms of their eight-sided wooden house.
Their trouble began in September 1988, when a teenager busted for a traffic violation traded his way out of a ticket by telling state police he could show them 200 marijuana plants growing on Machin's farm.
Police raided the property and found only six plants, which Machin admitted to growing.
He received a suspended sentence and spent 50 hours doing community service. Tranquility returned to the Machin farm, but the government wasn't through.
On Aug. 12, 1989, U.S. Attorney George Terwilliger III filed action to seize the Machin house and property. Vermont state law does not permit the seizures of a home, so the case was pursued through federal courts.
But the political pressure and the outpouring of concern from the community forced Terwilliger, who also runs the Justice Department's forfeiture fund, to back off.
"The Machin case is one where public scrutiny forced the government to do it right. What about all the others where no one is watching?" Machin's lawyer, Richard Rubin, asks.
LET THE FEDS DO IT
There was little public scrutiny in November 1989 after Robert and Brenda Schmalz pleaded guilty to marijuana charges in Bismarck, N.D., and got probation.
North Dakota state law does not allow the forfeiture of real estate involved in crimes. So, in order to seize the house, prosecutors took the Schmalz case to federal court, says federal Judge Patrick Conmy, who got the case. Conmy said at the hearing that the couple had grown marijuana in their basement for their own use. Even so, because they used their house in the crime, Conmy says, he had no choice but to order them to forfeit their home.
"I don't really care if somebody loses their Cadillac, or their coin collection, the cash that's with the drugs. That's fine. It's looked on as a hazard of doing business," the federal judge says.
"But you get a husband, wife and several children in a three-bedroom home and the husband raises marijuana in the basement with some grow lights, and you take their house for that. That, to me, is different.
HEADACHES
The marijuana Jack Blahnik grew in his yard controlled severe pain from his cluster headaches, he says.
Blahnik completed 68 years of his life without a single brush with the police. But in his 69th year, he and his 61-year-old wife, Patricia, were arrested, convicted and jailed for 60 days for growing 35 marijuana plants.
On March 6, 1990, the state of Washington also seized the couple's three- bedroom home and the five acres it sat on.
Blahnik admits he was growing the dope.
"I showed it to the police, I took them out to the shed in the back yard and told them that I was growing the stuff for my own use, to try to control the pain from these cluster headaches that I have," Blahnik says.
Blahnik heard that marijuana helps such headaches, and his doctor confirmed its value.
"My wife was against my growing the stuff, but she went to jail because she copied some growing instructions for me," Blahnik says.
The statute under which the Blahnik's house was seized requires the state to provide "evidence which demonstrated the offender's intent to engage in commercial activity." The police never made that link, affidavits show.
The Blahnik's $100,000 property in Woodland, about 130 miles south of Seattle, was their nest egg.
"It was our life savings," Blahnik says. "Everything we had went into that house and land."
Police charged that drug sales financed the house.
"They knew that wasn't true," Mrs. Blahnik says. "Our bank statements and tax forms show that everything we ever put into buying that house, and everything else we have, came from money that we worked hard 40 years to save."
The Blahniks' lawyer, Michael McLean, calls the seizure unconstitutional and punitive.
"The maximum fine for this crime in the state of Washington, is $10,000. The Blahnik's property was worth 10 times that amount."
Blahnik does not question that he should be punished for breaking the law. However, he questions the manner in which it was done.
"The prosecuting attorney went on television, putting our mug shots on and claiming they had made the biggest seizure ever made in either Washington or Oregon and we could possible be connected to a nationwide drug ring," Blahnik says.
"They failed to mention that their big seizure was our retirement money," Blahnik says.
Don and Ruth Churchill's land was seized after marijuana was found in the cornfields
A COSTLY CATCH
Sometimes the government's push to seize property drives it to spend far more than it makes. For example, it's estimated that the state of Iowa spent more than $100,000 defending the seizure of a $6,000 fishing boat.
It has been three years since the Iowa Department of Natural Resources agents charged Dickey Kaster with having three illegally caught fish.
the officers stopped Kaster, a 63-year-old retired gas company foreman, leaving Clear Lake. In the back of his truck the fish cops found a silver bass, a northern pike and a muskie, and said they had "net marks" on them. Kaster was charged with gill-netting, a misdemeanor in Iowa punishable at the time by up to 30 days in jail and a $100 fine for each fish. Altogether, he paid about $500 in fines.
But the officers also seized Kaster's 16-foot boat, 40-hp motor and trailer - worth about $6,000.
"No doubt they had net marks on them, but so do 75 percent of the fish in the lake. I caught them with a rod and night crawlers, " Kaster says.
District Court Judge Stephen Carroll said the seizure was unconstitutional and ordered the boat, motor and trailer returned.
But Cerro Gordo County Attorney Paul Martin appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court, which ruled the property could be seized.
Kaster's saga of the three fish has been on local court dockets four times and before the Iowa Supreme Court twice.
A court clerk in Mason City estimated that "probably a lot more than $100,000" was spent in pursuit of justice for those fish.
Kaster says he knows exactly what the ordeal cost him.
"Just about everything I own. I auctioned off the inventory of my bait and tackle shop at about a dime on the dollar and sold my house to pay the legal bills and keep the bank happy," he says.
"I didn't get my boat back, but I'm still trying," he says. "You can't let the government ignore the Constitution. I'm fighting this over a boat that shouldn't have been taken, but it really deals with how fair our government is supposed to be."
MIXED CROP
And fairness is what is worrying Don and Ruth Churchill, who are fighting to keep their family farm in Indiana.
"Salt of the earth" and "good God-fearing people" are how some neighbors in the southern Indiana farming community describe the 54-year-old couple.
In 1987, Churchill had found some marijuana plants mixed in with his corn and immediately notified state police.
Farmers in the area were aware that a group called "the Cornbread Mafia" was planting marijuana in other people's cornfields throughout nine Midwestern states.
The cops destroyed the crop, and the Churchills thought they were done with marijuana.
But two years later, while they were watching a TV newscast about thousands of marijuana plants being found on farmland, they recognized the land as theirs.
The next morning, the Churchills went to the sheriff to say it was their land. Ten days later, state police arrived at their door to arrest Churchill and his 34-year-old son, David, charging them with numerous felony counts, including possession of and cultivating marijuana.
An informant had reported that he saw Churchill, his son and a third, unidentified man tending marijuana crops on land they own in Harrison County. The informant later reported that dope was also growing on other Churchill land in Crawford County, court affidavits show.
In February, four months before their first criminal trial, the federal government - prodded by state police who would get the bulk of any forfeiture proceeds - seized the 149 acres the Churchills own in both counties.
They are awaiting the outcome of the case.
While the Churchills anguish over the possible loss of their property, they don't dispute that police found thousands of marijuana plants growing on their two tracts.
What Churchill disputes is that he or anyone else in his family grew it.
"I farm part time. We plant in the spring and harvest in the fall and don't mess with the corn in between." Before the large cache of marijuana was discovered, "we hadn't been out there for weeks," says Churchill, who leaves for work at 4 a.m. to get to the Ford truck plant 43 miles away in Louisville, where he has worked for 27 years.
Planting of "no-till" crops is very common in the area as a way to make extra money.
The farmland, especially valuable because it contains the largest natural spring in Indiana, has been in Mrs. Churchill's family for generations.
Standing on the steps of a woodframe chapel in the midst of some of the land the government is trying to take, Mrs. Churchill expressed her disillusionment.
"This church is built on my family's land. I was baptized here, and Don and I were married here. This used to be a place of peace and happiness," Mrs. Churchill says. "Now, this place, our community, our lives, our faith in government, everything has changed.
"If they take our land, I'm going to lose faith in everything," she says.
Ron Simpson, the state's primary persecutor of the criminal charges, questions the fairness of the federal government's seizure of the Churchills' land when most of it was inherited from the wife's family.
"Under our system, if someone is punished, they should have been charged with something, and we've brought no charges against Mrs. Churchill. We have no evidence that she know anything about the marijuana that was growing," Simpson says. "You just have to wonder about how fair this seizure is," Churchill says.
"We assumed the legal system was fair, that if we were innocent, we had nothing to worry about. Now I'm in one court defending myself and my son against drug charges, and in another court, they're trying to take my land away. I'm worrying about a lot of things now."
A HANDFUL OF TROUBLE
The issues of proportionality and fairness pose challenges for even strong supporters of forfeiture laws, including Gwen Holden, a director of the National Criminal Justice Association in Washington, D.C., a group that represents state law enforcement interests.
If an individual is clearly a major trafficker and everything he ever bought is dirty, no one has major heartburn, If someone owns 200 acres of land and there's drugs on a corner ant the guy never knew it was there, then the rule of reason should kick in." Ms. Holden says. "You shouldn't be taking the whole farm if he didn't know it was there."
Taking Bradshaw Bowman's whole farm is exactly what the government is trying to do.
The 80-year-old man was arrested for growing marijuana, and the local sheriff has seized his 160-acre ranch in the breathtaking high desert area of southern Utah.
A convicted drug dealer-turned sheriff's informant blew the whistle on a handful of marijuana plants growing on Bowman's property.
Bowman's "Calf Creek Ranch" is 300 miles south of Salt Lake City, at the entrance to a National Scenic Vista area of stunning canyons.
The marijuana was found on a hiking trail far from Bowman's house.
"I've had this property for almost 20 years, and it's absolute heaven. I love this place. My wife's buried here,:" Bowman says. "I can't believe they're trying to take it away from me, and I didn't even know the stuff was growing there.
"I used to serve on jury duty, but at 70 they make you stop. In all my time sitting in the jury box, I never heard of the Constitution treated this way."
Garfield County Attorney Wallace Lee, who is prosecuting both the criminal charges and the civil effort to seize Bowman's house, says, "He's getting his day in court."
"The fact that he's 80 years old has no bearing on the case at all and certainly not with me," Lee says. "I'm out to prosecute a criminal case here, and it doesn't matter whose house it is."
Bowman's lawyer, Marcus Taylor says: "This is the classic example of the absurdity, injustice and almost immoral nature of forfeiture.
"You could hold that entire bundle of 67 plants in one hand."
JET SEIZED, TRASHED, OFFERED BACK FOR $66,000
Billy and Karon Munnerlyn's Las Vegas air charter service was sold off to pay legal bills to fight the government's seizure of their Lear Jet
With more than 9,000 flights under his belt, Billy Munnerlyn has survived lots of choppy air. But it took only one flight into a government forfeiture action to send his small air charter service crashing to the ground.
Munnerlyn and his wife, Karon, both 53, worked for years building their Las Vegas business. Their four planes - a jet and three props - flew businessmen, air freight, air ambulance runs and Grand Canyon tours.
"It wasn't a big operation, but it was ours," Mrs. Munnerlyn says.
Today, Munnerlyn is making 22 cents a mile truckling watermelons and frozen carrots across the country in an 18-wheeler.
He has filed for bankruptcy. He sold off his three smaller planes and office equipment to pay $80,000 in legal fees. His 1969 Lear Jet - his pride and joy - is being held by the federal government at a storage hangar in Texas.
Munnerlyn's life went into a tailspin the afternoon of Oct. 2, 1989, when he flew an old man and four padlocked, blue plastic boxes to the Ontario International Airport, outside Los Angeles.
His passenger was 74-year-old Albert Wright, a convicted cocaine trafficker. The plastic boxes contained $2,795,685 in cash.
But Munnerlyn says he didn't know that until three hours after they landed and Drug Enforcement Administration agents handcuffed him and took him to the Cucamonga County Jail. Munnerlyn was charged with drug trafficking and ordered to pay $1 million bail. Seventy-one hours later, he was released without being charged.
When he went to get his plane, a drug agent told him "it belongs to the government now" - a simple statement that launched a devastating legal battle that continues today.
An informant had told Ontario Airport police that Wright would arrive Oct. 2 with a large amount of currency to purchase narcotics.
Police were waiting when the Lear landed. They watched Wright get off the plane. For the next three hours, agents followed him as he met two other people, picked up a rented van, returned to the airport and unloaded the plastic containers from Munnerlyn's jet.
Police followed the van to a residence about 20 miles away. They surrounded the van and four people nearby. All were identified as being major cocaine traffickers.
A search of the plastic boxes found $2,795,685.
At the airport, agents told Munnerlyn he was in trouble. They searched the jet. No drugs were found, but they seized $8,500 in cash that he had been paid for the charter.
"I guessed they would figure out I had nothing to do with that guy and his drug money, and give me my plane and $8,500 back," Munnerlyn says.
He was wrong.
Two weeks later, drug agents showed up at Munnerlyn's Las Vegas home and office and carried off seven boxes of document and flight logs.
It was just the beginning of the government's efforts to prove he was a drug trafficker and had flown for Wright for years.
Munnerlyn says he didn't even know Wright was the man's name.
Several days before the seizure, Munnerlyn was contacted by a man identifying himself as "Randy Sullivan," a banker, who was willing to discuss financing a new aircraft that Munnerlyn had been telling business contacts he wanted to buy.
Munnerlyn agreed to meet him Oct. 2 at Little Rock Airport. "We were going to fly back to Las Vegas, where I was going to show him my operation and talk about him financing my purchase of a larger plane." Munnerlyn picked up "Sullivan" and four boxes of "financial records."
"He was a distinguished-looking, very old man dressed in a dark suit. He looked like a banker is supposed to look," Munnerlyn says.
They stopped in Oklahoma City to refuel. When they took off 45 minutes later headed to Las Vegas, "Sullivan" told Munnerlyn he had made a telephone call and had to go to the Ontario airport instead. They would discuss the loan at a later date, he told the pilot.
While en route, he paid Munnerlyn $8,300, the normal tariff for a jet charter, and gave him a $200 tip.
"I told the DEA that I never saw that man before in my life, and I've never had anything to do with drugs," Munnerlyn says. "All I want is my plane back."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alejandro Mayorkas is still fighting to prevent that from happening.
In court documents Mayorkas filed he acknowledged the government "will rely in part on circumstantial evidence and otherwise inadmissible hearsay" to try to justify the forfeiture.
The government "need not establish a substantial connection to illegal activity, but need only establish probable cause," the prosecutor wrote.
Mayorkas says the fact the aircraft flew into Los Angeles, "an area known as a center of illegal drug activity," is probable cause.
The prosecutor faulted Munnerlyn for not knowing what was in the boxes, but government regulations do not require charter pilots to question or examine baggage.
Munnerlyn wanted Wright to testify, but the government said he couldn't.
"He was the only guy other than me who could tell the court that we didn't know each other. But Mayorkas said they couldn't find him," Munnerlyn says.
At a three-day trial that began last Oct. 30, Mayorkas sprang a surprise witness. A ramp worker from Detroit's Willow Run Airport testified that he had seen Munnerlyn and Wright at his airport "in the fall of 1988."
The witness, Steven Antuna, described Munnerlyn to a T. right down to the full reddish, gray streaked "Hemingway-like" beard he had when he was arrested.
The only problem was that Munnerlyn didn't have a beard until the summer of 1989.
Mrs. Munnerlyn and her 31-year-old son took the stand and refuted the statement about the beard.
The six-member jury ruled that the plane should be returned to the pilot and his wife.
In December, Mayorkas asked for another trial - and held on to the plane. He said Munnerlyn's family members had lied.
But Munnerlyn submitted 51 affidavits from FAA and Las Vegas officials, U.S. marshals, bank officers, customers and business contacts swearing he did not have a beard in the fall of 1988.
Photos and a TV news tape of Munnerlyn being interviewed after rescuing a couple from Mexico after a hurricane, both taken that fall, showed him beardless.
But the government kept the plane.
Munnerlyn and his wife shuttled between Las Vegas and Los Angeles more than 20 times.
"Each time we went we thought this nightmare would be over, but each time there was some new game that the government wanted to play," Mrs. Munnerlyn says.
First, Mayorkas demanded that pilot pay the government $66,000 for his plane.
"We didn't have any money left and we couldn't figure out why we should have to pay the government anything, when a jury said we were innocent," Munnerlyn says.
Mayorkas lowered the "settlement" to $30,000 still far more than the Munnerlyns could raise.
In April, Munnerlyn went to the U.S. Marshal Service's aircraft storage site in Midland, Texas. He climbed over, under and through his plane, which had been torn apart during the DEA search for drugs.
"The whole thing was a mess," he says. "That plane's going to need about $50,000 worth of work to bringing it up to FAA standards again, to make it legal to fly."
In mid-June, Mayorkas made what he called a "final offer."
"We have to pay the government $6,500 to get back my plane, that a jury says shouldn't have been taken in the first place, and they want to keep the $8,500 that I was paid for the flight," Munnerlyn says.
Last month, when asked if the settlement request was fair, Mayorkas said: "If he was innocent, he would have taken reasonable steps to avoid any involvement in illicit drug activity, " Mayorkas says.
But he wouldn't detail what preventive measures Munnerlyn should have taken.
The Munnerlyns are trying to borrow the money to get their plane back.