Asset forfeiture is legalized plunder

Indiana police using legal loophole to steal without cause

 

If you’re sending your packages via FedEx, beware. The State of Indiana could be seizing them without any warrant or probable cause.

According to a lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice, police have been seizing FedEx packages containing cash, and then taking the cash under civil asset forfeiture.

Civil asset forfeiture is a process by which police can take anything suspected of being involved in a crime without a warrant or conviction, and then keep the loot for themselves.

In this case, it’s happening at the nation’s second-largest FedEx hub, located at the Indianapolis International Airport. Police dogs sniff packages and flag those expected to contain cash. Officers then remove the tape, rummage through the package and take the cash for themselves if they find any. Ostensibly, the police can do so because they perceive the cash is connected with a crime, even if no actual crime is identified.

This isn’t crime fighting. It’s an actual crime – a blatant, naked theft carried out by uniformed officers.

Indiana law requires any assets seized in a civil forfeiture case to go directly to the school fund – likely to mitigate the moral hazard and incentive to steal citizens’ assets – but little money is actually going to that fund. Instead, police departments are keeping it for themselves, and a 2019 Indiana Supreme Court case upheld that, allowing police, prosecutors or private lawyers contracted to carry out the cases to keep a minimum of 90%.

Indiana, by the way, is the only state that allows prosecutors to contract out asset forfeiture cases to private attorneys, who then can get a cut of the proceeds.

In 2023, $6.6 million was stolen by the police in asset forfeiture. Of that, only 5% went into the school fund, but 30% went to prosecutors and attorneys and 64% to law enforcement agencies.

In this particular case, California jewelers Henry and Minh Cheng made a $42,825 bulk sale to a retail customer in Virginia, which was paid for in cash. However, the package containing the cash was routed through Indianapolis, where the K-9s flagged it, the officers seized it and Marion County stole the money.

Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears has still not identified a crime that was committed, but he has begun forfeiture proceedings to allow his office and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department to keep the cash.

Often, the reason civil asset forfeiture is justified is because large amounts of cash are sometimes used to buy drugs, so therefore, anyone carrying or mailing cash is automatically suspected of being involved in the drug trade, and thus involved in a crime.

However, people carry and transfer cash for a number of reasons that would never be involved in crime. In this case, it was carrying out a legitimate business transaction, for which Cheng has a bill of sale to prove it.

The Chengs are suing Mears and the State of Indiana to get their rightful payment back. It is not a crime to sell jewelry, and it is not a crime to use cash – where “this is legal tender for all debts, private and public” is clearly written on each bill – to pay for a purchase.

When their assets are tangled up in forfeiture proceedings, the burden of proof is often on the citizen to obtain their money. However, that is extremely difficult, because the assets themselves – inanimate objects – are listed as the defendants, and such cases often tie the money up in long and challenging legal proceedings.

Not only should the Chengs prevail, the Indiana General Assembly should put an end to the heinous practice of civil asset forfeiture, especially in cases where there is no conviction recorded.

As powerful agents of the state, the job of the police is supposed to be to “protect and serve,” not to abuse their office to pilfer and plunder.

In Liberty,

Evan McMahon, Chair
Libertarian Party of Indiana

(click the image below to watch The Federalist Society’s video – Civil Asset Forfeiture: An Overview & Conversation [POLICYbrief])