Seizure debate a wrap, cash owner undecided

Money’s drug tie a question for judge

Who owns $43,069 confiscated from a North Carolina man stopped for speeding last year in Arkansas?

That’s the question Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox said he’ll have to study further after a trial Monday.

Deputy prosecutor Jason Ables argued that the seized money should be considered drug trafficking proceeds and turned over to the state, as asset forfeiture laws allow.

David Cannon, an attorney representing the man who had the money, argued that the state has no proof that the money came from drug dealing.

“We’re talking about due process and property rights,” Fox said during the trial. “Does the state have the right to [force] forfeit of the money?”

The circumstances of how the Arkansas State Police Highway Patrol division confiscated the money should govern whether it’s awarded to authorities or returned to its owner, both lawyers told the judge.

The money, in more than 42 rubber-band-wrapped bundles, was found in Elias Cardenas’ car along with a bottle containing 9 grams, about a third of an ounce, of marijuana and a handgun.

Cannon told the judge the state can’t claim the money because the only evidence of contraband in the car was the marijuana, which was not enough to make its possession a felony.

Arkansas asset forfeiture law allows authorities to force drug dealers to give up the money and property they’ve obtained through illegal activity, regardless of whether they’ve been convicted of a crime.

But the law, Arkansas Code 5-64-505, bars police from keeping that money or property if they can’t prove that the items in question came from a felony drug-dealing offense.

Marijuana possession typically does not become a felony until it involves at least 4 ounces, much more than

police found on his client, Cannon told the judge.

Cardenas, 25, of Mebane, N.C., was charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession and theft by receiving a stolen firearm, a felony, but prosecutors dropped those charges last week after police failed to bring the evidence to court.

Asked about that Monday, the state trooper who stopped Cardenas disputed a claim that the contraband had been misplaced.

Sgt Eric Agee testified that he wasn’t told he had to bring it to the courthouse last week and that by the time police got it to the courthouse, prosecutors had dropped the case.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to have it until about 15 minutes before I was supposed to testify,” Agee told the judge.

Agee said he stopped the car in September 2015 on Interstate 40 near the Faulkner County line after seeing the eastbound vehicle driving at what he estimated to be 100 mph. His radar showed the car moving at 99 mph.

Agee said he saw an open beer in the car and field sobriety tests showed that Cardenas was impaired but not enough to be charged with drunken driving.

Instead, Agee said he arrested Cardenas for reckless driving and found the money in a backpack in the car’s

trunk. Backup officers discovered the marijuana and the pistol, he testified.

Ables, the prosecutor, told the judge that the evidence shows the money comes from drug dealing, particularly since the gun was possibly stolen.

“We believe this is an issue of trafficking, which is exactly what the [forfeiture] statute is for,” Ables said.

Arkansas law does classify the possession of drugs and firearms together, a Class Y felony, as a trafficking offense, Ables said.

But Cannon questioned how authorities could claim the money’s owner could be considered to be drug trafficking when the man was never charged with that offense.

Cannon also told the judge that prosecutors couldn’t provide sufficient proof that the gun had been stolen.

Ables would not concede a complete absence of proof, but he did acknowledge having difficulty locating the man who’d reported the gun stolen in North Carolina.

Testifying Monday were the trooper who found the money and the narcotics agent who examined the cash and investigated its owner.

Officer Mike Brooks, a North Little Rock police officer assigned to the local federal drug task force, told the judge that Cardenas declined to be interviewed but did tell him that, “the money, gun and drugs were his, and his friend

[the passenger] had nothing to do with it.”

Brooks, citing training he’s received to investigate money laundering and drug dealing, said the style of bundling, the presence of a gun in the car, and the fact that the car was registered and insured a week before the traffic stop were “common indicators” of drug dealing.

Most of the money was found in 42 $1,000 bundles, Brooks testified, telling the judge that drug dealers regularly package their money to make it easy to count and simplify transactions. They’re also known to have weapons to protect their money and use cars with no obvious connections to them, he told the judge.

Cardenas wasn’t at Monday’s trial over the money because of car trouble, Cannon said.

But the lawyer offered Fox a much less sinister scenario than the one presented by authorities, based on the evidence.

Cannon said what was likely was a case in which two young men road-tripping from North Carolina to California had been stopped by police just after they’d smoked some marijuana. The gun could be for self defense and the cash going to pay their expenses, he said.

“There’s nothing to show this was anything more than someone traveling with a large amount of cash,” he told the judge.