Pubdate: Thu, 12 Nov 2009
Source: Times & Transcript (Moncton, CN NK)
Copyright: 2009 New Brunswick Publishing Company
Contact:  http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2660
Page: A1
Author: Craig Babstock

N.B. TARGETS TOOLS OF CRIME

Justice Minister To Introduce Forfeiture Legislation

Justice Minister Mike Murphy plans to introduce new legislation to 
help battle criminal activity in New Brunswick's neighbourhoods.

Murphy says the Civil Forfeiture Act will target property used by 
people to commit crimes. The province will launch lawsuits against 
those individuals in an effort to have the court order them to 
forfeit property used to commit an offence.

Murphy singles out people who deal drugs out of their homes or 
produce and distribute child pornography from their homes.

"These people are bugs that need to be crushed," says the justice minister.

The province already has powers to seize property in criminal cases 
and argue that judges should order it forfeited. It's been fairly 
common over the last few years to see repeat drunk drivers ordered to 
forfeit their vehicles or people running bawdy houses out of massage 
parlours ordered to forfeit the property.

The province then disposes of the property, mainly through auction.

The Civil Forfeiture Act, which Murphy will introduce when the next 
legislative session begins this month, won't involve Crown 
prosecutors in criminal court. Instead, the province's lawyers will 
take people to civil court, regardless of whether or not the person 
has been convicted of a crime.

Murphy says if someone is charged, they will most likely let the 
criminal proceeding play out before launching a civil action, but a 
criminal conviction is not necessary.

"If they get acquitted, we can start legal action that same day," 
says the minister.

In criminal court, people are only convicted if the evidence shows 
they committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, but in civil court, 
decisions are based on the balance of probabilities, meaning the bar 
to prove a case is lower. As an example, Murphy points out O.J. 
Simpson was acquitted of murder back in the 1990s, but then lost the 
civil case against him when he was found liable for the deaths of the 
two people who were murdered.

Similar civil forfeiture legislation is already in place in countries 
like the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom and several 
provinces, including Ontario, B.C., Manitoba, Alberta, Quebec and Saskatchewan.

Murphy says he's spoken with his counterparts in other provinces and 
they say this legislation is an important tool.

"In provinces like Ontario and B.C., they have a 100 per cent success 
rate," he says.

Murphy says in those provinces, legal action is launched alleging the 
defendant made himself a nuisance to the community by taking part in 
illegal activity in a particular property. Most often the defendant 
simply agrees to give up the property rather than fight it in court.

The justice minister says the goal is to protect communities from 
people like child pornographers and drug dealers and to remove them 
from these neighbourhoods by taking their property.

"We can root these scumbags out of our neighbourhoods and make it 
quite lucrative for the province," says Murphy.

It's proven very lucrative for Ontario, which was the first province 
to introduce this type of legislation. On Friday the attorney 
general's office sent out a news release about how it purchased a new 
mobile command vehicle for the London Police Service with funds from 
the province's Civil Remedies Grant Program, created under the Civil 
Remedies Act.

Ontario's civil forfeiture law allows the attorney general to ask the 
civil court for an order to freeze, take possession of and forfeit to 
the Crown, property that is determined to be a proceed or an 
instrument of unlawful activity. Civil forfeiture legislation focuses 
solely on the connection between property and unlawful activity and 
is not dependant on any criminal charges or convictions.

 From November 2003 to this past Friday, a total of $11.2 million in 
property has been forfeited to the Ontario Crown through this 
legislation. The province also has approximately $40 million in 
property frozen pending the completion of civil forfeiture proceedings.

Under the act, the Ontario attorney general has successfully frozen 
or had forfeited several biker clubhouses, crack houses, vehicles 
used for street racing, almost 50 properties used as marijuana 
grow-ops and much more. Millions of dollars generated for the 
government from the sale of that property has been used for grants 
for law enforcement agencies and compensation for victims of crimes.

According to the Ontario attorney general's office, in June 2005 a 
constitutional challenge to the act was dismissed by Ontario Superior 
Court which ruled the civil forfeiture of property does not infringe 
on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In 2007, Ontario's Court of 
Appeal upheld the lower court's decision.

Murphy says he will introduce the legislation this session and hopes 
to have it passed some time after Christmas.

"I'll be surprised if there's any opposition to it," he says.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart