Wayne County’s asset forfeiture problem

The Detroit News has the second installment up of their series on the abuse of asset forfeiture laws by law enforcement and it contains another alarming statement from a law enforcement official, this time Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy. The article recounts this story of a woman who had her car seized on the false allegation that she was engaging in prostitution:

The way Krista Vaughn sees it, Wayne County fined her $1,400 even though police and prosecutors admit she broke no laws.

Vaughn, who has no criminal record, was required to pay for the return of her car, which was seized by police after they mistook Vaughn’s co-worker for a prostitute. Even though prosecutors later dropped the case, Vaughn still had to pay…

Vaughn, who works in an American Red Cross supply warehouse, dropped off her co-worker, Amanda Odom, at a Detroit bank the afternoon of Feb. 11, 2004. Both women were still wearing their Red Cross badges.

Officers from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Morality Unit accused Odom of solicitation after they saw her make eye contact with passing motorists while waiting for Vaughn to pick her up from the bank. On the strength of that observation, officers ticketed Odom and seized Vaughn’s 2002 Chrysler Sebring.

“We obviously weren’t doing anything wrong, but the cops wouldn’t listen,” Vaughn said.

The charges against Odom were eventually dropped, but Vaughn still was out $900, the usual fee prosecutors require to return seized vehicles. She also had to pay another $500 in towing and storage fees, because it was several days before she could raise the money to get her car back — plus another $400 to repair an oil pan she said was damaged when her car was towed.

And this is Worthy’s response to questions about it:

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy declined to be interviewed, but issued a written statement.

“If people are soliciting prostitutes, selling drugs or otherwise profiting from criminal activity, as prosecutors we have the right under the law to forfeit property,” Worthy wrote.

But that rather obviously ignores the point. Vaughan was not engaged in any criminal activity. Worthy’s office dropped the charges against her. But despite having never convicted her of anything, Vaughan was forced to pay $1,400 to get back a vehicle that should never have been seized in the first place.

Even when someone has committed a crime and been convicted of it, such forfeitures can be unjust. Perhaps the most famous court decision on this issue was a 1996 case from Royal Oak, Michigan. A man named John Bennis was arrested for soliciting prostitution and his vehicle was seized. The man’s wife, Tina Bennis, had purchased the car with money she had saved from babysitting but both their names were on the title. She used the car to transport their five children to school every day and had no knowledge of her husband’s activities until he was arrested; in fact, she divorced him after the arrest. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against her and said she has no right to the vehicle even though she had done nothing wrong.

So even when someone is actually convicted of a crime, seizing an asset can have a clearly unjust result. Seizing property without ever convicting someone of a crime can never be a just and fair result.