RESTRICTION A BLOW TO PROSECUTORS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 25, 1993                   TAG: 9302250036
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DOUGLAS PARDUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
RESTRICTION A BLOW TO PROSECUTORS
The Supreme Court's ruling Wednesday restricting the government's ability to seize illegal drug money is a devastating blow to the government's efforts to strip drug dealers of their profits, a federal prosecutor in Roanoke said.
"It's going to be tough. . . . Chalk one up for the bad guys," Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson said.
Sorenson, who directs most of the federal government's drug-profits seizure cases in the western half of Virginia, said the ruling "makes it a lot easier for dopers to conceal or disguise dope money."
In effect, he said, all a drug dealer has to do is put everything in the name of his children, wife or mother. And as long as those people have no idea that it's drug money, the government won't be able to do much about it, Sorenson said.
He said it will force the government to have to prove who has control of the money or property.
In Western Virginia, he said, the government has 60 seizure cases pending involving almost $1.5 million in cash and property. He said he doesn't think it will affect many of those cases because most of the drug dealers involved hadn't tried to conceal their ownership.
The problem with the Supreme Court ruling, he said, is that it will encourage drug dealers to conceal profits in the names of seemingly innocent people.
The government still can go after those profits, but people will be able to stop seizures if they show that they were innocent recipients of drug money, Sorenson said.
"The decision is going to hurt . . . and have some negative effects on the drug war," he said.
Kent Willis, director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia, said the ruling is a victory for individual rights, and still leaves the government with the ability to go after drug profits.
"I don't think it guts the forfeiture law," Willis said. But, he said, "it does put the burden where it belongs." The government can't just take everything regardless of whether the person is innocent. "It does protect innocent people who have received money that is tainted."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB