On The Front Lines
Relying on Red Tape and Technicalities, Police Use Asset Forfeiture to Keep Thousands of Dollars in Cash From Innocent Owners
WASHINGTON, DC — The Rutherford Institute is pushing back against efforts by police to use red tape and technicalities as a means of keeping thousands of dollars in cash seized under asset forfeiture schemes from innocent property owners.
In an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in Sanchez v. United States, The Rutherford Institute and the Manhattan Institute are challenging the government’s use of cumbersome paperwork, “labyrinthine” bureaucratic processes and a profit-driven forfeiture system as the means by which innocent property owners are being robbed of thousands of dollars in cash and other valuables. In acknowledging that asset forfeiture has become a means of policing for profit, Supreme Court justices have noted that some law enforcement agencies reportedly place special emphasis on seizing low-value items and relatively small amounts of cash in the hopes that their actions will not be contested because the cost of litigating would be more than the value of the property itself.
“Americans no longer have to be guilty to be stripped of their property, rights and liberties,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “You just have to possess something the government wants.”
In Sanchez v. United States, law enforcement officials seized $9,000 in cash, which the government was subsequently allowed to keep through asset forfeiture after the courts dismissed the claims of innocent owners based on a minor procedural technicality for not signing the correct page of a timely filed petition to recover the money. The case began in 2021, when Carlos Cancari was entrusted with delivering a $9,000 cash payment for electronics to Luis Sanchez, whose company had sold merchandise to Jaqueline Palacios, the owner of an electronics company in Bolivia. Unbeknownst to Sanchez and Palacios, Cancari was also in possession of narcotics. Although the $9,000 cash payment for electronics was unrelated to Cancari’s drug offenses, when Cancari arrived at the Miami airport, he was arrested for possessing narcotics and law enforcement seized the cash, which Cancari told the officers belonged to Luis Sanchez.
At his criminal trial, Cancari did not contest forfeiture of the cash because it was not his. The government posted and sent notice of the pending forfeiture. Sanchez and Palacios jointly petitioned the district court for the cash, explaining that the money had no relationship with Cancari’s drug offenses. The petition was signed by their attorney and included affidavits personally signed by Sanchez and Palacios. Despite this, the government, the district court, and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals claimed that the petition was not properly signed, refused to allow an amendment, and dismissed the property owners’ claims to the money. This permitted the government to keep the money without having to prove that the owners were not connected with or knowledgeable of Cancari’s drug offenses. In weighing in on the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, the legal coalition is hoping the court will use the opportunity to rectify what some justices have characterized as a “booming business” with “labyrinthine processes” set up by the government in hopes that innocent owners will abandon attempts at recovering their property.
Benjamin C. Block, Jack G. Lund, Thea McCullough, Eli Nachmany, and Ethan C. Treacy of Covington & Burling LLP helped advance the arguments in the amicus brief.
The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, defends individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
