Senate OKS seizure law reforms

A bill passed by the Senate last week would make it harder for police to seize and keep cash and other property they suspect is related to the drug trade.

The update comes after a civil rights committee blasted the Bay State’s laws as woefully out of date.

“The civil forfeiture laws in Massachusetts are some of the most outdated in the country with some statutes dating back over 230 years,” the Massachusetts Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said in a memo backing the bill. “The Commonwealth holds the distinction as having the lowest burden of proof of any state for police and prosecutors to confiscate the property of individuals.”

Current law allows the police and prosecutors to seize property and cash they allege has been involved in a crime. The burden of proof for seizure under current law is probable cause. And once that property has been seized, a person is forced to prove it was obtained lawfully.

The practice has been criticized for incentivizing departments to seize cash and property.

The Committee noted that “law enforcement agencies keep up to 100 percent of asset forfeiture proceeds. In certain instances, civil forfeiture funds allow local police departments to purchase equipment without approval from the public, circumventing disclosure.”

The Senate bill passed last week would increase the burden of proof, only allowing for seizures when the goods can be shown as ill-gotten gains by a preponderance of evidence.

The bill also allows access to state-appointed lawyers for people to try to reclaim their property in forfeiture proceedings.

“Under current Massachusetts law, individuals who believe that their possessions were wrongly forfeited are required to demonstrate that these items were not involved in a crime or otherwise do not meet the standard required for forfeiture.

This puts the burden of proof on the accused, rather than on law enforcement or prosecutors, making it difficult and time-consuming to repossess forfeited items,” Senate President Karen

Spilka’s office said after the bill passed Thursday.

“( The bill) rectifies this by requiring that law enforcement or prosecutors prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that property seized is in fact subject to civil asset forfeiture under Massachusetts law,” they said.

Hampden District Attor

ney Anthony Gulluni criticized the change, saying said the bill ignores the impact of crime on communities. “This bill affords no respect to those who have lost a loved one to drug addiction, no respect to our neighborhoods and communities fighting against drug dealers, no respect to law enforcement who’s work

ing every day to hold dealers and traffickers accountable, and no respect to the taxpaying citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” he said.

The bill now awaits action in the House where it joins a host of other acts lined up for passage before the end of their two-year session on July 31.