ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 25, 1996 TAG: 9606250086
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
NOTE: Above
NARCOTICS SUSPECTS can be prosecuted in one court and, in another court, have the government sue to confiscate their property.
Upholding a major strategy in the war on drugs, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that the government can prosecute people while simultaneously suing them to confiscate drug-connected property.
The double-barreled strategy does not violate the Constitution's protection against being punished twice for the same crime, the court ruled in two cases from California and Michigan.
``We hold that these ... civil forfeitures are neither punishment nor criminal for purposes of the double jeopardy clause,'' Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the court.
``Congress long has authorized the government to bring parallel criminal proceedings and civil forfeiture proceedings, and this court consistently has found civil forfeitures not to constitute punishment under the double jeopardy clause,'' Rehnquist wrote.
Justice John Paul Stevens dissented in the 8-1 ruling in the Michigan case, in which a man was forced to forfeit his home. Stevens said the ruling ``has cut deeply into a guarantee deemed fundamental by the Founders.''
Stevens joined the unanimous ruling in the California case, in which the high court said two men could be forced to forfeit funds found to be the proceeds of illegal activity.
David Michael, the lawyer for one of the men in the California case, said the ruling will allow the government to ``run rampant in seizing people's property.''
``If this decision were written during Prohibition, it would have allowed the government to seize and forfeit the house of anybody in this country who had an alcoholic beverage in their home,'' Michael said.
The Clinton administration had argued that federal and state prosecutors should be allowed to seek civil forfeitures in addition to filing criminal charges.
But lower courts ruled in the Michigan and California cases that civil forfeitures amounted to piling on additional punishment.
The Fifth Amendment says nobody will be ``subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.'' Previous Supreme Court rulings have said this protects people from being prosecuted or punished twice for the same crime.
In the Michigan case, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Guy Jerome Ursery's 1993 conviction on a charge of manufacturing marijuana. Earlier, he agreed to pay the government $13,250 instead of forfeiting the home in Perry, Mich., where the marijuana was found.
The court said Ursery's criminal conviction and 63-month prison sentence were a second punishment for the same offense.
In the California case, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that James Wren and Charles Arlt could not be forced to forfeit the proceeds of a drug and money-laundering operation because they already had been convicted of related criminal offenses.
The Supreme Court reversed those rulings.
``Requiring the forfeiture of property used to commit federal narcotics violations encourages property owners to take care in managing their property and ensures that they will not permit that property to be used for illegal purposes,'' Rehnquist wrote.
His opinion was joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas concurred in a separate opinion that contended the Constitution bars only successive prosecutions, not double punishment.
The Justice Department said Monday it collected about $550 million in asset forfeitures from criminals during fiscal 1994.
Also Monday, the court made also said Monday that prisons don't have to help inmates become ``litigating engines,'' the Supreme Court said Monday in making it harder for inmates to sue for better law libraries or other government-funded legal help.
The justices reversed a lower court ruling that ordered a detailed plan to beef up Arizona's prison law libraries, saying it was ``a model of what should not'' be done in such cases.
A more liberal Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that inmates have a constitutional right of meaningful access to the courts and that they must be provided law libraries or other legal help.
But that ``does not guarantee inmates the wherewithal to transform themselves into litigating engines capable of filing everything from shareholder derivative actions to slip-and-fall claims,'' Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court.
``The tools it requires to be provided are those that the inmates need in order to attack their sentences ... and in order to challenge the conditions of their confinement,'' Scalia said.
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