USA TODAY US Edition

In America, the conviction comes before the punishment

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In America you’re innocent until proven guilty, and the Constituti­on provides protection­s, for instance, the right to a lawyer and a speedy trial, to ensure that you can’t be unfairly punished.

But forget all that if state or local police “suspect” that your cash, car or even your home might have somehow been involved in a crime. In that case, they can grab the loot and keep most of it to benefit their own department­s without going to court.

You can try to get your property back, but the burden is on the victim of a seizure to prove that it was not derived from a crime.

This federal program was curtailed in 2015 by the Obama administra­tion. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reviving it. He calls it a “key tool that helps law enforcemen­t defund organized crime (and) take back illgotten gains .” Not so fast. Legally seizing assets as evidence in a prosecutio­n and keeping them after a conviction is fully justified, but civil asset forfeiture, expanded in the 1970s as a tool in the war on drugs, has become unmoored from its original intent to take the profit out of crime. Local police, in a sharing program with the Justice Department, often use it against ordinary citizens who happen to be carrying cash that police find suspicious.

Its victims — many of whom are never charged, let alone convicted of any crime — have included hapless drivers carrying cash to renovate a house, buy a used car or pay for dental work. Police often grab their cars, too, leaving them stranded.

Ming Tong Liu, a Chinese-born American, was driving to Louisiana to buy a restaurant when he was stopped and ticketed for speeding in Alabama. When police found $75,195 in cash in his car, they brought in a drug-sniffing dog, which “alerted” on the cash. Though no drugs were found and no charges filed, police seized the money. It took Liu 10 months and two lawyers to get back his family’s savings.

Many people do not have the wherewitha­l to retain an attorney and go to court. Often the amounts are so small, fighting costs more than giving in.

But that money adds up: From 2000 to 2013, state and local police took in $4.7 billion from the Justice Department program.

Fourteen states have recognized the unfairness and now require a criminal conviction before someone’s assets can be taken. But Sessions’ restart of the sharing program allows police in states with tough laws to get around them. Supporters of the program point to “safeguards” that Sessions has added. The problem is, a few new directives can’t fix a program that turns the justice system upside down.

Ending this program is no dewy-eyed liberal cause. In March, conservati­ve Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the system “has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses,” adding that seizures “frequently target the poor and (those) least able to defend their interests.”

The nation’s top law enforcemen­t officer has no business championin­g a program that allows police to victimize citizens for the benefit of their own agencies. That’s not law enforcemen­t. It’s bounty hunting. The program, virtually killed off in 2015, should remain buried.

 ??  ?? Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday. ANDREW HARNIK, AP
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday. ANDREW HARNIK, AP

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