[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
FORFEITING OUR RIGHTS:
THE URGENT NEED FOR CIVIL
ASSET FORFEITURE REFORM
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 8, 2021
__________
Serial No. 117-57
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on: govinfo.gov
oversight.house.gov or
docs.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
46-284 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking
Columbia Minority Member
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Jim Jordan, Ohio
Jim Cooper, Tennessee Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Michael Cloud, Texas
Ro Khanna, California Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Pete Sessions, Texas
Katie Porter, California Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Cori Bush, Missouri Andy Biggs, Arizona
Shontel M. Brown, Ohio Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Danny K. Davis, Illinois Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Scott Franklin, Florida
Peter Welch, Vermont Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr., Pat Fallon, Texas
Georgia Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Byron Donalds, Florida
Jackie Speier, California Vacancy
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Mark DeSaulnier, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Russ Anello, Staff Director
Devon Ombres, Subcommittee Staff Director
Amy Stratton, Deputy Chief Clerk
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
Mark Marin, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Chairman
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland Nancy Mace, South Carolina,
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Ranking Minority Member
Robin Kelly, Illinois Jim Jordan, Ohio
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts Andy Biggs, Arizona
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Scott Franklin, Florida
Columbia Byron Donalds, Florida
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
Danny K. Davis, Illinois
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on December 8, 2021................................. 1
Witnesses
Mr. Daniel Alban, Senior Attorney and Co-Director, National
Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse Institute for Justice
Oral Statement................................................... 6
Ms. Malinda Harris, Victim of Civil Asset Forfeiture
Oral Statement................................................... 8
Professor Louis S. Rulli, Practice Professor of Law, Director of
Civil Practice Clinic & Legislative Clinic University of
Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Oral Statement................................................... 10
Ms. Aamra Ahmad, Senior Policy Counsel, American Civil Liberties
Union
Oral Statement................................................... 11
Written opening statements and statements for the witnesses are
available on the U.S. House of Representatives Document
Repository at: docs.house.gov.
Index of Documents
----------
* Report by the Institute of Justice regarding the forfeiture
process at the federal level; submiitted by Chairman Raskin.
* Editorial by the Charleston Post and Courier regarding
property being seized without charges; submitted by Rep. Mace.
* Washington Post article regarding annual reports that are
submitted by local and state agencies to the Justice
Department's Equitable Sharing Programs; submitted by Rep.
Wasserman Schultz.
* Report by the Institute of Justice, titled ``Policing for
Profit''; submitted by Chairman Raskin.
* Report by the Institute of Justice, titled ``Does Forfeiture
Work?''; submitted by Chairman Raskin.
* Policy brief by ACLU, titled ``Profiting from California's
Most Vulnerable''; submitted by Chairman Raskin.
* Report by Center for American Progress, titled ``Forfeiting
the American Dream''; submitted by Chairman Raskin.
* Letter signed by 16 nonprofit groups supporting federal civil
asset forfeiture reforms (March 15, 2015); submitted by
Chairman Raskin.
Documents are available at: docs.house.gov.
FORFEITING OUR RIGHTS:
THE URGENT NEED FOR CIVIL
ASSET FORFEITURE REFORM
----------
Wednesday, December 8, 2021
House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Reform
Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, and via Zoom. The
Hon. Jamie Raskin (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Raskin, Wasserman Schultz, Kelly,
Pressley, Norton, Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Davis, Mace, Sessions,
Biggs, and Donalds.
Also present: Representative Clyde.
Mr. Raskin. The committee will come to order. Without
objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the
committee at any time.
And I am now going to recognize myself for an opening
statement.
Good morning. Thank you to our witnesses for joining us
today, and thanks to all the members for coming to participate
in this critical hearing.
I want to thank my friend, the ranking member Congresswoman
Mace, and her staff for working so closely with us in
coordinating today's hearing.
This bipartisan hearing will be the first that Congress has
held in nearly seven years focused on the need to reform the
use of our civil asset forfeiture laws. Civil asset forfeiture
is a tool used widely by federal, state, and local law
enforcement to seize assets that are believed to be connected
to criminal activity, either as an instrument of criminal
activity or a proceed of criminal activity.
Law enforcement, under the civil asset forfeiture laws, can
seize money, cars, vans, boats, and other vehicles, even
people's homes and offices, and then keep the cash or sell the
property to augment their agency's budget, their auto fleets,
their holiday party and social activity funds, athletic and
gymnastic facilities, and other government facilities and
activities.
Because these laws often lack the bare minimum of due
process protections, many of these operations are, in fact,
trampling every major component of constitutional due process.
Law enforcement agents can seize and permanently deprive people
of their assets without ever arresting them, much less charging
them with a crime, much less convicting them of a crime. And
that is why we call this civil asset forfeiture because the
state is not going through the ordinary criminal process and
sustaining the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt
someone has committed a crime. Rather, people's property is
just being seized.
And again, you don't have to prove beyond a reasonable
doubt or even by a preponderance of the evidence in court first
that the property is somehow tainted by crime. You don't even
have to charge the person. You don't even have to arrest the
person. The state is just seizing the property.
And law enforcement agents can seize and forfeit assets of
innocent third-party owners even if the person whose property
is being seized had no knowledge that their property was being
allegedly used in connection with a suspected crime. Under this
system, a grandmother's car or a parent's apartment can be
seized if police suspect that the grandchild or child is
possessing drugs or committing some other kind of criminal
offense on the property. That is an outrageous breach of the
most basic concepts of civil justice, due process, and property
rights. And too often these seizures become permanent, even if
charges are never brought against a person whose assets are
seized.
Even if criminal charges are never even brought, it can be
extremely difficult, virtually impossible to recover your
property. So, civil asset forfeitures flip the constitutional
standards of a citizen's presumption of innocence and the
government's duty or burden to prove guilt on their head. Just
flip it over and, thus, deprive people of their due process
rights.
In most cases, law enforcement can seize and keep the
property using a very low evidentiary burden. Even if it does
get to court, even if the person whose property is seized goes
to court, finds a lawyer, pays to go, even then the lowest
evidentiary burden of simple reasonable suspicion of crime is
what is often used, and hearsay is often used in the process.
Conversely, the property owner must be the one who goes to
court and affirmatively prove that their assets are not
connected to a crime or that they had no knowledge that they
were connected to a crime. Your property, in essence, is
presumed guilty, and this is a scandalous inversion of due
process.
Because these are civil rather than criminal actions, poor
Americans who are caught up in this process have no right to
appointed counsel. The civil forfeiture proceedings are
bewilderingly complex to navigate for laypeople. A single
filing error can result in permanent forfeiture, and the value
of seized assets is often less than it would cost to hire an
attorney in the case of someone just having a small amount of
money taken from them on the street, for example. As a result,
civil asset forfeitures are rarely challenged, and successful
challenges are very rare.
Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies in many states keep the
proceeds from forfeited assets, leading to massive windfalls in
some police department or sheriff department budgets. This is
true even in states that have abolished civil asset forfeiture
because of a massive loophole in the federal law we will
discuss today called the Adoption and Equitable Sharing
Programs.
Under these programs, seizures made by state and local law
enforcement can be adopted by a federal agency for forfeiture,
and then up to 80 percent of those revenues can be equitably
shared and returned to the seizing agency. This creates a
perverse profit incentive because law enforcement agencies can
keep the revenues from forfeitures with little, if any,
oversight as to how the money is being spent.
In 2018, federal and state law enforcement seized and
forfeited more than $2 billion worth of cash and assets from
Americans using these processes. From 2000 to 2018, state and
federal agencies combined obtained more than $68.8 billion
through forfeitures. Despite these massive sums, high-value
forfeitures remain the exception, not the rule. In fact, most
seizures, usually of cash or cars, are for quite low values and
are taken from people primarily living in communities of color
in low-income areas.
Between 2015 and 2019, the average forfeiture amount under
state law was $1,276 per incident. In several states, the
median amount forfeited is far less than that. Half of all
forfeitures in Michigan, for example, were less than $423 in a
two-year period, and in Pennsylvania, they were less than $369
in 2018.
Moreover, numerous studies reflect that communities of
color are disproportionately affected. For instance, between
2012 and 2018, more than half of the forfeitures occurring in
Philadelphia came in four low-income Black and Latino majority
zip codes. Between 2014 and 2016, 65 percent of the people
targeted for forfeiture in South Carolina were African-American
men, despite their making up just 13 percent of the state
population.
The 2016 ACLU of California study found that 85 percent of
equitable sharing payments went to law enforcement agencies
serving in majority minority communities. We cannot have an
honest conversation about civil asset forfeiture without
acknowledging its connection to greater issues of the targeting
of communities of color by law enforcement in particular
communities.
In 2015, then-Attorney General Holder issued an order that
curbed federal adoptions to a limited degree and prohibited
equitable sharing revenues from being spent on militarized
equipment. Even though these limitations were applied narrowly,
they were rescinded by Attorney General Sessions in 2017.
It is time for DOJ to reinstate the protections provided by
the Eric Holder memorandum and to conduct a comprehensive
review of its civil forfeiture program to ensure that basic
civil rights and civil liberties are being protected. But this
isn't enough. We need lasting legislative reform.
Thankfully, there is near universal recognition now that
civil asset forfeiture practices are rife with abuse and ripe
for reform. Since 2014, 36 states and D.C. have taken steps to
reform their regimes, and four states--Maine, Nebraska, New
Mexico, and North Carolina--have eliminated it entirely.
But these efforts are being undermined by federal equitable
sharing, which is like a run-around or an end run, and we need
to deal with it by passing the sweeping reforms contained in
the FAIR Act that we will discuss today. Congress must act to
ensure lasting reforms to federal civil asset forfeiture
programs.
I am proud to be the lead Democratic cosponsor of H.R.
2857, the FAIR Act, along with my good friend Congressman Tim
Walberg of Minnesota. This bill will, among other things, raise
the level of proof required by the government to keep a
forfeiture to clear and convincing evidence. It will require
all revenues to be deposited in the general Treasury fund,
rather than being returned directly to state and local law
enforcement agencies.
I am pleased as well that many of my colleagues on this
committee have joined Mr. Walberg and me in cosponsoring this
bill. This is how Congress should be operating in the interests
of protecting the rights of all Americans, rather than engaging
in our constant habits of partisan polemic and invective.
I hope that we can continue working together to confront
this mostly invisible, but still egregiously outrageous
injustice that civil asset forfeiture imposes on so many
Americans. And I look forward to hearing the testimony of our
distinguished witnesses today.
With that, I now recognize my esteemed ranking member, Ms.
Mace, for her opening statement.
Ms. Mace. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you,
Chairman Raskin, for holding today's hearing on a question that
couldn't be more important to the American people or
fundamental to our Nation's identity as founded in our
Constitution, the ability of people to be secure in their
property.
In the case of civil asset forfeiture, there is no
requirement that the property owner be convicted of a crime,
let alone charged with any sort of offense. And I want to quote
this morning, first of all, my hometown newspaper, the
Charleston Post and Courier. As we were discussing earlier
before the hearing today, I worked on civil asset forfeiture as
a state lawmaker before coming up here to Congress, and it is
an honor to work with you on these issues and to have this
hearing today. It is an important hearing.
The Post and Courier a few years ago reported on
investigations by the Post and Courier and the Greenville News
in 2017, and their investigation showed how the law was
incentivized, law enforcement agencies, to seize assets,
sometimes without even filing criminal charges and put people
in the legally backward position of having to prove their
innocence to get their property back, which is completely
opposite of what the Constitution would, I believe, require.
The Post and Courier also stated the Greenville News series
that did this large investigation looked at some 3,200 seizures
and $17.6 million in assets taken over a three-year period in
South Carolina. In about 800 cases of those 3,200, or 25
percent, there were no criminal charges filed. And in another
800 cases in which charges were filed, there were no
convictions.
The series, the investigation by the Greenville News, also
found that roughly two-thirds of seized assets came from Black
men, calling into question whether the law was being applied
fairly. And as the chairman rightly recognized, this
disproportionately affects communities of color, and those who
are poor are also unfairly and unevenly treated in these cases.
The writers of our country's Declaration of Independence
held several truths to be self-evident, that all are created
equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain
unalienable rights. And those are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.
Our Constitution guarantees those rights explicitly in the
text. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the Federal Government from
depriving people of life, liberty, or property without due
process of law. And in so many cases, as the chair has
recognized, that is not happening.
Likewise, the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from
depriving any person of life, liberty, or property again
without due process of law. But civil asset forfeiture too
often creates an end run around the constitutional guarantee of
due process. Too often civil asset forfeiture creates a ``seize
first, ask questions later'' approach and incentive.
We do want to prevent criminals from continuing to use
their property in the commission of criminal offenses and
crimes or to enjoy the property derived illegal activity. They
shouldn't be doing it, obviously. But asset forfeiture,
pursuant to a criminal charge and conviction, is a sound means
of ensuring criminals do not benefit from the proceeds of their
crimes, and defendants should be proven guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt.
Civil asset forfeiture is an action against the property,
and those property owners who have assets seized have no
guarantee to an attorney to help them navigate a very
complicated and most often expensive and costly legal
proceeding. They usually cannot afford to contest the
forfeiture in a proceeding in which the government has a very
low burden of proof.
In fact, it often costs well more for an attorney than the
seized assets are worth, leading many forfeiture actions just
to simply go untested because it is unaffordable to fight in
court. Many innocent activities have led to authorities seizing
assets, which are often very difficult to get back through any
forfeiture proceeding.
Small business owners have been wrongly accused of
structuring, which is the practice of depositing or withdrawing
less than $10,000 to avoid bank reporting laws, even though
there are a number of reasons to deposit $9,000 in a bank.
Those affected have had their entire bank accounts seized,
tying up all of their operating capital for months, if not
years, in complicated legal proceedings, all without ever being
charged with a crime.
Others have had their life's savings confiscated by the
government merely for carrying large amounts of cash, again
without being charged with any criminal offense. A report by
the Institute for Justice shows the median cash seizure in
states is only about $1,300, which is well below the amount of
money it would cost to hire an attorney to contest the
forfeiture.
This is a real problem in our country, one that Congress
should seriously debate and consider reforming, which is why we
are doing this today. So, thank you. And certainly, there are
simple, common sense reforms that we all could get behind to
restore the Constitution's guarantee of due process outlined by
the chairman this morning.
But for example, it should be easier for litigants
representing themselves to navigate and contest any forfeiture
action. We should guarantee their right to a quick hearing,
where the government must show cause for why the property was
seized in the first place. And we should consider whether it is
proper for funds to be returned directly to the authority
seizing those funds in the first place or whether those funds
should be deposited, as you mentioned, in the general Treasury,
if not returned directly to victims that are affected.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today. So,
thank you for spending your time with us and sharing your
knowledge and expertise and personal experiences about the
scope of this issue across the country and what we could be and
should be doing as legislators in Congress to solve it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
Mr. Raskin. And thank you, Ms. Mace, for those super
thoughtful and lucid remarks you just made.
I want to now introduce our witnesses today and swear them
in.
Our first witness is Daniel Alban, a senior attorney and
co-director for the National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse
at the Institute for Justice, which is a primary actor in this
field. And I, too, like Ms. Mace, worked on this problem in
Annapolis when I was a state senator, and the Institute for
Justice was a critical resource we relied on. So, thank you for
being with us, Mr. Alban.
Then we are going to hear from Malinda Harris of
Springfield, Massachusetts, who was a victim of civil asset
forfeiture.
Then we are going to hear from Professor Louis Rulli, a
practice professor of law and director of the Civil Practice
Clinic and Legislative Clinic at the UPenn Carey Law School.
Finally, we will hear from Aamra Ahmad, a senior policy
counsel at the ACLU.
The witnesses will be unmuted, please, or stand so we can
swear them in. Please raise your right hands. Great.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
[Response.]
Mr. Raskin. All right. Let the record show that all of the
witnesses answered in the affirmative today.
Thank you. Without objection, your written statements are
going to be made part of the record.
Now you are recognized for five minutes. And with that, Mr.
Alban, you will go first.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL ALBAN, SENIOR ATTORNEY AND CO-DIRECTOR,
NATIONAL INITIATIVE TO END FORFEITURE ABUSE, INSTITUTE FOR
JUSTICE
Mr. Alban. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the members of this
committee, for the opportunity to testify about the urgent need
for civil forfeiture reform.
My name is Dan Alban. I am a senior attorney at the
Institute for Justice and the co-director of our National
Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse. IJ is a national nonprofit
public interest law firm. For 30 years, we have litigated cases
nationwide on behalf of individuals whose constitutional rights
have been violated by the government.
IJ has been litigating civil forfeiture cases since the
1990's, and we are currently litigating over a dozen forfeiture
cases in courts across the country. We have also conducted
extensive research on the use of civil forfeiture nationwide
and have published numerous studies based on that research,
including three editions of ``Policing for Profit,'' the
Nation's only comprehensive study on civil forfeiture laws in
all 50 states and at the federal level.
In recent years, we have also published multiple studies
based on Federal Government data that found that civil
forfeiture is ineffective at fighting crime, but it is used to
generate more revenue when there are budget shortfalls. Those
findings highlight why civil forfeiture is a national disgrace.
It is not just ripe for abuse. It is inherently abusive.
Our civil forfeiture laws violate due process, encourage
widespread abuse of civil liberties, pose a terrible threat to
property rights, and distort and divert law enforcement
priorities away from preventing and solving crimes toward
raising revenue. Civil forfeiture turns the presumption of
innocence on its head and effectively permits the government to
punish someone for a crime without actually convicting them of
that crime. That is not just deeply unjust, it is un-American.
But civil forfeiture continues throughout the United States
because law enforcement has a strong financial incentive to use
it. It gets to keep the money. Up to 100 percent of forfeited
money goes to funds controlled entirely by law enforcement,
with little oversight by Congress, state legislatures, or city
council. That not only violates the separation of powers, it
distorts law enforcement priorities, incentivizing policing for
profit.
But civil forfeiture--unsurprisingly, the vast majority of
forfeiture done under federal law is civil in nature. From 2000
to 2019, civil forfeitures made up 84 percent of all
forfeitures done by DOJ agencies and 98 percent of forfeitures
done by Treasury agencies. During that time, at least $69
billion was seized and forfeited nationwide, and the Federal
Government paid out nearly $9 billion to state and local law
enforcement agencies through the Federal Equitable Sharing
Program.
While forfeiture generates massive amounts of money for law
enforcement, the size of a typical forfeiture is quite modest.
The median DOJ agency currency forfeiture is $12,090. In other
words, half of DOJ currency forfeitures are under $12,000. The
median currency forfeiture by Treasury agencies is just $7,320,
while the state median currency forfeiture is about $1,000.
These figures indicate that forfeiture targets everyday
people far more often than drug kingpins. Even worse, the
federal forfeiture system involves a very complex set of
procedures that is nearly impossible for a layman to navigate.
We have prepared an infographic, which I am holding up now,
that demonstrates the incredible complexity of the federal
forfeiture process and how many ways there are to lose a civil
forfeiture case, but very few ways to win.
Congress must act to fix this injustice. First, Congress
should eliminate the profit incentive that drives most civil
forfeiture by diverting all forfeiture proceeds to the general
fund. Law enforcement should not get to control the money it
forfeits. All spending should be done through the normal
appropriations process and subject to legislative oversight.
Second, Congress should abolish the Federal Equitable
Sharing Program, which drives so much abuse at the state and
local level. Equitable sharing allows state law enforcement to
circumvent state law by sending their forfeitures to the Feds.
Equitable sharing should be abolished to preserve federalism
and let states implement greater protections for property
rights than are available under federal law.
Third, Congress should eliminate the byzantine
administrative forfeiture process that makes it extremely
difficult for property owners to contest a forfeiture. Property
owners deserve their day in court, in a real court with a
neutral Article III judge. They should not lose their property
because the seizing agency makes a self-serving determination
that it was right to seize and forfeit their property.
Finally, to truly fix this problem, civil forfeiture should
be replaced entirely by criminal forfeiture. Until forfeiture
is limited to criminal matters, the government will continue to
punish people for alleged unlawful activity without actually
convicting them of a crime. That is contrary to the American
system of justice and cannot stand.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
Mr. Raskin. And thank you for your excellent testimony, Mr.
Alban.
Ms. Harris, you are now recognized for your five minutes.
STATEMENT OF MALINDA HARRIS, VICTIM OF CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE,
SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
Ms. Harris. Good morning. First, I would just like to thank
the committee for inviting me here to testify. This is what
happened with me and to give me a voice. So, thank you for
that.
My name is Malinda Harris. I am 61 years old. I am a single
parent of three boys. I was born in Greenville, South Carolina.
I currently reside in Springfield, Massachusetts.
In 2015, my car was taken from me----
Mr. Raskin. Ms. Harris, forgive me. Will you just make sure
you speak directly into your microphone or as close as you can
get? We don't want to miss any of your important words.
Ms. Harris. OK. Is that better? Can you hear me?
Mr. Raskin. That is great.
Ms. Harris. OK, great. In 2015, my son Trevice Harris was
coming off a vacation, and he asked if I could pick him up at
the airport. I did so and returned home. He asked if he could
borrow my car. I let him. He dropped me off, and about 10:30
that night, I got a phone call from him. I could tell something
was wrong, but I wasn't quite sure what. He told me to come
where to pick my car up at.
When I went to pick my car up, as soon as I put my hands on
the door handle, about five, six police officers came from out
of nowhere. One of them even had his hand on his holster, and
they told me that they were going to seize my car because it
was suspected of being involved in criminal activity.
And I'm like, ``I don't know what you are talking about.
This is my car.'' They wasn't trying to hear it. They told me
that, basically, if I didn't give them the keys, they would--
that the car may be damaged, but whether I give it to them or
not, the car was coming with them.
They had no warrant. They didn't show me any paperwork. I
never got a receipt for my car. Basically, told me they were
taking the car, and that's what they did.
So, the next day, I went down to the police station to find
out what's going on and how to get my car back, and they
wouldn't give me any information. Said it was part of an
ongoing investigation, and so that was pretty much that.
Fast forward in I think it was 2020, I got a letter in the
mail stating that they were going to keep the car unless I
answered to them. I called to find out what needed to be done.
They told me I need a lawyer.
I couldn't get a lawyer because I couldn't afford a lawyer
at the time, and I needed to answer these things I had. They
gave me 23 days, and by the time the letter got to me, I had
like two weeks. And couldn't afford one, plus with the pandemic
going on, you couldn't get a legal aide or anything. So, I was
kind of left out there again.
So, I was trying to get more time. I contacted the D.A.'s
office to see if I could get more time. They basically told me
I need to get a lawyer to put into for more time to get a
lawyer. It was a very difficult time, and if it wasn't for the
Goldwater Institute and taking my case pro bono, I wouldn't
have gotten my car back.
But fortunate for me, they did a great job, and I was able
to get the car back, and I was able to give it to Trevice's
daughter when she graduated.
The forfeiture was very, very stressful, and if it wasn't
for them--it was a bad time. My son Trevice--let me just say
this quickly. My son Trevice was killed in 2018, murdered. So,
and it was in the same month. So, my thoughts were all over the
place. It was a very difficult time. And thank you for the
Goldwater Institute. My car was returned. So, I gave it to my
granddaughter.
And why I think this reform is important is for a lot of
reasons that were already stated because I don't believe people
should be allowed to police for profit, and I think that they
should have a better burden of proof. And also if they're going
to do it, the money should be--they should be held accountable
how the money is spent. And I really think it should go back
into the community from which it was taken and do some good
there, as opposed to lavish parties and trips to wherever.
So, once again, I thank you for allowing me to come and
share my story, and I truly hope this bill passes because I
think it's very important.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Ms. Harris, thank you for your wonderful
testimony. We are very sorry to hear about the loss of your
son, and thank you for joining us today and sharing your story.
Professor Rulli, you are now recognized for your five
minutes of testimony.
STATEMENT OF LOUIS S. RULLI, PRACTICE PROFESSOR OF LAW,
DIRECTOR OF CIVIL PRACTICE CLINIC AND LEGISLATIVE CLINIC,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA CAREY SCHOOL OF LAW
Mr. Rulli. Thank you so much, Chairman. I appreciate the
offer to testify today, and I commend the subcommittee for
holding such an important hearing.
I direct a civil practice clinic at the University of
Pennsylvania law school, where our students have represented
low-income property owners in civil forfeiture proceedings over
the past 20 years. Our clinic's work on civil forfeiture was
highlighted in a cover story in the New Yorker magazine in
2013, entitled ``Taken.''
We were introduced to civil forfeiture 20 years ago, when a
77-year-old Black homeowner who had end-stage renal disease was
served with a petition for forfeiture of her home. She was
never charged with a crime. She was never suspected of any
criminal activity. It had to do with a neighborhood boy who was
unrelated to her. But nonetheless, the prosecutor sought to
take her home.
I remember distinctly her saying something to me that many
clients would say to me over 20 years, and that was, ``Why is
the government trying to take my home when I didn't do anything
wrong?''
The New Yorker article was about our representation of Mary
and Leon Adams, an African-American couple living in West
Philadelphia. Prosecutors brought a civil forfeiture action
against their home because their adult son was engaged in some
small marijuana sales to a confidential informant. It had
nothing to do with Mary and Leon Adams.
They were 68 and 70 years of age, upright, law-abiding
citizens who had never been charged with a crime in their life,
and nor were they charged or suspected of any criminal activity
here. It was all related to their adult son. Nonetheless,
prosecutors sought to take their home permanently.
Just recently, a local judge called me, seeking
representation for a 14-year-old high school student who
resided with his mother in a home that he inherited from his
grandfather. The student's father did not live with them, but
apparently or allegedly was involved in some low-level drug
sales two miles from the property.
Nonetheless, never charged with any criminal activity,
either mom or the high school student, prosecutors filed a
civil forfeiture action to take the student's home.
Civil forfeiture is not just about homes. It's about cash,
and it's about cars. And in terms of cash, the police
confiscated a piggybank belonging to our client's young
daughter when they searched her home. They never charged her
with any criminal activity. She wasn't involved in anything.
The piggybank contained the young girl's birthday money,
totaling $91. Prosecutors refused to give back that piggybank
to her daughter.
These cases ended favorably only because there was free
legal representation. A 70-year-old widow in failing health had
both her home and her car seized by police and forfeited,
putting her on the street at age 70, only to have years later
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court finally rule in her favor.
Let's be clear. For the decade between 2005 and 2014,
prosecutors in Philadelphia forfeited 746 homes, 1,938 cars,
$34.2 million in cash. That's just one city alone.
Reform of civil forfeiture is long overdue. We must enact a
right to counsel. The high rate of default judgments is
intolerable in our justice system. Prosecutors are not being
held accountable for the claims they bring, and these matters
are too complex to handle on your own.
We must put a stop to the low cash forfeitures that make it
infeasible to hire a lawyer to represent you to get your cash
back, and we must make sure that low-income individuals have
the legal help when they need it most. The burden of proof is
way too low. It does not protect property owners from erroneous
deprivation of their property.
And we must boost data tracking and address head on the
racial disparity in civil forfeiture. We know, and we did
studies in Philadelphia, that low-income families and
particularly families of color are disproportionately affected
by civil forfeiture. This must end, and it will end if we begin
to eliminate the financial incentive to law enforcement that
drives persistent abuses.
I thank you all, and I thank this committee for this
important work. Let's get it done.
Mr. Raskin. And thank you, Professor Rulli, for your
powerful testimony, and thank you for being a credit to law
professors everywhere with the clinics that you run and the
work you have been doing in the city of Philadelphia.
We turn now to Ms. Ahmad. You are now recognized for your
five minutes of testimony.
STATEMENT OF AAMRA AHMAD, SENIOR POLICY COUNSEL, AMERICAN CIVIL
LIBERTIES UNION
Ms. Ahmad. Good morning, Chair Raskin, Ranking Member Mace,
and distinguished members of the subcommittee. My name is Aamra
Ahmad. I am pleased to be here today to discuss the need for
federal civil asset forfeiture reform and urge you to pass the
bipartisan Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act.
For over 100 years, the ACLU has been our Nation's guardian
of personal liberties, working to defend and preserve our
individual rights and liberties. The ACLU believes there are
three fundamental flaws with federal and state civil asset
forfeiture laws.
First, they violate due process and the prohibition against
excessive fines. Second, they disparately impact people of
color and low-income people. And third, they create perverse
profit motives for law enforcement and allow agencies to
augment their budgets without legislative oversight.
Civil asset forfeiture has been championed by law
enforcement officials as a powerful weapon to fight the failed
war on drugs, seizing the assets of major drug traffickers and
repurposing those assets to fund law enforcement initiatives.
It's been profitable.
Between 2000 and 2014, deposits into DOJ's forfeiture fund
have increased tenfold from $440 million to $4.5 billion. Far
greater than the billions in proceeds is the price that people
pay when their homes, businesses, cars, and cash are unjustly
seized. Just as the war on drugs disproportionately impacts
people in communities of color, so does civil asset forfeiture.
One example is an ACLU case in East Texas, where in 2007,
police pulled over a biracial couple and their children. When
police learned they were carrying $6,000 in cash as they were
en route to buy a new car, they threatened to charge them with
money laundering and put their children in foster care if they
did not hand over the cash. The man and woman were never
arrested or charged with a crime, and the seized assets were
used to enrich the prosecutors and officers themselves.
In 2008, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of the couple
and other drivers targeted by the scheme. It was discovered
that between 2006 and 2008, police of East Texas had seized $3
million from at least 140 people, all people of color.
Numerous studies show East Texas is not an outlier.
Thirteen percent of South Carolina's residents are Black men,
but 65 percent of cash seizures are from Black men. In one
Florida county, 90 percent of the drivers from whom cash was
confiscated without arrest were Black or Latino. In New Jersey,
8 of the 10 cities with the highest number of seizures were
also the poorest in the state.
Federal law enforcement does not report data on the race of
property owners subject to federal forfeiture, but when the
Washington Post looked at 400 cases that challenged federal
seizures and got some money back, it found that the majority of
those people were people of color.
And when DOJ's Inspector General examined DEA's cash
seizures, it could confirm that only 34 percent were related to
a criminal investigation. The report cautioned that when
forfeitures cannot be linked to criminal activity, ``Law
enforcement creates the appearance and risks the reality that
it is more interested in seizing cash than advancing an
investigation.'' Even the former prosecutors who built DOJ's
asset forfeiture program in the 1980's have said civil
forfeiture has run amok and that policing for profit outside of
the legislative budget process must end.
For example, DOJ's Equitable Sharing Program serves as a
loophole for state and local agencies to forum shop and
sidestep state reforms to the tune of over $6 billion between
2000 and 2016. Due to the racial disparity and the lack of due
process, the ACLU believes that federal civil asset forfeiture
should be abolished.
In the interim, we also support the following five steps
that can be taken immediately. First, pass the FAIR Act. It
would shift the burden of proof to the government, raise the
standard of proof to clear and convincing evidence, end the
Equitable Sharing Program, and direct DOJ forfeiture proceeds
to the general fund, where it will be subject to congressional
appropriations.
Second, Congress should end federal administrative
forfeitures. They lack judicial oversight and are used in 80 to
98 percent of cases.
Third, members should conduct oversight of the Equitable
Sharing Program and demand that DOJ officials prevent purchases
of military equipment and other forms of wasteful spending.
Fourth, Congress should give property owners counsel when
they can't afford it.
Finally, Congress should establish basic transparency and
accountability standards by requiring DOJ to report whether
seizures are related to any criminal investigation and the race
and ethnicity of property owners.
Once again, I appreciate your leadership on this issue and
the opportunity for the ACLU to participate in today's
important hearing. I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Raskin. All right. Thank you very much for your
excellent testimony, Ms. Ahmad.
And now I am going to recognize myself for five minutes for
questions.
First, though, I do want to submit for the record this very
helpful document that Mr. Alban brought, demonstrating how
civil forfeiture works at the federal level. And without any
objections, that will be entered into the record.
Mr. Raskin. OK. I recognize myself for five minutes for
questions.
Now, Ms. Harris, I want to come back to you. What happened
when your car got seized? Did you have another car?
Ms. Harris. No, sir. I did not. I ended up in public
transportation.
Mr. Raskin. So, how long were you without a car before you
got your car back? And I know you are one of the lucky ones
because you found legal representation, but what was the
interval?
Ms. Harris. It was probably about a year and a half before
I would be able to save to purchase another car, nowhere near
as nice or the value of the one that they took, but it did get
me to work once I found it.
Mr. Raskin. I am sorry, but I missed it. How long were you
going on public transportation without a car?
Ms. Harris. About a year and a half.
Mr. Raskin. A year and a half?
Ms. Harris. Yes, sir.
Mr. Raskin. And then you got your car back, or how did you
end up with a new car or a different car?
Ms. Harris. I was able to get my car back because I was
then sent to the Goldwater Institute, and they do forfeitures,
and they do pro bono work. And I was very fortunate to get
connected with them.
Mr. Raskin. I got you. So, when you got your car back and
it was working OK, even though it hadn't been driving for a
year and a half?
Ms. Harris. Well, we had to--I had to spend probably about
$2,000 to get it to ready to be--in order to be drivable and
what not.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you.
Mr. Alban, let me come to you. Because I remember when we
went through this in Maryland, and we dramatically reformed our
process when we learned of all these outrageous abuses taking
place. But I think both you and Ms. Ahmad have ventured that
why do we need civil asset forfeiture?
Criminal forfeiture says that if we think you are involved
in, say, drug dealing, you are charged. You are indicted. You
are prosecuted. If you are found guilty, at that point, the
criminal forfeiture process kicks in.
So, you say, well, we don't need law enforcement
departments just taking people's property from them. Whether it
is cash or apartments or condos, there is way too much error
that takes place. The violation of third-party rights is
terrible, but also, I assume you are raising the rights of even
the people who might go on to be convicted criminally.
But do we lose something if we were to abolish civil asset
forfeiture? And I am thinking specifically of this. I remember
one officer testified, and he said, well, it is 2 o'clock in
the morning, and we don't want to bring somebody in and charge
them and everything. But they are standing on the corner with a
wad of cash. We just grab the cash, and then they learn their
lesson, and then we get the money.
What is wrong with that?
Mr. Alban. What's wrong with that is that mere suspicion is
not sufficient to punish someone as though they've committed a
crime. Under the American criminal justice system, we believe
that people should be innocent until proven guilty and should
not be punished until they're proven guilty. And civil
forfeiture permits law enforcement to seize property from
people just on that mere suspicion, never actually secure the
conviction, and say, ``Oh, well, we know that guy is guilty,''
even though that's never proven in a court of law.
Mr. Raskin. And it risks the corruption of both the law
enforcement officers who are doing the seizing and the
departments, right?
Mr. Alban. It does. It creates a strong incentive for those
law enforcement agencies to devote far more resources to things
like highway interdiction or airport interdiction, and that
takes away from the resources that they have to spend
preventing crime and solving crimes. There's been a number of
studies that have shown that civil forfeiture is ineffective at
fighting crime, ineffective at lowering drug use rates, but is
effective at raising revenue. But that is not a valid reason
for taking property away from people without a criminal
conviction.
Mr. Raskin. But would you talk us through what the Holder
policy was, how well that worked? Is it time to reinstate it?
And should it be reinstated the way it was, or should it be
expanded in some way?
Mr. Alban. Sure, I'd be happy to. So, the Holder policy
addressed one specific aspect of the Federal Equitable Sharing
Program. There are two types of equitable sharing. There are
adoptive seizures, and there are task force seizures. Task
force seizures make up about 80 percent of all equitable
sharing. Adoptive seizures make up about 20 percent.
The Holder program suspended the use of adoptive seizure.
So, suspended about 20 percent of the Equitable Sharing Program
without approval from very high up in the Justice Department.
And so that prevented state and local agencies from asking
federal agencies to adopt their seizures and then process them
through the federal forfeiture system.
I think it would be excellent to reimplement the Holder
policy, but frankly, the entire Equitable Sharing Program
should be suspended. DOJ could do that unilaterally, or
Congress could simply pass a law making equitable sharing
something that's not allowed anymore.
Mr. Raskin. And what about the task force side of it?
Mr. Alban. So, the task force side was unaddressed by the
Holder policy. And so the vast majority of equitable sharing
continued while the Holder policy was in effect. So, it was a
good first step, but it did not fix the equitable sharing
loophole.
Mr. Raskin. But should we look at reforming the task force
side of it as well?
Mr. Alban. Yes, absolutely. The entire Equitable Sharing
Program poses the same problems, poses the same threats to
federalism, and allows federal--allows local and state law
enforcement officers to sidestep state law requirements by
handing their seizures off to the Feds.
Mr. Raskin. So, it incentivizes an end run around the
policies that have been adopted by the state governments,
right?
Mr. Alban. That's right. And many states have adopted laws
that are much more protective of property rights than the
federal forfeiture system or have said that money that's
received through forfeiture has to go to a school fund or a
general fund. But the Federal Equitable Sharing Program
circumvents those requirements and allows those state and local
law enforcement agencies to directly receive the federal money.
Mr. Raskin. All right. Well, the state laws are being
circumvented by federal policy in order to violate the civil
rights and civil liberties of the people.
So, thank you. And I am going to turn now to Ms. Mace. You
are recognized for five minutes.
Ms. Mace. And thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Two things before I start with some questions. First, I
would like to enter into the record this editorial by the
Charleston Post and Courier that I quoted from this morning
about property being seized without bringing charges.
Mr. Raskin. Without objection.
Ms. Mace. And then, second, I thought I was on the FAIR Act
already. Apparently, I am not. So, you can add one more
Republican to that great bipartisan bill.
Mr. Raskin. That is very good news. Without any objection
there, too.
Ms. Mace. Right. And then, third, I will start with Ms.
Harris and then go to Mr. Alban.
Ms. Harris, first of all, I want to thank you for sharing
your personal story. So, many voices don't have the opportunity
to share their stories, and it takes courage to do that. And we
thank you for being here today, going through everything you
went through from losing your son to losing your vehicle.
So, my first question goes to you. Were you ever charged
with a crime in this particular incident?
Ms. Harris. Not only was I never charged with a crime, I
was never even accused of a crime, except when they told me if
I didn't hand over the keys that they could then have held me
accountable also. Other than that, that's the only thing that
ever happened.
Ms. Mace. Thank you.
I think many Americans would be just surprised and shocked
to hear that your assets--your car, your house, your cash--
could be seized without ever being charged, let alone convicted
of a crime.
What impact did losing your car for that period of time
have on you, your family, and work?
Ms. Harris. Yes. Like I said it was in the middle of
winter. So, I had--I was using public transportation in the
middle of the winter. And then I had to pretty much grocery
shop. Everything had to be done on the bus system, and at my
age, that was not a very pleasant or easy thing to do. But you
do what you have to.
Ms. Mace. Right.
Ms. Harris. And I forgot to state that, which I think is
very important, is that not only did they take my car, they
kept my car for five years before they even started any type of
form of forfeiture acts, and I hadn't heard anything about that
car for five years. That's a long time.
Ms. Mace. So, you--technically, you didn't have the vehicle
for six years?
Ms. Harris. Yes.
Ms. Mace. OK, 6, 6 1/2 years without a vehicle. Thank you.
Ms. Harris. Without my vehicle.
Ms. Mace. Yes, thank you for sharing that.
And then I would like to talk to Mr. Alban and talk about
some of the experiences that you have. And first, thank the
Goldwater Institute for stepping up and helping you, too, Ms.
Harris. But can you give some examples, Mr. Alban, of innocent
activities that someone might have--that your clients or
potential clients have been involved in that led to their
property being seized via civil asset forfeiture, where they
were never charged with a crime?
Mr. Alban. Absolutely. Usually the activity that people are
engaged in is traveling, either driving, say, across the
country, across the state, or flying. I recently represented a
gentleman from the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans whose name
was Kermit Warren. He's a metal scrapper and, until the COVID
pandemic, was the shoeshine man at the Roosevelt Hotel in New
Orleans.
He and his son both lost their jobs because of the COVID
pandemic and were looking to try to provide for themselves by
expanding their metal scrapping business. To make that
effective, they needed a second truck. And so Mr. Warren
located a tow truck that fit his specifications in Ohio. He
flew to Ohio to inspect that truck, decided it wasn't actually
quite what they needed, and on his way back was stopped at the
airport by the DEA and had the $28,180 that he had with him to
buy the tow truck seized from him.
That was his entire life savings, and it left him destitute
for over a year. That seizure happened last November. He
finally got his money back just before Thanksgiving this year,
over a year later. He was never charged with any crime, nor was
his son, and his money has now been fully returned. But his
life was made miserable for a year because DEA suspected that a
Black man flying through an airport with $28,000 must be up to
no good.
That's just one of many, many examples. I'd be happy to
provide others, but I don't want to take up your time.
Ms. Mace. Yes, and how do we disincentivize, de-incentivize
some of this behavior? What other proposals are out there? We
have the FAIR Act, but what are some things, small parts that
would make a big difference in this larger conversation?
Mr. Alban. Well, I think it's absolutely critical that we
separate the financial incentive so that law enforcement
doesn't stand to directly benefit from the seizures that
they're making. Those DEA officers that stopped Mr. Warren at
the airport and took money from him, they don't get to put that
money directly in their pockets, but you better believe they
get promotions based on how much money they seize. They get
evaluated based on how much money they seize because they're
part of the airport interdiction program, and that interdiction
program exists to take money away from travelers.
We need to put an end to those sorts of programs, and the
best way to do that is to make sure that the money that is
taken through civil forfeiture goes to the general fund and not
to the DOJ assets forfeiture fund or the Treasury forfeiture
fund, which are funds that can only be spent by law enforcement
and are controlled by law enforcement. That's the fundamental
thing that drives all of this abuse.
Ms. Mace. And thank you. And I am reminded, Mr. Chairman,
having this conversation, talking about people using cash, when
my kids were toddlers, I bought my first minivan for $14,000.
And I showed up with cash, not even thinking what the
consequences could be.
So, thank you for sharing that, and I yield back.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
I knew of another case like this where an older Chinese
American gentleman had saved up, I think it was around $40,000
in order to purchase a restaurant, and he was driving to
Louisiana and got stopped, and the money was seized. It took
him many years, I think with the help of the Institute for
Justice, to get the money back.
All right. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, you are recognized for
your five minutes.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, civil asset forfeiture creates perverse
incentives, as we've heard, for law enforcement agencies that
stand to benefit financially from increased numbers of
seizures. After the assets are seized, we heard the property
may be sold, the proceeds kept, and in some states, law
enforcement agencies are actually authorized to keep 100
percent of their forfeiture proceeds, which is a massive
windfall for law enforcement.
In the vast majority of jurisdictions, forfeited assets
don't go into a state's general fund for the well-being of all
of its citizens, instead the money goes directly to the seizing
law enforcement agency to spend however they want, and it has
few or even no strings attached.
Dr. Alban, can you talk about the best evidence that we
have that the financial benefits for law enforcement for law
enforcement created by our laws are a motive behind civil asset
seizures?
Mr. Alban. Sure, I'd be happy to discuss that. First of
all, you can simply look at the time graph of federal civil
forfeitures over time after the law was passed in the early
1980's, 1984, the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, permitting
law enforcement to keep the proceeds of civil forfeitures.
After that point, civil forfeitures went up dramatically.
But probably the most salient example that demonstrates how
this profit incentive distorts law enforcement activity was a
drug task force that was operating on I-40 outside of
Nashville. In the drug interdiction world, money and drugs are
viewed as moving in different directions. The drugs are viewed
as moving from south to north and from west to east, from
basically the borders to the population centers in the east
coast. And the money is viewed as moving in the opposite
direction, from east to west and from north to south, back to
the borders where the drugs are coming in from cartels and
smuggling and that sort of thing.
On I-40 outside of Nashville, this drug task force, which
was funded almost entirely by civil forfeiture proceeds, was
operating 90 percent of the time on the westbound side of the
freeway. That is the side that the money would be moving on.
And the local News Channel 5 there investigated it using
their traffic copters and an undercover investigation and found
that 90 percent of the time, they were operating on the money
side of the freeway rather than the drug side of the freeway.
If you're trying to prevent drug trafficking, you should be
operating on the drug side of the freeway because you prevent
the drugs from getting to the east coast, and then there will
be no money coming back.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Right.
Mr. Alban. But that was the fundamental problem. There
would be no money coming back. And if there was no money coming
back, this drug task force would not be able to exist because
it was funded almost entirely from civil forfeiture proceeds.
So, that's just one of the many examples out there.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Mr. Chairman, a Washington Post report, which reviewed
annual reports that are submitted by local and state agencies
to the Justice Department's Equitable Sharing Program, shows
how law enforcement agencies and drug task forces spend their
seizure proceeds. And it found multiple examples of agencies
that used seizure proceeds to purchase frivolous items,
including large-scale military-style equipment in small
communities.
I would like to ask unanimous consent to submit this report
to the record.
Mr. Raskin. Without any objection.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you.
And Professor Rulli, what tangible steps can the Federal
Government take right now to remove the profit motive
associated with civil asset forfeiture? And then I would like
to ask Dr. Alban, if both of you could answer, if you can
answer the question about the role that law enforcement plays
in thwarting civil asset forfeiture reform efforts, even though
it is clear that they are necessary.
Mr. Rulli. I'll go first then. This is Lou Rulli. Thank you
for that question.
You know, we've seen on the local level how powerfully the
financial incentive for law enforcement really operates. And in
Pennsylvania, for example, 100 percent of the funds go directly
to law enforcement, directly to the people who are making the
decisions as to whether or not to seek forfeiture.
And we've watched as the prosecutors' offices grow, and
they spend money on lots of things that are totally unrelated
to the safety of our citizens. And so we must direct funds away
from these forfeiture funds and directly to the Treasury, where
there is general accountability, where there is much more
transparency, where we have a sense of exactly the data
underneath all of these forfeitures.
What are the forfeitures for? Who is being impacted by
these forfeitures? How is the money being spent? Are people
being charged with a crime or not? And certainly, our
experience on the local level has really confirmed all of the
things that have been discussed here today, that reform is so
desperately needed.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. And Mr. Chairman, would it be OK if
the other question was answered quickly?
Mr. Raskin. Yes, was that addressed to Ms. Ahmad?
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Alban. Professor Alban.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Alban, yes.
Mr. Alban. Yes, I'd be happy to address that. Law
enforcement likes to say that they are only enforcing the laws
and they don't make the laws. But the dirty little secret of
forfeiture reform is the only entity opposed to forfeiture
reform is law enforcement, and it's a powerful lobby.
I have personal experience with reform efforts in states
like Missouri, where there has been widespread support--
widespread bipartisan support for forfeiture reform,
eliminating the equitable sharing loophole, and prosecutors and
officials from St. Charles County, which profits substantially
from civil forfeiture on the interstate there, come in and they
lobby key legislators. And you know, basically say you don't
want to look soft on crime. You're going to be taking money out
of--out of law enforcement's pockets, and we're going to make
you pay for that politically.
And that sort of process repeats itself all around the
country when there are forfeiture reform efforts. They are
almost always bipartisan. They are almost always supported
nearly unanimously, if not unanimously. And yet law enforcement
opposes these reform efforts because they view it as taking
money out of their pockets.
And that is the primary obstacle that folks who want to
reform civil forfeiture law face, that law enforcement is a
powerful lobby. That it is able to affect how things happen in
the judiciary process and in judicial committees where these
bills are typically before. They can get a bill so that it's
not heard. It's simply tabled.
And you have bills with widespread support that end up
moving nowhere because of opposition from law enforcement.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you. Thank you. The gentlelady's time has
expired.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. [Inaudible].
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much. Mr. Biggs, you are now
recognized for your five minutes of questioning.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am grateful that you are having this hearing. This is an
important topic, and Mr. Alban has kind of connected up, as
some of you have, the intersection between state law and
federal law on civil asset forfeiture.
Civil asset forfeiture laws infringe upon Americans' due
process and property rights. Civil forfeiture has been used by
state and federal officials to confiscate innocent Americans'
property. And this is a problem, OK? So, I am going to get off
my script here for a second because I used to be a prosecutor,
and we actually carpooled. I carpooled with a group of
prosecutors, and one of our prosecutors was a civil asset
forfeiture attorney.
And he would tell us of cases, and we would say, ``How can
you take this person's property?'' I mean, first of all, they
have never been--you didn't even charge them. They were never
charged with a crime.
Second of all, there is the standard of proof is so low.
How can that be? But that was the state law in Arizona. And so
Arizona has actually done some reform, much needed, long
overdue reform.
So, I want to ask--I want to, if I can, deconstruct or
delink for just a minute, Mr. Alban. My question is for you
initially, and then if you are able to answer this question.
How extensive is the federal civil asset forfeiture system? I
want to know how much money or the value of the assets that we
are seizing in our federal police apparatus, our prosecutorial
apparatus every year? Do we know?
Mr. Alban. It varies by year, Congressman. It's
approximately $2 billion to $3 billion in recent years. From
2000 to 2019, of that $69 billion figure that I mentioned
earlier, $45.7 billion of that went into federal forfeiture
funds. So, it was forfeited by federal agencies or through
federal equitable sharing.
Mr. Biggs. And so when we look at this, the argument from
my police officer friends is that we are using it to curtail
crime. Is there any evidence, is there any scientific data--I
shouldn't say scientific, but any statistical data that
indicates that we have seen the reduction in crime in certain
areas because of the civil asset forfeiture laws?
Mr. Alban. There is not. In fact, the studies indicate the
opposite. A study that was done on New Mexico, which abolished
civil forfeiture in 2015, found that after civil forfeiture was
abolished, there was no increase in crime rates both in New
Mexico and New Mexico compared to neighboring counties of other
states.
Mr. Biggs. Can you share that study with members of the
committee?
Mr. Alban. Absolutely. It's in our ``Policing for Profit''
report. We also have two other reports that were done looking,
one, at federal equitable sharing data and, two, at the data
from five states that made data available, comparing forfeiture
rates to crime rates. Found no correlation in terms of
increases in forfeiture reducing crime or reducing drug use.
Mr. Biggs. So, there may be some other variables,
independent variables that are affecting crime rates is what
you are suggesting?
Mr. Alban. Lots of other independent variables affect crime
rates, but civil forfeiture is not one of them.
Mr. Biggs. OK. So, the other--the other argument is that
victims--our system is not designed--you know, biblical systems
were designed to restore victims. Our system doesn't do that.
We do it very inefficiently. We tend to punish first and
reimburse victims last.
What is the result here? Do we have any data indicating
that civil asset forfeiture is going to benefit or restore
victims and make them whole where possible?
Mr. Alban. The evidence that we have, Congressman, is that
a teeny-tiny percentage of all federal forfeiture procedures--
--
Mr. Biggs. What would that be? ``Teeny-tiny'' doesn't
compute for me. I need to know what the number is.
Mr. Alban. I'll have to get back to you on the specific
number, but I believe it's around 5 or 6 percent.
Mr. Biggs. OK. And so if you can get that for us, that
would be helpful.
I think that the first thing--and the other thing is, as we
have talked about, the standard of proof. The number of cases
that don't even get litigated here because the value, what is
the average value, something like $1,300, of assets seized. The
cost to litigate that is at least twice that. In my own
experience, it would cost you far more than you would get. Is
that accurate?
Mr. Alban. Yes. At the state level, the median forfeiture
is about $1,000.
Mr. Biggs. What is it at the federal level?
Mr. Alban. At the federal level, for DOJ agencies, it's
$12,090. And for Treasury agencies, it's about $7,300.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you. My time has expired.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for introducing this legislation.
Thanks for having this hearing today. Appreciate it.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you for your questioning, Mr. Biggs. It
is appreciated.
And Ms. Kelly, I come to you for your five minutes.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Chairman Raskin and Ranking Member
Mace, for holding this very important hearing.
The protection of due process is central to our justice
system. However, the current process of civil forfeiture
violates this right and disproportionately, as we have heard,
affects people of color. A policy that was meant to target drug
kingpins and criminal organizations has instead been used by
police departments as an extra revenue stream.
Targeting people on their way to buy a car with money they
have saved or someone related to a person that has committed a
misdemeanor is simply unacceptable. Congress passed the Civil
Assets Forfeiture Reform Act, or CAFRA, in 2000 with the intent
of implementing due process protections for innocent people
facing forfeitures. Unfortunately, as the last 20 years of
civil asset forfeiture regimes have proven, CAFRA has not
worked.
Ms. Ahmad, I would like to start with you. As I mentioned,
CAFRA was intended to provide due process protections for
individuals facing civil asset forfeitures, but such
protections have not happened in a meaningful way. How has
CAFRA affected the due process rights of individuals whose
assets have been seized by law enforcement?
Ms. Ahmad. Sure. Well, I think it's helpful to compare
civil forfeiture to criminal forfeiture and what happens in
criminal court. Under criminal forfeiture, a person has the
presumption of innocence. They have to be--the government has
the burden of proving a person guilty beyond a reasonable
doubt.
But in civil court, we have this archaic legal fiction that
a piece of property can be a defendant in a case. So, we have
cases of United States v. $22,000. And because it's a piece of
property, it doesn't have rights. It doesn't have a right to
counsel. It doesn't have the presumption of innocence. The
property is presumed guilty. The individual has to prove their
innocence, and under CAFRA, they have to prove their innocence.
So, the kind of changes that we need for property owners is
to--is to put the burden of proof on the government, to raise
the burden of proof from preponderance of the evidence. Right
now, the government just has to prove a nexus to the crime,
between the property and the crime by a preponderance of the
evidence. That should be raised to clear and convincing
evidence. And these changes would definitely level the playing
field.
Ms. Kelly. Has CAFRA even reduced civil asset forfeiture
abuse since its passage?
Ms. Ahmad. Actually, since CAFRA, the Department of
Treasury and the DOJ's asset forfeiture program have still been
pulling in billions of dollars, even more than before CAFRA was
passed. It's been 20 years, and the budgets just keep growing.
The asset forfeiture funds and proceeds keep growing.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you.
Mr. Alban, I would like to bring you in. Based on what we
have heard today, it seems clear that CAFRA has not fulfilled
its intended purpose. But I am curious to know whether CAFRA
has harmed any of the people it was designed to protect. Can
you speak to some of the unintended consequences?
Mr. Alban. Certainly. CAFRA was watered down quite
dramatically from its proposed version to the version that was
ultimately passed. There were a handful of good reforms within
CAFRA, for instance, raising the burden of proof from probable
cause to a preponderance of the evidence. But by and large,
CAFRA did not make a major impact on the federal forfeiture
system, and so people continued to be abused by federal
forfeiture after CAFRA.
Ms. Kelly. And how has the federal civil asset forfeiture
and equitable sharing practices evolved since CAFRA's passage
in 2000?
Mr. Alban. Well, the data show that there have been
increases in the amount of money brought in through both the
federal forfeiture programs and the equitable sharing programs.
There have been substantial increases through 2015 or 2016.
Federal forfeiture seems to have peaked around those years.
There's been a slight decline since then, but CAFRA does not
seem to have slowed the increase of forfeitures at the federal
level.
Ms. Kelly. And what are your top one or two reforms that
you would recommend?
Mr. Alban. I'd say the top three reforms that should be
passed would be eliminating the profit incentive by directing
all federal forfeiture proceeds to the general fund; two,
eliminate equitable sharing so that there's no loophole for
state and local governments to evade--state and local law
enforcement agencies to evade their own state laws; and three,
eliminate administrative forfeiture, which stacks the deck
against property owners and produces this incredibly complex
and byzantine system that is impossible for someone to navigate
without an attorney and, frankly, many attorneys find very
difficult to navigate.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you to the witnesses.
And my time is up. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Ms. Kelly, thank you for your questioning.
And before I come to Mr. Sessions, I just want to, without
objection, Congressman Clyde of Georgia will be permitted to
join the hearing and be recognized for the purpose of
questioning the witnesses. Without any objection.
So, Mr. Clyde, welcome. And I now recognize you, Mr.
Sessions, for your five minutes.
Mr. Sessions. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
And to our panel, we appreciate this. I think this--I join
my colleagues in saying--is an area that not only is very
interesting but must--for civil liberties of our citizens, must
be looked at again.
My innocence in looking at this is that I would have
assumed that if you take something from someone, you would have
followed up with a process. That you would have required
yourself, your legal team--whether it is a police officer or
sheriff, federal agent--that they would have had a process that
they must conform themselves to within a timeframe. It is a
taking. Maybe you don't charge them with something. Then if you
go through that process, you have to return the money.
Talk to me about this angle of the Federal Government.
Generally speaking, do they just as they did at the airport in
the example you gave, Mr. Alban, where the federal agencies--I
don't know what those were, U.S. Marshals or just DEA, but I
know that they have combined task forces. What is their process
that they are required to follow by the law?
Mr. Alban. Sure. I'd be happy to address that.
So, under CAFRA, the federal forfeiture statute that we
were just discussing, when federal law enforcement like DEA
seize property from someone, they're supposed to give that
person a receipt at the time of the seizure. And then, within
60 days, they are supposed to followup with what's called a
CAFRA notice, or a notice of intended forfeiture.
So, about two months after the seizure, the property owner
should receive in the mail a notice saying that the agency is
intending to forfeit their property. At that point, the
property owner has four options. By the way, this is all
outlined in our federal forfeiture infographic.
At that point, the property owner has four options. One is
to file an administrative petition and let the administrative
agency decide the case. One is to file a judicial claim and try
to go to court. And then the other two options are basically
give up or negotiate some sort of settlement.
The property owner has to do those first two actions within
30 or 35 days, and then once they file a claim with the agency,
then the Federal Government has another 90 days to file a civil
forfeiture complaint. So, in a typical forfeiture case where
someone is represented by counsel and is advised to file a
judicial claim making the government take the case to court, if
you add up those time periods--60 days plus 30 days plus 180
days--you end up about six months after the seizure before the
Federal Government even files the initial civil forfeiture
complaint.
And that, of course, is what starts the forfeiture case
itself. So, it can be many years after that that the person is
able to get their property back.
Those are the processes that are supposed to be followed.
They are not always followed. The person doesn't always receive
the notice within 60 days. Sometimes agencies seize property,
hold onto it for years, and never bother to process it through
the forfeiture system.
Mr. Sessions. So, it seems like to me that we should spend
time, notwithstanding we are trying to stop things that are
egregious and wrong, that we should streamline the system to at
least make sure that perhaps the burden is on them up front,
meaning whoever the agency was that had the taking, that they
had to prove cause, that they had to show some jurisdiction
about why they got that.
And you are saying that is at the back part of that
process?
Mr. Alban. That's right. That's one of the major
inadequacies of the federal forfeiture system is that there is
no prompt procedure hearing for someone to be able to shortly
after the seizure contest the legitimacy of the seizure. What
if the government just got the wrong person or the wrong bank
account or the person has all receipts with them and can easily
show that they just withdrew this money from the bank and are
going on a trip to buy, you know, a new car or something like
that.
Those things can be easily shown at an early stage and can
at least allow someone whose car is seized, for instance, to
maintain possession of that car while the forfeiture proceeding
continues. But the federal forfeiture system doesn't have that,
and that means even innocent people, people who ultimately
prevail in their federal forfeiture proceeding, can go years
without their property.
And of course, that's tremendously harmful to them. If
you're a car owner, you probably need to get a new car while
that's going on. That puts a substantial burden on property
owners, and they shouldn't have that burden.
Mr. Sessions. Do you find that these forfeitures, that
these federal agencies then go and speak with and do an
investigation like perhaps with the IRS to find out whether
their justification that they took of that I suppose would be a
larger amount, not a smaller amount? Do they involve then
federal agencies, or do they just do their own investigation,
what I would call a prima facie--``Well, we don't know where
you got it. So, we took it.''
Do they then come back and where there is a process, they
involve other federal agencies like the IRS?
Mr. Alban. It varies. In some instances, it looks like no
additional investigation was done once the seizure happened. In
a few other instances, I'm aware of the U.S. Marshal Service,
on behalf of U.S. attorney's offices, conducting additional
investigation. I'm aware of different agencies reaching out to
each other as part of investigations.
But it seems like the most common practice is once we've
done a seizure, there's no need for additional followup. If you
had a whole bunch of money and you were flying, that's prima
facie evidence of you were up to no good, and we're just going
to keep the money based on that.
Mr. Sessions. Could we have one more question, please, Mr.
Chairman?
Mr. Raskin. Please.
Mr. Sessions. Is there a what I would call an area of the
country, a federal area where they seemingly do process maybe
at a fair or equitable balance, where either by one of the U.S.
attorneys or however the administrative procedure? Is the
Federal Government good at some point where they do a better
job, where they take this seriously, as opposed to maybe
others? Is there a best practice area?
Mr. Raskin. The gentleman may answer the question.
Mr. Alban. There's not a specific region that's doing
better than another region. But I will say that a large number
of forfeitures are dropped between when the seizing agency
seizes it, the property owner files a claim, which requires it
to go to court.
That requires the seizing agency to transfer the case to
the U.S. attorney's office. And the U.S. attorney's office has
to then evaluate whether that case is worth pursuing as a civil
forfeiture. And it's at that point that there seems to be some
adult supervision. Some U.S. attorney's offices are better than
others. But some U.S. attorney's offices will look at those
seizures more closely and will, at times, decline to file a
forfeiture action, which ultimately means that the person's
property is returned.
Now that happens 7 or 8 months later----
Mr. Sessions. Right.
Mr. Alban [continuing]. But it's----
Mr. Sessions. Well, and I am sorry about, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for allowing me to ask that question, and I
appreciate our witnesses today of the information they brought
us.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Sessions. And I now recognize
the gentlelady from the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton, for
her five minutes of questioning.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
This is a very revealing and important hearing. We have
heard some of the specifics. I am interested in how asset
forfeiture disproportionately affects communities and
individuals of color, and that is what my questions will go to.
We have heard some of that about from Philadelphia, but we find
it in states all over the United States. Las Vegas, Oklahoma,
California--I am amazed at how widespread this is.
Ms. Ahmad, the ACLU of California found that more than 85
percent of equitable sharing payments in the state went to
police agencies serving majority-minority communities. Now that
is what interested me right there. What do you believe explains
the disproportionate impact of civil asset forfeiture on
communities of color?
Ms. Ahmad. Sure. Well, thank you for your question.
I will point out that that trend that you have honed in on
in California, as you indicated, around the country, in New
Jersey, the poorest counties are the ones that are most
targeted. That's not unusual at all. It's a common occurrence.
What accounts for that is concerns about racial bias in
policing. That's a problem throughout the system. The war on
drugs is really what is fueling the asset forfeiture process.
It is seen as a tool to fight the drug war. But many of the
tools that are used in the drug war have been unsuccessful and
ineffective, and they have a trend of disparately impacting
communities of color and also poor communities.
Ms. Norton. Well, if the high percentage of forfeitures
involving Black and Latino communities reflect excessive
targeting of those communities by law enforcement, how can we
hope to craft reforms--because that is what we are interested
in in this committee--that will reduce the disparate impact of
these practices?
Ms. Ahmad. We need oversight, and we need accountability,
and we need transparency.
Ms. Norton. Oversight at the state level or at the federal
level?
Ms. Ahmad. At the state and the federal level. Because
those numbers that you mentioned about California, those were
all federal dollars that were taken through the Equitable
Sharing Program, the Department of Justice's Equitable Sharing
Program, and sent to California agencies that were policing
communities of color.
So, at the federal level, first of all, there needs to be
reporting about the race of people, the race and ethnicity of
people who are subject to seizures. We need more information.
The information we have so far is from independent
investigations by organizations like the ACLU or journalists
like the Greenville News in South Carolina, who are collecting
this data.
So, we need that information, and Congress can mandate that
that information be reported. We also need information about
the effectiveness of these seizures. So, for example, in my
written testimony, I talk about a 2017 report from the
Inspector General's office at the DOJ that reviewed very
carefully a number of DEA seizures and found that the DEA--and
probably other federal agencies--does not track whether
seizures are related to a criminal investigation or
prosecution.
And the Inspector General, as I said earlier in my
statement, noted that when that happens, there is a question as
to whether this is really crime fighting or about seizing
assets. So, if we have that information and that transparency,
that would give Congress the ability to conduct that oversight.
We also need due process. So, right now, law enforcement is
the judge and the jury and the prosecutor when assets are
seized. Law enforcement gets to decide whether there's probable
cause to seize the asset in the first place, and then no one
else participates in the system. The property owner can't
participate in the system for many months.
There should be an opportunity to--sorry.
Ms. Norton. I have never heard of such a system in this
country. I did have one more question, though, for Professor
Rulli.
After Philadelphia--I am very interested in reform and
whether it can take place and what happens. After Philadelphia
reformed its civil asset forfeiture practices, did you see a
shift in how communities of color were targeted? Professor
Rulli?
Mr. Rulli. Well, there are many things that are happening,
many moving parts here. And this is a complex question, and I
thank you for that question.
First, let me just say that we cannot separate civil
forfeiture from criminal justice reform that's ongoing, and
there's a direct relationship here that we need to examine, and
we need the data, as has already been reported.
I'd also point out that in minority communities, many
families are unbanked or underbanked, meaning that they are
carrying cash because that is the way that they are able to
trans--you know, deal with the various needs that they may
have. And so the suspicion that the mere carrying of cash is
somehow illegal or related to drugs is a fundamental issue that
is targeted really in low-income and minority communities. We
have seen this throughout Pennsylvania, but particularly in our
urban centers like Philadelphia.
Now there have been reforms, but as you've already heard,
there were much more extensive reforms originally planned. I
testified in the Senate Judiciary Committee that would have
much more greatly revamped our state laws, but behind my
testimony was the testimony of elected district attorneys from
around the state that brought a very powerful lobby to really
diminish the reforms that could have taken place.
Nonetheless, we have had reforms. We have a new district
attorney who has greatly curtailed civil forfeiture. The press
has spotlighted the abuses of forfeiture and its impact on low-
income and minority communities. The Institute for Justice
brought litigation in collaboration with local folks that was
very successful.
Our Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued an excessive fines
decision that was critical, and we haven't talked about
excessive fines protection, but that's really another area that
is underutilized. And we've had, as I said, some changes to our
Pennsylvania law, like elevating the burden of proof to clear
and convincing evidence.
Ms. Norton. Thank you.
Mr. Rulli. So, all of those things are helping, but the
reality is that this is a problem largely in urban centers,
largely in low-income and minority communities.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you. The gentlelady's time has expired. I
now recognize Mr. Clyde for his five minutes of questioning.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Chairman Raskin and Ranking Member
Mace, for allowing me to join the subcommittee today to discuss
this issue that is very much a personal interest of mine,
making much-needed reforms to civil asset forfeiture
proceedings to protect the due process rights of individuals.
I say it is a personal interest because I, myself, was a
victim of civil asset forfeiture. I had my asset seized by the
Internal Revenue Service in 2013, over $940,000, without
warning and without ever being charged with a crime. And I
think we have heard that a lot today--without ever being
charged with a crime.
So, how on earth does the Internal Revenue Service or any
other government agency have the power to seize one's property
without charging a person with a crime? It should not. But the
IRS had been wrongfully confiscating money from individuals and
small business owners across the country through civil asset
forfeiture. Specifically, they were accusing people of
structuring their legally earned cash bank deposits, and that
is exactly what they did to me.
In my case, the Internal Revenue Service offered me a deal
to give back two-thirds of the $940,000 of my legally earned
money if I would forfeit one-third to them as a penalty. They
wanted me to voluntarily forfeit $325,000.
Even though they admitted in writing that all the money was
legally earned and properly reported, in writing. This was
nothing short of extortion, and I refused. They then threatened
me with criminal prosecution to get a civil monetary
settlement, which is a violation of legal ethics. And again, I
refused because I had done nothing wrong.
Long story short, I fought the Internal Revenue Service in
court and eventually had my money returned, but it cost me
$150,000. Unfortunately, too many Americans do not have the
ability or the resources to take on the government, especially
the Internal Revenue Service, and they wound up losing their
businesses and livelihoods.
But I couldn't stop there. So, I found myself on the
opposite side of this dais back in 2015. And there was a
gentleman from the Institute for Justice, Rob Johnson, that sat
right beside me testifying against the Internal Revenue Service
and their corrupt methods in a congressional hearing. My
testimony before Congress resulted in the introduction of and
the eventual enactment of the Clyde-Hirsch-Sowers RESPECT Act,
a bill that ensured individuals and small businesses were
protected from unlawful cash seizures by the Internal Revenue
Service over structuring.
Those protections were a great start, and I am thrilled to
be here to learn more about how we can further reform our civil
asset forfeiture laws so that we are protecting the due process
rights of all Americans from being trampled on by all federal
agencies, not just the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, I was
excited to learn about the chairman's bill when he introduced
it with Representative Walberg, the FAIR Act, and I
wholeheartedly support its goals and policies.
Civil asset forfeiture knows no partisan bounds, no ethnic
bounds, as no person is immune to it, none. We can and we must
do better, and so I wanted to use this opportunity to commend
the chair's work on this bill and for holding today's hearing
to shine a light on the perverse incentives of federal
forfeiture proceedings and the need to strengthen civil
liberties.
One aspect I am particularly interested in working on,
which the FAIR Act looks to do, is bolstering the reporting
requirements and data tracking of assets seized so that we can
know whether civil forfeiture is being applied fairly to all
citizens. In fact, Mr. Rulli brought up the very issue of the
need for more transparency in his submitted testimony, and I
find this important, Mr. Chairman, because eventually I would
like to see every individual wronged by civil asset forfeiture
abuses made whole again. And we must have a better reporting
system to make that happen, I believe.
So, Mr. Rulli, a question for you. Recognizing that we need
better data and reporting to right the wrongs moving forward,
is there an avenue by which we could simultaneously look to
retroactively right these wrongs?
While I was fortunate to get my assets back, too many
people have thrown up their hands and succumbed to the abuse.
They just want it to go away. That is all they want.
And I realize there is no silver bullet to achieve my
desired outcome, but is there any instrument you see that we
could--wherein we could help these individuals? Thank you.
Mr. Rulli. Thank you for that question and for your
testimony here, and it's so powerful.
And I would just add that so many of the clients we've had
were in similar situations where prosecutors said, well, we'll
give you 50 percent back, but we're keeping 50 percent. Really
extortion.
Mr. Clyde. Right.
Mr. Rulli. Even though there was no legal basis for the
taking of that property. And that's why transparency and data
is so important. We have to provide remedies for those whose
property has been taken, and we have to know exactly what is
happening.
I get calls all the time from reporters saying they're
having difficulty getting access to the data. That's certainly
at the state level, and that requires right to know requests,
Freedom of Information requests, great delay, great objections,
but without real basis.
And so, yes, I think the FAIR Act can take a major step
forward in providing requirements that are carefully tailored
to the abuses that we have seen so that we can get on top of
the information we need not only to prevent the future abuses,
but to determine who's been abused, who's had their property
wrongfully taken, and how we can provide a remedy for them.
This is a very important part of this legislation, and I
support it completely.
Mr. Raskin. All right.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If you may, I would
certainly appreciate the opportunity to work with you on that,
on that issue, if you----
Mr. Raskin. By all means. Thank you for raising that. Thank
you for your participation, Mr. Clyde. We welcome it, and we
thank you for your excellent and revealing comments today.
I was thinking about when you were talking about the
shakedown, the extortion of one third of your money when you
hadn't done anything wrong, and they were conceding it. St.
Augustine once said that government without justice becomes
just a band of robbers.
Mr. Clyde. That is right.
Mr. Raskin. And we don't want the police to be mimicking
the tactics of the worst thieves on the street. So, thank you
very much for your participation.
Come now to Ms. Tlaib for your five minutes of questioning.
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you so much, Chairman Raskin.
And I really appreciate, Ms. Harris, you helping put a
human face behind much of that is being discussed in this
committee and very, very important hearing.
You know, civil asset forfeiture has been a major issue in
my district. In 2017 alone, 400 of my residents without being
charged with a crime, like my colleague, lost their vehicles to
Wayne County's Operation Push-Off. They didn't have the kind of
resources that some of my colleagues have here. I mean, this is
life-changing for them.
The operation targeted disadvantaged communities, involved
officers stopping individuals and seizing vehicles if they
suspected, not proved, suspected that they have been involved
in a crime. I find it extremely outrageous. A vehicle can be a
lifeline for so many of my residents.
Individuals who wanted to challenge these forfeitures could
expect the process to take months or even years. Naturally,
they could also pay $900 ``settlement fee,'' basically, a
legalized bribe, in my view, for the return of their property.
And of course, all of the proceeds went straight to the police
department. If anyone else was doing this, it would be called
extortion.
The fact that there are studies now that show that civil
asset forfeiture does not significantly reduce crime or improve
policing capabilities in our country. A recent study by the
Institute for Justice that looked at data from five states,
including my own, found ``no evidence that forfeiture proceeds
helped police fight crime, whether in terms of solving more
crimes or reducing drug use.''
This table, Mr. Alban, from the report shows civil asset
forfeiture has no significant impact on drug use. Can you
quickly summarize this table and its meaning for my colleagues
on the effectiveness of civil asset forfeiture?
Mr. Alban. Sure. So, this study compared the data, federal
data on illicit drug use and specific categories of drug use,
including marijuana, nonmedical prescription drugs, cocaine,
and found there was no correlation between increases or
decreases in the use of civil forfeiture and increases or
decreases in drug use rates of the various categories depicted
in that table.
Ms. Tlaib. And the next table, if you look right here, the
next table shows the effect of forfeiture on crime clearances,
or the number of crimes solved by police. Can you briefly walk
us through this table and its meaning?
Mr. Alban. Sure. So, the top-level takeaway is that there
was no associated correlation between increases or decreases in
the use of civil forfeiture and on crime. However, there was an
inverse relationship between crime clearance rates and the use
of civil forfeiture.
And so what this table shows is that when you divert law
enforcement priorities to things like highway interdiction or
community interdiction programs, where you're stopping people
on the streets and taking away their money, instead of actually
solving violent crimes, you end up with lower crime clearance
rates, which should not be a goal.
Ms. Tlaib. Well, thank you for that.
Ms. Ahmad, I would like to conclude with your thoughts. On
this greater conversation, and it has been a conversation,
around policing in our country and reform, in your view, what
does the fact that increased revenues from civil asset
forfeiture don't actually improve crime rates or drug use tell
us about the need for civil forfeiture reform?
Ms. Ahmad. Thank you for the question.
Right. I agree. It tells us that there's a need for civil
asset forfeiture reform, that crime rates are not decreasing.
And again, it brings us back to this is about process. It's
about due process. It's about involving a judge in the process
so that there is a neutral arbiter. But it is also about
oversight. It is about accountability.
If a town in Georgia of 30,000 spends over $200,000 on an
armored truck based on using federal equitable sharing
proceeds, the question is, were stakeholders in the community
involved? This was all done behind a Black box, and it wasn't
learned of until after the purchase was made. Others in the
community may have wanted to spend that money differently.
So, if we can bring transparency to the process and if we
can remove the profit motive by directing proceeds to a general
fund that is controlled by a legislative body in a public and
open manner, that would make a tremendous difference.
Ms. Tlaib. Yes, and I think a lot of us, and that is
something very much my colleagues and I all agree about is
transparency. And so, again, thank you so much for being part
of this process.
And thank you again to Ms. Harris, who shared her story. I
think it is really important to remember that these are
families and folks behind all of these processes, and if we
don't get it right, it really is a life-altering change for
them.
Thank you so much, and I yield.
Mr. Raskin. Ms. Tlaib, thank you so much.
Ms. Pressley, if you are out there, you are recognized for
your five minutes? It looks like she had--oh, there you go. Ms.
Pressley?
Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Chairman Raskin, for convening
today's hearing.
Civil asset forfeiture laws have been weaponized by police
and prosecutors and disproportionately targeted against Black
and brown communities for far too long. These policies amount
to little more than legalized theft, and they are abused to
increase police budgets and to dole out bonuses. Without
reform, civil asset forfeiture laws will continue to exact hurt
and harm at the expense of innocent people all across our
country.
And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the state I call
home, is certainly no exception. In 2018, Massachusetts made
$36 million in revenue from civil asset forfeitures because it
had an extremely low standard for seizure. The state has little
transparency on who it is taking money and property from and
even less accountability to ensure wrongful seizures are
quickly returned.
Ms. Harris, unfortunately, you know this all too well. We
all appreciate your willingness to share your story on how your
car, your only possession during the time when you were living
in a shelter, was seized by the police and impounded for five
years. It breaks my heart to learn about the hardships and
trauma that you experienced. At the same time, my heart swells
at your resiliency and your ability, as Chairman Elijah
Cummings so often said, to turn your pain into purpose.
Ms. Harris, I want to give you an opportunity to share
anything about your experience that you would like to add to
your opening remarks, such as what was going through your mind
in real time when this happened.
Ms. Harris. I was alone--can you hear me?
Ms. Pressley. Yes.
Ms. Harris. OK. My voice gets low sometimes. And I just
felt like I didn't have any resources. I didn't have any money.
So, nobody wanted to talk to me.
And I just really thought that the car was just gone
because I see it all the time in my community. This is not
unusual, and everyone was just telling me that it's a loss,
it's a loss.
I was going through other things at the time, so I just
moved on to what was next, and that was--that was unemployment,
finding a place to live, you know, those things that were more
important. And like I said, I already just said, OK, that's
gone. Because this is what happens all the time where I live
at. It's not unusual, you know, for that to happen.
Ms. Pressley. And thank you for that. And if you can tell
us, what did it mean to have your car returned to you after you
had written it off as gone for more than five years? What was
that moment like, and in what ways did that change and improve
your life?
Ms. Harris. Well, it affected me because my son Trevice was
murdered. Being able to get that car back and to give it to his
oldest daughter who had just graduated high school and started
college was tremendous, and it left a legacy for Trevice for
his daughter to have something by him. So, it was tremendous.
It was uplifting.
And it shows not only Kenai, his daughter, but in our
community sometimes it's just like really hard to see that the
law works for us. And for that to come back and to get that
car, it let my granddaughters know that this system, we are
included in this system, and it does work when people treat us
fairly and work it.
Ms. Pressley. That is right.
Ms. Harris. So, she was--so she was able to see that the
law does work when somebody puts in the effort to make it
happen. So, and that was something that was big for us.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you. Well, you are modeling the fact
that the arc of justice has to be--we have to bend it. And so,
but I thank you so much for sharing your story. And although it
is one that is based in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the
policy violence of civil forfeiture is nationwide, as evidenced
by the testimony that we have heard here today.
Professor Rulli, as the director of a law school clinic
working on civil asset forfeiture, how does the loss of a home
or car or even a few hundred dollars affect the lives of your
clients?
Mr. Rulli. Thank you for that question.
It's devastating. It is so painful. It really just renders
family--it tears families apart. The thought of being put on
the street, most of our clients, their homes were all paid up.
Many of them were of elderly age and were facing difficult
health problems.
And to have this kind of pressure on them, the loss of
their home or of their cars, which they needed for medical
appointments, they needed for all kinds of things that were
critical to their well-being, just was inflicting enormous
pain. And to think that their own government was doing it to
them when they had done nothing wrong was----
Ms. Pressley. That is right. And Professor Rulli, to that
point, so this injustice that they experienced happened very
quickly, but the process to have their belongings returned to
them was much more slow. Could you just speak to that, just the
challenges of navigating that process in order to have one's
property returned?
Mr. Rulli. Yes. It is, as you've heard today, it's a very
complex process. It's a very lengthy process.
The example that I gave of the piggybank, for example,
which was just $91, but was really important, took us 12 court
appointments over more than a year just to get that money back
for that child.
The home forfeitures on average, I would say, lasted about
three years in the courts.
Ms. Pressley. Wow.
Mr. Rulli. So this--even those who succeeded, this was
weighing over their heads for that long period of time, and
that really is terrible.
Ms. Pressley. And just to get a sense of just how many
people that we are talking about who experience this thievery,
really, can you tell us roughly how many people whose property
gets seized through asset forfeiture have actually committed
any type of crime?
Mr. Raskin. The gentlelady's time has expired, but you may
answer that question.
Mr. Rulli. Well, our experience was that overwhelmingly,
actually, our clients were never accused or certainly not
convicted of any crime at all. Really, this is so much taking
based upon suspicion that's not proven in the courts.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much, Ms. Pressley, for your
questioning. Mr. Davis, you are recognized for your five
minutes now.
Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And a very informative
hearing, tremendous information and insights have been given.
You know, there are some who would argue that there have
been positive developments by the courts to rein in civil asset
forfeiture. Specifically, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Timbs
v. Indiana that the excessive fines clause of the Eighth
Amendment was applicable to state and local governments in the
context of asset forfeiture.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the state's
excessive fines clause should have applied to a case in which a
71-year-old woman's home was seized and taken because her son
allegedly sold $200 worth of marijuana from the property. The
Pennsylvania court provided guidance on how the excessive fines
clause should apply in cases such as this.
However, neither of these opinions created precedent that
would stop forfeitures from occurring at their outset. The onus
remains on property owners to challenge the seizures and retain
counsel that can help them navigate, as you just said a moment
ago, Professor, the complex processes.
Professor Rulli, you lead the University of Pennsylvania's
Law School Practice Clinic, and so I hope you can provide us
some direct insight into the Young decision. Since Young was
handed down, have jurisdictions across Pennsylvania reduced
their use of civil asset forfeits?
Mr. Rulli. Thank you for that question.
I wish I could say the answer was yes, but I can't. The
reality is that, again, the excessive fines clause protection
will only be of help if it's raised, if there's an opportunity
of counsel to be there and to provide the representation. And
the reality is that in so many of the cases, there is no
representation, and individuals facing forfeiture of their
property do not know to raise the various protections that do
exist under the Constitution.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision is a very important
decision, and I would hope that one day the U.S. Supreme Court
would adopt a much more protective framework for all citizens.
Mr. Davis. Are individuals contesting asset forfeiture able
to state in their claims that a seizure violates the excessive
fines clause, allowing for an expedited return of their
property?
Mr. Rulli. Yes. That exists as a result of this decision.
But in practice, it's not happening. Again, because without
legal help, people do not know that they have this available to
them. Prosecutors are not sharing this information with the
individuals from whom they're taking property.
And so the law can exist, but it doesn't help ordinary
people unless we are aware of it, unless we have the help that
we need to express those concerns, and so it then comes back to
due process. And so we've got a lot of work yet to do.
Mr. Davis. Thank you. Thank you very much.
So, the courts in Pennsylvania apply the excessive fines
clause on a case-by-case basis, and there are no expedited
processes that would allow laypersons to easily represent
themselves.
Mr. Alban, I imagine that this would hold true in the
federal context as well. Is that true?
Mr. Alban. That is correct, and the federal system is far
more complex than Pennsylvania's system because of the addition
of the administrative forfeiture procedures under federal law.
So, it's even more difficult for someone to represent
themselves in a federal forfeiture proceeding than under
Pennsylvania law.
Mr. Davis. Is there a role for courts to help prevent these
forfeitures from occurring in the first place?
Mr. Alban. Absolutely. There should be judicial review of
all forfeiture cases. Administrative forfeiture should not
exist in the first place, but if it does exist, property owners
should have the ability to appeal any ruling by an
administrative agency so that an actual Article III judge can
review the forfeiture and determine whether or not it's
legitimate.
Mr. Davis. Thank you. Thank you very much.
And Ms. Ahmad, if I could ask you a brief question?
Mr. Raskin. OK, yes. This will be your final question.
Thank you.
Mr. Davis. All right. How does this lack of guidance affect
the greater civil asset landscape, and what does it imply for
ongoing efforts at reform?
Ms. Ahmad. Thank you for the question.
Well, what it implies for ongoing efforts is that more
reform is needed at the federal level particularly. Violations
of CAFRA are occurring right now. A DHS report from last year
reports that a process, a negotiation process that feels like
extortion is going on, even as CAFRA is supposed to prevent
that kind of conduct, where agents are bypassing the judicial
process and not working with federal prosecutors to file a
claim and go to court and seize the asset.
Instead, they waive their own deadline. They don't talk to
the federal prosecutor, and they call up the property owner,
and they negotiate a settlement, not unlike Congressman Clyde's
case.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much. And Mr. Chairman, I yield
back.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much for your questioning, and I
turn now to the vice chair of the committee, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez,
for her five minutes of questioning. And thank you for your
patience.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you so much, Chair Raskin.
Yes, I believe that there are two things to understand from
our witness testimony today, and I want to thank our witnesses
who are here in person as well as those joining us digitally
for sharing their experiences and expertise today.
But you know, I think this is just simply an issue that
Americans, so many people in this country, cannot believe is
real. Civil forfeiture--Mr. Alban, civil forfeiture means that
the government, law enforcement, et cetera, is allowed to take
away your property, often your car or even your home, without
an arrest, without criminal charges, and without ever going to
court. Correct?
Mr. Alban. That is correct.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And as long as the police can claim that
they believe this property is in some way connected to a crime,
the seizure of one's property can just happen without any sort
of recourse in the immediate term. Correct?
Mr. Alban. That's absolutely true under the federal
process.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And then the police can sell your home
or sell this property and use the proceeds as revenues.
Correct?
Mr. Alban. After the property has been forfeited, yes.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Now, second, we know, Ms. Ahmad, that in
the United States our criminal system over targets the poor and
over targets people of color, particularly Black Americans.
Correct?
Ms. Ahmad. That's correct.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And it relies on the kind of
exploitation, the fact that so many people do not have the
ability or the resources to get adequate defense to allow this
to persist. But when we put these two things together, what we
get is a picture of what is happening now, that in the vast
majority of civil forfeiture cases, the government is driving
away cars, kicking people out of their homes for claimed
suspicion. But not even the person that has this property needs
to be connected to any of these crimes. This happens without
arrest, without criminal charges.
So, Professor Rulli, what you see in your practice
essentially is the combination of the inherent biases and,
frankly, institutional racism and classism of our criminal
system, combined with civil asset forfeiture means it is
disproportionately poor people, low-income people, and people
of color that are having their property seized without really
any proven cause. Correct?
Mr. Rulli. That is correct. And in fact, we map that in
Philadelphia. We actually use geo mapping to show that. You're
absolutely right.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you so much, Professor Rulli.
And we have one of those people with us here today, with
our witness, with Ms. Harris. Ms. Harris, the police, as you
mentioned in your testimony, drove your car away and for a
reason that you were not completely understood when it was
given to you. And they didn't even show you a single slip of
paper when they took your car away, right?
Ms. Harris. Correct.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. That is correct. And Ms. Harris, how
long did the government take to contact you with a notice after
they drove away with your car? You had mentioned it earlier.
Ms. Harris. Five years.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So, they took your car without a shred
of documentation, and they took five years to get back to you
about that?
Ms. Harris. Yes, right.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And when they got back to you about
that, how long did the government, after they took five years
of their time, their sweet time, how much time did they give
you to respond to their notice?
Ms. Harris. I believe it was between 25 and 21 days, and
that was what they gave me. And they put the wrong address on
there. So, by the time I got that paperwork, I actually had two
weeks.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So, any amount of things could have
happened. I mean, you could have moved. You could have had a
change of address. They took five years to get to you, and then
they gave you 21 days to respond to an enormous asset that they
had seized that's absolutely devastating to just lose
overnight. That's what happened?
Ms. Harris. Yes, correct.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And initially, you weren't even going to
pursue recourse because the legal fees associated with getting
your car back, before pro bono help was extended to you, you
were just going to take it as a loss. Is that correct?
Ms. Harris. Yes.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. See, you know, and Chair Raskin, this is
the thing that it gets down to is the fact that, increasingly,
so many of our communities, including the Bronx and Queens that
I represent, do not believe and are increasingly not believing
that we have a justice system in the United States. That this
is just a punishment system that we have, a criminal system
that does not even really center the actual justice of their
innocence and actually give them benefit of the doubt.
We have a system that does not presume innocence until one
is proven guilty unless you are wealthy or privileged in this
country. And that is what we are here to really address. So, I
thank you for calling the hearing, and I greatly look forward
to our continuing work on this matter.
Mr. Raskin. And thank you very much to the vice chair for
her insightful questioning.
I am going to ask the ranking member, Ms. Mace, for any
closing remarks or thoughts she has before I offer my own.
Ms. Mace. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to thank you for having this hearing today,
having worked on it, like you, as a state lawmaker and coming
to Congress. And then seeing, when we bring together members of
the Squad and the Freedom Caucus, and we are all working
together on the same issue is quite the feat, and it is past
time that we work together. It is quite an achievement and
shows that this is necessary, very much needed, past time to
work together on this.
Because there is something really wrong with this issue,
and Congress is finally doing something about it. So, thank you
for this great step in having and hosting this hearing.
And I want to thank everyone who participated and Ms.
Harris for sharing her personal story. Congressman Clyde, my
colleague, for being so insightful in your story as well. I
want to thank everyone for making the effort to be here and let
us do something about it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Raskin. And Ms. Mace, thank you so much for your
wonderful participation in this hearing and this issue.
Before I make a closing remark, I just want to ask
unanimous consent to enter into the record two Institute for
Justice reports, ``Policing for Profit'' and ``Does Forfeiture
Work?''
And without objection, an ACLU policy brief, ``Profiting
from California's Most Vulnerable.''
Without objection, a Center for American Progress report,
``Forfeiting the American Dream.''
Without objection, and a letter signed by 16 different
nonprofit groups supporting federal civil asset forfeiture
reforms, dated March 15, 2015.
All of these will be entered into the record.
Mr. Raskin. I just want to close with a few thoughts about
the fundamental importance of this hearing. I often think that
the two most beautiful words in the English language, certainly
in the law, but perhaps in the English language are ``due
process'' because all of us have had the experience and know
the indignity and the injustice of being wrongly accused of
something and then having something taken away from us because
of that.
And that is what due process is all about. We have got, in
the civil asset forfeiture system, a whole apparatus and
bureaucracy of government that inverts the general principles
of due process. The basic idea is that we are all presumed
innocent. In America, we are presumed innocent unless the
government can actually show probable cause and make a case
against us, sustaining its burden of proving beyond a
reasonable doubt that we have committed a crime.
But other than that, we are presumed to be innocent. And
yet what is happening and what we have heard from Ms. Harris
and the stories that we have heard from around the country are
of people having their property taken away from them, whether
it is their life savings that they happen to have in their
pocket because they are going to purchase a car or going to put
a down payment on a house. It could be a car itself in lots of
these cases. It could even be an apartment or a condo. It could
be a bank account, as in the case of Mr. Clyde.
All of that is happening without people being charged with
a crime. In many cases, without being accused of a crime.
Certainly without being convicted of a crime, without being
sentenced to a crime. But their property has been taken away.
And at that point, the whole system of due process is
thrown out, and now you need to go out and hire a lawyer, if
you can afford one, as Ms. Harris underscores. If you can
afford one, you have got to go find a lawyer to go and sue the
government and prove that you are innocent. Your property is
innocent. Or if you are not innocent, there is no nexus between
you and the property, but even that connection seems to be
thrown out the window because the assumption is if there is
some cloud over you, then your property is definitely guilty,
and the government is going to keep it. And that is wrong.
So, we have got a serious problem here, and it is something
that affects every citizen. Whether you are a wealthy
businessman in Georgia with $1 million in the bank or you are a
homeless person in Springfield, Massachusetts, who has to her
name only a car, you can be affected by this totally arbitrary
inversion of due process.
And it is also true, as I think has been shown by several
witnesses today, that in the absence of constitutional due
process, then all of the background inequalities of our society
and the background injuries of race and class come to bear
because some people are able to fend for themselves if they can
afford a lawyer or if they have got the benefit of the
Institute for Justice or the Goldwater Center. But without it,
if you don't have the means to do it, then you are really at
the mercy of a rather merciless system, as the Institute for
Justice has documented in this excellent poster, which
demonstrates the byzantine complexity of this Orwellian and
Kafkaesque system that has grown up.
So, that is a real problem, and we didn't even really get
into the corruption of the government and law enforcement
agencies and bureaucratic departments themselves. I mean, it
has been mentioned several times, but it is almost worth a
hearing of its own. What does it do when the government
agencies are told you can keep either 100 percent or a large
part of the proceeds that you seize from people?
Well, you start focusing on one side of the street, as Mr.
Alban says, and not on the other side of the street. You are
looking for the money. You are not necessarily looking for the
drugs.
And I do think that this whole problem has clearly been
exacerbated by the war on drugs because it is such a cash-
intensive business. There is so much money out there to be
seized, and this is another way in which the war on drugs is
eroding the basic civil liberties infrastructure of our
constitutional system.
So, we have got to clean this up. I mean, part of me says
we should just get rid of the whole thing and say the
government can't take anybody's property until they have
actually arrested you, indicted you, prosecuted you, convicted
you, and then they can take your stuff from you.
But the legislation, which Congressman Walberg and I have
been working on--and he has been such a powerful intellectual
force in this field--this legislation doesn't go that far. This
legislation should be able to be agreed to by everybody across
the spectrum, whether you want to see things through the eyes
of law enforcement or you want to see things through the eyes
of somebody who has been the victim of one of these
forfeitures.
What it does is it says we are going to shift the burden of
proof back onto the government. The government has got to prove
by clear and convincing evidence that your property is guilty
in connection with a crime, either the proceeds of the crime or
an instrument of making the crime happen, rather than your
having to go and prove that it is innocent. We want to increase
transparency around the whole process, and we want to
dramatically restrict the use of equitable sharing agreements
between DOJ and local and state law enforcement.
I hope this is something that we can move in this session
of Congress, that we can get it done on a bipartisan basis. I
urge all of my colleagues on the committee and beyond who are
watching to join us in H.R. 2857.
I want to thank the vice chair for her eloquent remarks and
the ranking member for her wonderful participation today.
Mr. Clyde, thank you for joining us and hanging with the
subcommittee, and I want to thank everybody on the subcommittee
for their focus on this.
And our witnesses have been wonderful today. Thank you all,
and we are determined to get this done.
You will have I think it is five days--one second. Yes. All
members will have five days within which to submit additional
written questions for the witnesses, and we will forward them
to you. And we are also available for any additional materials
that you want to send us. And we ask our witnesses to please
respond as promptly as you can to any further questions that
are sent to you.
Without any further business, this hearing is adjourned,
and thank you all for participating in it.
[Whereupon, at 12:12 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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