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Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Law - "New Institute for Justice Report on Asset Forfeiture"
The ILB has had many entries on asset forfeiture. Today Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy highlights "an important new report detailing the many abuses of property rights in the asset forfeiture system." A sample from the entry:
The authors also provide the first comprehensive survey of state asset forfeiture laws, giving each a “grade” on the A to F scale. They find that most of them provide little if any protection for innocent property owners:Only three states—Maine, North Dakota and Vermont—receive a combined grade of B or higher. The other 47 states all receive Cs or Ds.• Most state civil forfeiture laws provide little protection to property owners. Six states receive an F and 29 states receive a D for their laws alone. Lax federal laws earn the federal government a law grade of D-.
• Eight states receive a B or higher for their laws: Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio and Vermont. But extensive use of equitable sharing pulls down the final grades of five of those states: Indiana (C+), Maryland (C+), Missouri (C+), North Carolina (C+) and Ohio (C-).
• The lowest-graded states overall, combining both poor laws and aggressive use of equitable sharing, are Georgia, Michigan, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 7, 2010 10:44 AM
Posted to General Law Related