Each year since 1985, federal, state, and local law enforcement officers have seized property from nearly 100,000 Americans. Many of that number are never arrested. Most are never convicted of any crime. Yet their property--including cash, jewelry, automobiles, boats, planes, and real estate--is seized and later sold at auction for being tainted by criminal activity. The program is a prime example of good legal intentions gone bad. Kathy Schrama's seizure nightmare began on a Friday afternoon two weeks before Christmas in 1990. The Sussex, New Jersey housewife answered her doorbell to find three local police officers on her front porch. "I assumed that something was up in the neighborhood and that they were going to everyone's door," she says.
Schrama was wrong. In less than half an hour she was on her way to the police station in handcuffs, under arrest for suspicion of theft. Her 10-year-old son, Michael, too young to stay alone, was brought to the station in a separate car. And when her husband, Mark, returned home from work, he too was placed under arrest, on suspicion of receiving stolen goods. It would take 24 hours before Mark's mother was able to put up her house as collateral and for the couple to be released.
Other than the high bail requirements set for first-time nonviolent offenders--$35,000 for her, $25,000 for him--there was nothing out of the ordinary about the arrests. Schrama, later diagnosed as having an impulsive control disorder brought on by depression, had in fact stolen several UPS packages--with a total value estimated at $500--from neighbors' porches.
But the case took a bizarre turn when on the following morning, with local television crews present, the police returned to the home and removed its contents. While awaiting bail, the Schramas were informed that their house, personal effects, and automobiles had been seized by the state and that if they attempted to return to their home they would be arrested for trespassing.
The Schramas had gotten caught up in the asset forfeiture program, a series of laws and statutes designed to take the profit out of criminal activity--particularly the drug trade--by permitting the confiscation of property even tenuously connected with a crime. A recent decision by the Supreme Court and the introduction of a bill to curb forfeiture have brought the program under fire. Opponents of asset forfeiture argue that it circumvents the Bill of Rights and that it has opened the door to a kind of legal corruption and citizen blackmail never before seen in the United States.
A CRIME-FIGHTING WEAPON
According to a 1991 report from former
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