Asset forfeiture abuse

Jeff Doles was acquitted of selling "drug paraphernalia" through his head shop in Gillette, Wyoming, but that didn't deter authorities. Turned away by a jury, Campbell County prosecutor Bill Eichelberger found a cooperative judge who allowed him to seize Doles's inventory anyway, even in the absence of a conviction.

The key is civil asset forfeiture, a convenient, if bizarre, bit of legal legerdemain in which a legal action is brought against objects rather than people. Money and inventory can be found guilty of a crime and seized, even when criminal defendants win their cases -- and some people are never even charged with a crime.

Civil asset forfeiture hit the headlines briefly in the 1990s after some well-publicized abuses of the power. Some of the uses, such as the confiscation by federal officials of $9,000 from a landscaper named Willie Jones, seemed indistinguishable from muggings. As a results, a modest reform measure, the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA) was passed by Congress and signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton, somewhat reining-in asset-grabs on the federal level. Forfeiture pretty much dropped off the public's radar after that.

But as Doles's case demonstrates, abusive uses of asset forfeiture didn't go away; the practice is alive and well across the country. Forfeiture Endangers American Rights, a national organization, keeps a close eye on the practice, and it has yet to run short of examples of government officials using the power of the law to bypass the requirements of a criminal trial.

The fate of Doles's inventory -- convicted in lieu of its owner -- will be decided by the Wyoming Supreme Court.