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SB 521 - Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act
Testimony of Senator Steve Nass
Senate Committee on Labor & Government Reform
January 26, 2016 • 330 Southwest, State Capitol |
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Thank you committee members for allowing me to testify
in support of Senate Bill 521. This legislation reforms
the civil asset forfeiture process in Wisconsin to
better protect the lawful property rights of innocent
citizens, and reduce the potential for abuse of the
forfeiture process. The bill does not impact law
enforcement’s ability to target the assets of an
individual convicted of a crime. |
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Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement agencies
to seize money and property that they suspect is being
used to commit a crime, or the profit from a criminal
activity. Under current Wisconsin law, however, law
enforcement does not need to convict or even charge the
owner of the property with a crime to make these
seizures. Property can even be seized from people who
are innocent of any crime and had no knowledge their
property was connected to a crime. |
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| These laws were created to go after unlawful gains
of large-scale criminal enterprises, but are becoming a
way to simply generate revenue to increase police
department budgets. Current law provides law enforcement
agencies with an incentive to seize money and property
through forfeiture because a large percentage of the
proceeds go back to them, and supplements their budgets
outside the normal legislative process. This is a clear
conflict of interest that goes well beyond using
forfeiture to deprive someone of ill-gotten gains as a
result of a crime. |
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| Law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin are allowed to
keep between 50%-70% of the proceeds of the property
they seize, under state law. However, police agencies
can also circumvent state law by turning over seized
assets to federal authorities to pursue the forfeiture
federally. Under the federal “equitable sharing”
program, local police agencies can keep up to 80% of the
proceeds of the forfeiture, with the remaining amount
going to the U.S. Department of Justice. |
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| A 2010 report by the Institute for Justice (IJ),
that rated the forfeiture laws in all 50 states for
fairness, gave Wisconsin a “C” grade. Police agencies in
Wisconsin took in more than $50 million from the
equitable sharing program alone between 2000 and 2008,
according to the report. It is more difficult to
determine how much was made from the state forfeiture
process because there is no existing standardized
reporting mechanism. |
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| SB 521 reforms the civil asset forfeiture process in
Wisconsin to maintain the private property rights of
innocent citizens. The bill is modeled on legislation
recently enacted in New Mexico. It reaffirms due process
protections for Wisconsin residents by creating the
following safeguards: |
1) Requires a criminal conviction before a
forfeiture proceeding can begin.
2) Requires that the property forfeited is
proportional to the crime committed.
3) Ends the potential “policing for profit”
incentive by specifying that the proceeds of any
seized property be deposited into the common school
fund.
4) Allows innocent owners to get their property back
in a timely manner, if they demonstrate they had no
knowledge or complicity of the crime connected to
the seizure.
5) Closes the “equitable sharing” loophole under
which local law enforcement agencies can circumvent
state law if they pursue the case with federal
authorities.
6) Increases transparency in the forfeiture process
by requiring an annual report be submitted and made
accessible by law enforcement agencies and the
Wisconsin Department of Justice, on their seizure
and forfeiture activity for the year.
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| An example of the excesses of Wisconsin’s civil
forfeiture law occurred in Green Bay. When the Brown
County Drug Task Force arrested her son Joel in 2012,
Beverly Greer worked to raise his $7,500 bail. According
to Greer, the Brown County authorities told her she had
to bring cash to pay the bail – even though this is not
required by Wisconsin law. |
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| When Greer showed up at the jail with the bail
money, jail officials brought in a drug dog to sniff the
money and seized it after the dog indicated it smelled
drug residue on it. |
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| Studies by the Federal Reserve, the Argonne National
Laboratory, and the University of Massachusetts, among
others, have consistently shown that most U.S. currency
contains traces of drug residue. |
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| Greer had in fact taken the money out from local
ATMs and had the receipts to prove it, but not until
after she had gone through months of court proceedings
and hired an attorney. |
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She wasn’t the only person in Brown County to have bail
money seized in this manner, but she was one of the few
to be able to hire an attorney to challenge the seizure.
Usually, people cannot afford to hire an attorney to
contest the forfeiture or they don’t bother because the
cost and time required is greater than the value of the
property seized. |
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SB 521 will enact common sense, bipartisan reforms to
safeguard due process and private property rights of
innocent citizens, while maintaining law enforcement’s
ability to seize assets that are proven to be derived
from a crime. The growing use of civil forfeiture to act
as a revenue stream, instead of a punishment or remedy
for a crime, has raised public concerns with this
process across the nation. Similar laws have been passed
in New Mexico, Minnesota, Montana, and North Carolina. |
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Thank you again for the opportunity to provide testimony
in support of SB 521. If any committee members have
further questions, I am happy to answer them at this
time. |
