At least 8 lawmakers — seven Republicans and one Democrat — are pushing bills to reform civil forfeiture laws in the state of Indiana. These are valiant efforts because civil forfeiture laws need to be reformed because it gives law enforcement too much power.
With these 8 bills in the works, and possibly more to come during Indiana’s current legislative session, 2017 may be the year we see reform.
Civil forfeiture in Indiana, and in general, is the legal process of law enforcement officers seizing assets of people who are suspected of committing a crime or other illegal activity.
While civil forfeiture has benefits, such as allowing police to seize counterfeit money; shut down drug houses that present a constant problem to a city; or seize criminal instruments, such as boats smuggling undocumented immigrants or drugs across the border, it is a drastically flawed process.
The main issue with civil forfeiture is more often than not law enforcement officers do not have to convict anyone to seize their assets. Instead of needing conviction, 31 states across the nation, Indiana included, require only something called preponderance of the evidence as a standard of proof.
All police must show is that the assets seized are more likely than not connected to Illegal activity. This may seem like a good enough standard at first glance, but only because of vague wording.
Another way to consider the term “more likely than not” is to say that the evidence must only be a slight amount more than 50-50 in favor of the government than the person who had their assets seized. This is a spit in the face to the American people and the United States legal system.
The legal system most commonly uses a standard which requires the evidence sufficient to convict someone be beyond a reasonable doubt of guilt. Standards like these are in place so the innocent do not get persecuted, but civil forfeiture laws are void of this level of carefulness.
This lacking standard of proof leads to unfair scenarios for American citizens across the country. In Indiana, specifically, a women whose son was arrested on drug charges had her personal bank account frozen, and police even went as far as to attempt to seize her home. While these issues were resolved, the woman was still put through legal hassle and almost lost her property for no good reason.
Not only are the ethics behind Indiana’s civil forfeiture laws’ standard of proof shady, but the way asset values are distributed after seizure in Indiana may violate the state constitution.
There is an open case in the Marion County Superior Court that claims financial gains from seized assets are not being spent how they should. Per the Indiana Constitution all forfeiture is to go to schools, but that supposedly is not the case in Marion County.
According to the two-people leading the case against Marion County, law enforcement officers are taking a portion of the seized assets and giving the remainder to schools. If true, this would be unconstitutional, and show another reason why civil forfeiture reform is needed in Indiana.
I hope Indiana sees civil forfeiture reform in 2017. If not in 2017, then citizens of Indiana need to continue to fight for reform against this unfair, un-American and maybe even unconstitutional process.
sareynol@umail.iu.edu
