The ACLU has filed suit against the Pinal County Attorney, Sheriff, and the Clerk of the Superior Court in Pinal County, Arizona, for their enforcement of Arizona’s civil asset forfeiture laws.
In Arizona, civil asset forfeiture allows police to seize — and then keep or sell — any property they allege is involved in a crime. Owners need not ever be charged with or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be taken away permanently by the government.
In this case, Pinal County law enforcement used what the ACLU refers to as an “unconstitutional scheme,” against Rhonda Cox, a Pinal County resident, to seize and keep her used truck, violating her First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments rights, according to the ACLU.
The ACLU claims that in order to keep her truck, the State didn’t have to prove that she did anything wrong – let alone criminal. In addition, the County Attorney’s office informed Ms. Cox that the State’s civil asset forfeiture laws would doubly punish her if she pursued her claim and didn’t win—in the end, she would lose her truck and be required to pay the county’s attorneys’ fees and investigation costs, which would exceed the value of her truck. Ms. Cox couldn’t absorb the financial risk involved, so she was forced to withdraw her claim and give up her truck to the authorities, according to the ACLU.
The ACLU argues that “civil asset forfeiture was originally intended as a way to cripple large-scale criminal enterprises by diverting their resources. But Arizona’s law creates perverse, unfair, and unconstitutional incentives for law enforcement agencies around the state to seize and forfeit as much money and property from people as possible, regardless of whether they’re guilty of a crime. All the profits from these efforts add up to multi-million dollar slush funds that are available to the same law enforcement agencies that seize them, and there is little or no oversight in how the profits are spent. The ACLU believes that constitutional policing should be motivated by crime fighting, not by profit seeking.”