Pennsylvania’s Controlled Substances Forfeiture Act allow all seized assets to go directly to the offices of prosecutors. The ACLU-PA found that prosecutors overwhelmingly target disadvantaged individuals without the means to fight the forfeiture in court. Photo from Occupy.com.
From Molly Tack-Hooper, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Pennsylvania
In a class action challenge to Philadelphia’s forfeiture practices, a federal district court ruled on February 23 that people who have lost property through forfeiture will have to file separate lawsuits to be compensated, even if the court finds some of Philadelphia’s practices unconstitutional. The ruling underscored one key message: that relief for the victims of this deeply broken system is still a long way off.
The lawsuit, Sourovelis v. City of Philadelphia, was filed by the Institute for Justice (a Washington, DC-based property rights group) with the assistance of local civil rights hero David Rudovsky in the summer of 2014. It was filed at the same time that ACLU-PA was forming a broad-based Coalition for Forfeiture Reform to push for statewide legislative change to Pennsylvania’s civil forfeiture laws. On both groups’ agenda was removing the direct financial incentive for prosecutors’ offices to aggressively pursue forfeiture.
Under Pennsylvania’s Controlled Substances Forfeiture Act, 100 percent of the proceeds from forfeiture go directly to the offices of the prosecutors who make decisions about what property to go after for forfeiture, who to target, and how ruthlessly to litigate forfeiture cases. In every county examined by the ACLU-PA, prosecutors disproportionately targeted people of color for forfeiture, taking mostly small amounts of cash where owners had little incentive to fight the forfeiture in court.
Senate and House bills would have removed this pecuniary incentive to use forfeiture overzealously and target people who can’t fight back by diverting forfeiture proceeds to a general fund instead. But in 2016, these bills were gutted at the urging of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association to remove all of the major reform components.
The current statute specifies that prosecutors are supposed to use forfeited property for drug enforcement, community-based drug- and crime-fighting programs, or relocation and protection of witnesses in criminal cases. However, the Sourovelis complaint alleges that, in Philadelphia, forfeiture proceeds are split between the police and District Attorney’s office and used in part to pay prosecutors’ salaries. The lawsuit makes the somewhat novel claim that the prosecutors’ financial stake in the outcome of forfeiture cases denies property owners due process.
In May 2015, the trial court rejected the City’s bid to throw out this due process claim, ruling that it couldn’t decide the claim without first resolving a factual dispute between the parties about whether the DA’s office actually used its forfeiture proceeds as contemplated by statute or used it for salaries.
In its February 23 ruling, the court made clear that even if the court ultimately sides with the plaintiffs and rules that the Philadelphia DA’s stake in the outcome of forfeiture cases is unconstitutional, the court will not order the return of all class members’ forfeited property. Rather, anyone who has lost property in Philadelphia to forfeiture would then have to file an individual lawsuit to determine what relief they’re entitled to.
With meaningful legislative reform seemingly off the table in Harrisburg and the federal trial court sending a signal that the Sourovelis lawsuit will not provide a quick or easy remedy for the victims of Philadelphia’s profitable forfeiture machine, it looks like Pennsylvanians will remain vulnerable to forfeiture abuse for a while longer.
Onto the links.
EXCERPTS
(Criminal justice news that could use a second look.)
The ACLU is updating its police body camera recommendations to clarify public release guidelines and improve accountability. Photo by Ryan Johnson.
From EndZeroTolerance.org: “Student Arrests in Pennsylvania: A Closer Look”
“In Pennsylvania, Black students were four and a half times more likely to be arrested than White students. This rate is two and a half times greater than the national rate for Black students. While Black students made up only 15% of student enrollment, they were 40% of the students arrested in Pennsylvania – a total of 2,074 Black students were arrested in 2013-14. In contrast, White students made up 69% of public students, but received 41% of student arrests.”
From ACLU National: “We’re Updating Our Police Body Camera Recommendations for Even Better Accountability and Civil Liberties Protections”
“We have also added language stipulating that police departments cannot use ‘investigative privilege’ as a basis for withholding footage where the suspect is a police officer (who likely is the one who recorded the video and has been allowed to see it). As we argue at greater length here, the rationale for such a privilege (tipping off suspects) does not apply when the suspect is a police officer. We do allow that redaction, subject to limitations, can be used in such situations.”
HEADLINES
(Criminal justice news to be aware of.)
Trina Singleton’s son is one of Philly’s many unsolved murders. In 2016, the city’s clearance rate dropped below 50 percent, the lowest it’s been in at least 15 years. Photo from The Daily News.
Pennsylvania
- From The Daily News: “More than half of Philly’s murders go unsolved”
- From Trib Live: “State police reveal cost of local police coverage: $600M”
- From Metro: “To crack down on witness intimidation, Philly courts to ban phones”
- From PennLive: “Because of high OT bills, Pa. prisons could instead hire more guards, still save money: report”
- From The Morning Call: “Debate over what Jeffrey Knoble’s costing taxpayers”
- From Post-Gazette: “Wolf’s former choice to lead State Police has a new job — overseeing state police”
- From The Intelligencer: “Pilot program involving Bucks’ district judges will divert some defendants to mental health services”
- From The Inquirer: “How an area artist, a former inmate, is sharing his craft”
- From PublicSource: “Voices Unlocked: From sailor locked up in Japan to artist in Pittsburgh”
- From The Times: “Ambridge district judge suspended from post over misconduct accusations”
- From PennLive: “Fears of ICE raids mount, but undocumented immigrants actually have rights”
Pa. District Attorneys
- From The Philadelphia Tribune: “A look at Philly’s D.A. candidates”
- From Philadelphia Magazine “Meet D.A. Candidate”: Joe Khan, Teresa Carr Deni, Rich Negrin, Larry Krasner, and Michael Untermeyer
- From The Good Men Project: “Philadelphia DA Candidate on Controversial Shooting and 2000 Puppet Warehouse Raid”
National
- From Governing: “The New, More Powerful Wave of Civilian Oversight of Police”
- From The Chicago Tribune: “New hope of freedom for those given mandatory life sentences as juveniles”
- From USA Today: “Supreme Court lets Alabama judges impose death penalty”
- From The Marshall Project: “The Case of Duane Buck”
- From Carceral Complex: “President Obama’s Criminal Justice Legacy: What Went Wrong”
- From Slate: “Is Texas About to Execute an Innocent Man?”
- From The Miami Herald: “Trayvon Martin had to be guilty of something, right?”
- From The New York Times: “Mental Illness, Untreated Behind Bars”
- From The New York Times: “Are U.S. Immigration Centers the Next Abu Ghraib?”
- From The Clarion-Ledger: “Immigrant detained after press conference”
- From The Crime Report: “Can Policing Really Change? Ten Lessons From the DOJ’s ‘Pattern or Practice’ Bias Probes”
- From The Jersey Journal: “Why police body camera programs in Jersey City and Newark have stalled”
- From Newsworks: “N.J. prosecutors won’t be required to call witnesses at detention hearings, judges rule”
- From The New York Times: “A Debate: Should the Justice Department Police the Police?”
- From The Atlantic: “Rethinking Mass Incarceration in America”
Trump Criminal Justice Watch
- From The Washington Post: “Trump wants to reduce crime. But he doesn’t understand good police work.”
- From The Associated Press: “Sessions: More violence around marijuana than ‘one would think’”
- From The Atlantic: “A Murder in Trump’s America”
- From The Guardian: “Police chiefs object to Trump’s efforts to involve them in immigrant deportations: Letter from more than 60 law enforcement heads asks to soften push to include police in roundups, saying it makes their communities less safe”
- From AL.com: “ICE raids have ‘blown up’ in Alabama since Trump immigration orders went into effect”
- Jeff Sessions Criminal Justice News: From The United States Department of Justice, “Attorney General Jeff Sessions Delivers Remarks at National Association of Attorneys General Annual Winter Meeting” and “Attorney General Announces Crime Reduction and Public Safety Task Force”; From NBC NEWS, “AG Sessions Says DOJ to ‘Pull Back’ on Police Department Civil Rights Suits”; From The Wall Street Journal, “Sessions Says Justice Department to Ease Up on Police Probes”; From ACLU National, “ACLU Calls for Investigation Into Potential Perjury by Sessions”; From The New York Times, “A Timeline of Jeff Sessions’s Trump Ties and Meetings With Russia”
The Appeal is a weekly newsletter keeping you informed about criminal justice news in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and beyond. It is written and compiled by Matt Stroud, ACLU-PA’s criminal justice researcher, along with ACLU-PA interns Morgan Everett and Bethel Habte.
If you have suggestions for links or criminal justice-related work that you’d like to highlight in The Appeal — or ways that we might improve — please email Matt Stroud at mstroud@aclupa.org. And if someone forwarded this email to you, and you’d like to receive it every Friday, you can subscribe here.
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