Bill would radically reform civil asset forfeiture

Criminal conviction would be necessary

Civil asset forfeiture law, seen as an effective crime-fighting tool by some but a mechanism for civil rights abuse by others, faces radical reform in Wisconsin under a bipartisan legislative proposal in Madison.

Hartland Police Chief Robert Rosch, president of the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association, said it opposes the bill in its current form and will track it closely through the legislative process.

Civil asset forfeitures gained traction in the 1980s when law enforcement agencies used the law to go after the fruits and tools of organized drug traffickers. Laws allowed agencies to seize all kinds of property, from commercial real estate to boats and jewelry, that they believed was used in crimes or obtained with crime proceeds. In many Florida counties, the sheriff would drive around in a luxury car marked, “This car was seized from a drug dealer.”

But well-publicized abuses of the process led to a long-running reform movement among lawmakers on both the federal and state levels.

Asset forfeiture turns the common concept of due process on its head: Police can seize property even when its owner is not even charged, much less convicted of, a crime police suspect is related to the property. Then the burden falls on the owner to prove the belongings are not criminally tainted.

“Civil asset forfeiture reform is an important step to ensure that no person is, ‘deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law’ as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment,” said Sen. Dave Craig, (R-Town of Vernon), chief sponsor of the bill.

“Criminal justice policy should focus on punishing the convicted, not raising revenue. Our bill accomplishes that.”

Craig is joined by Sens. Stephen Nass (R-Whitewater) and Robert Wirch (D-Kenosha) along with Assembly members Gary Tauchen (R-Bonduel), Adam Jarchow (R-Balsam Lake) and Frederick Kessler (D-Milwaukee). They are circulating the bill for co-sponsorship.

The bill would alter some fundamental aspects of current asset forfeiture practice. For one, forfeitures would have to be tied to a criminal conviction, and even then, the forfeiture would have to be proportional to the offense, meaning, for example, a semitrailer truck couldn’t be taken because the driver had sold a personal amount of marijuana to another driver inside the cab.

Proceeds to schools

Another key change: All proceeds from forfeitures would go to Wisconsin’s schools fund. Now, law enforcement agencies can keep various portions, which critics say serves as an incentive to abuse the process.

Craig’s group says many of the bill’s reforms would track those introduced by U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) last year in something he calls The DUE PROCESS Act. Among other things, it would offer property owners the chance to contest seizures and regain illegally seized property immediately.

It also would increase the amount of notice given to owners and make it easier for them to be heard by a judge while raising the burden of proof that the government must meet to seize suspect property. Currently, prosecutors must only show a criminal connection by a preponderance of the evidence, a much lower standard than in a criminal case.

Wisconsin actually fared pretty well among all states in a 2015 study of civil asset forfeiture by the Institute for Justice, earning a B grade, just one of five in the nation. Only one state got an A — New Mexico, because it did away with civil asset forfeiture entirely.