The U.S. Justice Department halted its adopted-forfeitures
program in early 2015 out of a sense that state and local law-enforcement
agencies had been using the federal program to retain a greater portion of
seized property, including cash, than state laws permit. Asset forfeiture had
grown since the 1980s largely as a strategy in combatting drug traffickers, yet
the agencies themselves benefited in being able to spend the cash. Besides this
conflict of interest, the federal-state dynamic here demonstrates federalism in
action, though perhaps not as strongly as the system of government allows.
As police departments collected more and more in
involuntarily forfeited property, an increasing number of people complained
that their property had been seized without there being any evidence that they
had committed any crime. In other words, the police were getting away with
dismissing the “innocent until proven guilty” mantra of American justice. The
ACLU, for instance, issued a statement saying the forfeitures violate the due
process clause in the U.S. Constitution.[1]
If so, then the Justice Department could have gone further than merely refusing
to allow police departments to collect property at levels permitted only by
federal law. Specifically, the federal agency
could have sued police departments to contest even the state laws as
unconstitutional. Presumably taking the property of anyone charged but not
convicted of a crime, even of drug-dealing, violates constitutional rights. In
a viable federal system, moreover, the federal government is obliged to act as
a check against state and local abuses of power. That the Justice Department
fell short of this function suggests that American federalism had already been
compromised rather than fully functional.
Were the Federal Government acting as a viable check on the
state (and local) governments in the U.S., surely going after governmental
conflicts of interest would be on the federal radar screen. That the
departments could spend the money from the forfeited property (whether under
state or federal law!) points to a conflict of interest wherein a department’s
own financial interests trumps or eclipses the wider protection inherent in the
doctrine of presumed innocence. Put
another way, police could get away with exploiting a public benefit for private
gain (that of the police). Of course, no police administrator would admit to
it.
Ron Brooks, for example, headed the National Narcotic
Officers’ Associations Coalition at one point. “While the money is helpful to
us, that’s not the reason forfeiture occurs,” he explains. “It occurs because it removes the most critical component
of these criminal organizations: the capital to operate.”[2]
He claims that the helpful money is not even a temptation even though it is
entirely reasonable to assume it is; he is dismissing the motive out of hand
when it is anything but reasonable to do so. Typically, such an attempt to hide
a conflict of interest is a subterfuge—meaning that one does in fact exist and
it is being exploited. Put another way, if police administrators really were
indifferent to the helpful money, why not admit that it could be a temptation?
Therefore, we can conclude that the departments’ discretion
in forfeiture cases is problematic, given the active temptation to exploit the conflict of interest. Were the
U.S. Government to have been acting as a check on the states, the Justice
Department lawyers would have gone after that discretion, at the very least. Of
course, going after the relevant state laws permitting the forfeiture practice
would go even further in deconstructing the institutional conflict of interest,
and thus evince a stronger federal system wherein the two systems of
government—federal and state—act as checks against abuses in the other at the
expense of the People.
[1]
Devlin Barrett and Zusha Elinson, “Holder Moves to Curb Asset Seizures,” The Wall Street Journal, January 17-18,
2015.
[2]
Ibid.
