The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on Monday in a pair of cases asking if two innocent property owners have due process rights to a prompt hearing after police seized their vehicles.
Civil forfeiture laws, which are in place in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., allow law enforcement to seize property, such as a vehicle, if it is used in connection to a crime, even if the property is owned by an innocent party. The case slated for Monday morning arguments, Culley v. Marshall, consolidates two civil forfeiture proceedings from Alabama.
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Between 2000 and 2019, states and the federal government pocketed a total of $68.8 billion through forfeiture, leading to police departments across the country raking in millions of dollars worth of property each year.
Parties who are ordered to forfeit their property contend the process for retrieving their property is overly tedious, not only because they must prove their innocence but because the process for obtaining a hearing can take months, sometimes even years.
“I know the pain firsthand,” said Stephanie Wilson, a Detroit nursing student who had her vehicle seized after a traffic stop in 2019. “While my car sat in an impound lot, I could not drive my son to school or take him to medical appointments. I could not get myself to classes at Wayne County Community College, where I was studying nursing.”
Although Wilson’s case isn’t before the high court, she eventually gained success after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled on Aug. 31, 2021, that Wayne County must grant pretrial hearings within two weeks of property seizure, albeit nearly two years after her vehicle was initially seized.
The oral arguments at the high court on Monday will instead involve similar dilemmas out of Alabama. Property owner Halima Culley had her vehicle seized for alleged drug crimes committed by her son. The other property owner, Lena Sutton, had her vehicle similarly seized over alleged drug crimes committed by her roommate. Both vehicle owners were found to be innocent third parties, but neither received a timely judicial review, leaving them without transportation for months, they contend.
The question before the nine justices is which test district courts should apply when determining if someone’s 14th Amendment right to due process was violated or was deprived of a prompt hearing.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in the Culley and Sutton cases held the “speedy trial” test, formed to resolve allegations of Sixth Amendment violations, applies and that due process is satisfied by the civil forfeiture process itself.
Both plaintiffs filed suits claiming their Eighth and 14th Amendment rights were deprived by their localities for months, arguing there should have been a pretrial hearing to establish probable cause for the seizures to determine swiftly that they were innocent property owners under Alabama law.
In a rejection of their claims in a July ruling last year, the 11th Circuit held that Alabama’s civil forfeiture process satisfied the requirements for a timely hearing under the speedy trial test. But opposing rulings such as Wilson’s case out of the 6th Circuit will have the justices examine which test aligns with their collective jurisprudence.
Alabama Attorney General Steven Marshall, a Republican, has urged the court to uphold the 11th Circuit’s ruling, saying that the Supreme Court “for centuries” has held that civil forfeitures need not inquire into the guilt or innocence of the property’s owner, “only the use of the property itself in a prohibited act,” according to a brief.
Marshall also contended that Alabama law actually does allow petitioners “during the pendency of the civil forfeiture case” to reclaim their vehicles and that the petitioners were merely “unaware” of the law’s features before they launched their complaint.
Meanwhile, outsiders, such as National Federation of Independent Business Executive Director Beth Milito, have sided with Culley and Sutton, arguing that “small-business owners who rent, sell, and conduct cash transactions are particularly vulnerable to seizures like the one highlighted in this case.”
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“Without a hearing, small-business owners are forced to go through a lengthy and costly forfeiture process, where they may not recover their property for years,” Milito said in June, urging the justices to reverse the 11th Circuit’s ruling and hold that small-business owners are entitled to prompt post-deprivation hearings.
The justices will likely return a ruling in the case before the end of June.
