Weekend Read: Civil asset forfeiture — guilty until proven innocent
Jamey Vibbert had owned his car dealership in Dothan, Alabama, for over a decade when authorities seized $25,000 from one of his bank accounts.
One of Vibbert’s customers had allegedly used illegal drug profits to buy two cars from him. A prosecutor later told the local newspaper that Vibbert, by extension, had committed something “kind of akin to money laundering because you know you’re taking dirty money.”
Vibbert said he knew no such thing, but authorities indicted him on title fraud and seized the money he received for the vehicles. When he went to trial, a judge was quick to find Vibbert innocent of any wrongdoing. But his troubles were far from over: Prosecutors wouldn’t return his money.
That’s because they had seized it through civil asset forfeiture, a process that lets law enforcement take and keep property even if its owner — such as Vibbert — wasn’t convicted of a crime.
This week, the SPLC and Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice released a joint report called Forfeiting Your Rights, which examines 1,100 cases of civil asset forfeiture in Alabama in 2015. Its findings paint a disturbing picture:
A legal process once intended to strip illicit profits from drug kingpins has since evolved into a revenue-generating scheme for law enforcement, one that is now being widely used against people accused of low-level crimes, particularly marijuana offenses, or no crime at all.
In Alabama, as in other states around the country, civil asset forfeiture has been used to take cars, real estate, guns, TVs — even power tools. And though a court decides whether the agencies can keep the property, the property owner must prove the property is “innocent” of the alleged crime, turning the concept of innocent until proven guilty on its head. Vibbert, for example, had to hire a lawyer to get his money back.
There is widespread agreement across the ideological spectrum that civil asset forfeiture laws violate the most fundamental tenets of due process in our democracy. And in Alabama, two state lawmakers filed legislation this week that offers reform.
Both are encouraging signs. As this report makes clear, civil asset forfeiture places its heaviest burden on the economically vulnerable. It encourages policing for profit. It erodes trust in law enforcement. In other words, it is unfair, undemocratic and un-American.
It is time to end this abusive practice.
The Editors.
P.S. Here are some other pieces we think are valuable this week:
- Stephen Miller: Immigration agitator and White House survivor by Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey for The Washington Post
- No, forced labor is not good for your health by Shawn Fremstad for TalkPoverty
- How transgender people in the South are helping each other get health care by Lewis Wallace for Scalawag
- Summoned to History: Jury foreman, alternate in Dylann Roof trial speak publicly for the first time by Jennifer Berry Hawes for The Post and Courier
SPLC’s Weekend Readings are a weekly summary of the most important news reporting and commentary from around the country on civil rights, economic and racial inequality, and hate and extremism. Sign up to receive Weekend Readings every Saturday morning.
