STOP THE DRUG WAR: In a major victory for property rights advocates, a federal judge in Massachusetts last week struck down a scheme by federal prosecutors to seize a motel owned by the Caswell family on rundown Main Street in Tewksbury. The ruling in US v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts should make it more difficult for the government to seize a person’s property if third parties committed criminal offenses on that property without the property owner’s knowledge.
The ruling reinforced longstanding complaints that the use of asset forfeiture statutes — both federal and state — is so broad as to be tantamount to an abuse of power. Under such laws, prosecutors file civil actions seeking to seize the property of accused criminals as the fruits of crime, but they often result in citizens being deprived of their property without ever being convicted of a crime, sometimes even without ever having been arrested…
US Attorney Carmen Ortiz had sought to seize the Motel Caswell from the Caswell family under the theory that the motel allegedly facilitated drug crimes. The government provided evidence of 15 drug-related incidents between 1994 and 2008, rousing US Magistrate Judith Dein to note tartly in her opinion that “it should be noted that during this 14 year period, the Motel Caswell rented out approximately 196,000 rooms.”… (more)
