Property seizures on trial - controversy over police rights to seize alleged criminals' assets

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 22, 1993 | by Richard Miniter

Sometimes simply carrying large amounts of cash is enough to warrant a search; many police do not think there is any legitimate reason to carry large amounts of cash. In another case uncovered by the Press, a Mexican-American man, Johnny Sotello, had $23,000 seized by sheriff's deputies in Jefferson Davis Parish, La., when his truck overheated in April 1989. The deputies stopped at the disabled vehicle, offering to help and asking to search his vehicle. He agreed and told them when asked that he was carrying the cash. A licensed buyer of heavy equipment, he explained he was attending auctions. The officers pulled a door panel from the truck and said it could be used as a hiding place for drugs. They seized the truck and the cash, but did not arrest Sotello.

Sotello, who was never charged with a crime, fought for two years for the return of his money and property. In March 1990, the Sheriffs Office offered him a deal - the return of the truck and half the cash. Sotello accepted and the Sheriff's Office kept $11,500.

Local and state police now routinely seize any large amount of cash carried by suspected drug couriers, even if no drugs are found. And the suspects are disproportionately minorities. In the 121 alleged drug courier cases examined by Flaherty and Schneider in which money was seized and no drugs were found, more than three-fourths of the targets were black, Hispanic or Asian.

Complaints that "profiling" violates the rights of minorities have limited its use as a courtroom argument of prosecutors. Instead, when cash is impounded, police usually say the money is tainted with drugs. That may testify as much as anything to advances in detecting ever more minute amounts of illegal substances. Even if a specially trained drug-sniffing dog detects the scent of, say, cocaine, that doesn't mean the currency was used in the drug trade.

Dogs have sniffed as little as a nanogram of contraband - one billionth of a gram. At that level of scrutiny, technicians say, almost all the currency in circulation can be described as tainted with drugs. About 96 percent of the currency examined over a seven-year period by Toxicology Consultants Inc., a Miami-based private lab, was found to be contaminated by cocaine, and other labs report similar levels. The FBI recently admitted that as much as 80 percent of the cash in circulation is tainted by trace amounts of drugs.

The taint of marijuana is also easily transferred to innocent parties. One suitcase with a small amount of marijuana stored in an airplane compartment can give all the other suitcases a faint aroma of drugs that police dogs can easily sniff out. Dogs have reacted to containers months after marijuana has been removed from them.

Direct contamination is not the only way drug dollars get back into circulation. Most law enforcement officials deposit cash seized in drug busts in local banks. And the amounts are large. In 1991, the most recent year for which figures are available, the Justice Department alone deposited $643 million. Since 1985, asset seizures under federal forfeiture laws have increased more than 1,500 percent.