Pubdate: Sun, 20 May 2012
Source: Oklahoman, The (OK)
Copyright: 2012 The Oklahoma Publishing Co.
Contact: http://www.newsok.com/voices/guidelines
Website: http://newsok.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/318
Author: George F. Will

A NIGHTMARE IN TEWKSBURY

TEWKSBURY, Mass. - Russ Caswell, 68, is bewildered: "What country are we
in?" He and his wife, Pat, are ensnared in a Kafkaesque nightmare
unfolding in Orwellian language.

This town's police department is conniving with the federal
government to circumvent Massachusetts law - which is less permissive
than federal law - in order to seize his livelihood and retirement
asset.

In a lawsuit, the government is suing an inanimate object, the motel
Caswell's father built in 1955. The U.S. Department of Justice intends
to seize it, sell it for perhaps $1.5 million and give up to 80
percent of that to the Tewksbury Police Department, whose budget is
just $5.5 million. The Caswells have not been charged with, let alone
convicted of, a crime.

They are being persecuted by two governments eager to profit from what
is antiseptically called the "equitable sharing" of the fruits of
civil forfeiture.

Caswell's "budget" motel has seen better days, as when the touring
Annette Funicello and the Mouseketeers checked in. In its sixth decade
the motel hosts tourists, some workers on extended stays and some
elderly people who call it home. The 56 rooms rent for $56 a night or
$285 a week.

Since 1994, about 30 motel customers have been arrested on drug
dealing charges. Even if those police figures are accurate - the
police have a substantial monetary incentive to exaggerate - these 30
episodes involved less than five one-hundredths of 1 percent of the
125,000 rooms Caswell has rented over those more than 6,700 days. Yet
this is the government's excuse for impoverishing the Caswells by
seizing this property, which is their only significant source of
income and all of their retirement security.

The government says the rooms were used to "facilitate" a
crime.

It does not say the Caswells knew or even that they were supposed to
know what was going on in all their rooms all the time. Civil
forfeiture law treats citizens worse than criminals, requiring them to
prove their innocence - to prove they did everything possible to
prevent those rare crimes from occurring in a few of those rooms.

The Caswells voluntarily installed security cameras, they photocopy
customers' identifications and record their license plates, and turn
the information over to the police, who have never asked the Caswells
to do more. The Caswells are represented by the Institute for Justice,
a libertarian public-interest law firm. They are victims of two
piratical governments that, IJ argues, are violating the U.S.
Constitution twice.

They are violating the Eighth Amendment, which has been construed to
forbid "excessive fines" that deprive individuals of their
livelihoods. And the federal "equitable sharing" program violates the
10th Amendment by vitiating state law, thereby enabling Congress to
compel the states to adopt Congress' policies where states possess a
reserved power and primary authority - in the definition and
enforcement of the criminal law. Not surprising to Madisonians A
federal drug agent operating in this region roots around in public
records in search of targets - property with at least $50,000 equity.
Caswell thinks that if his motel "had a big mortgage, this would not
be happening."

"Equitable sharing" - the consensual splitting of ill-gotten loot by
the looters - reeks of the moral hazard that exists in situations in
which incentives are for perverse behavior.

To see where this leads, read IJ's
scalding report "Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset
Forfeiture," a sickening litany of law enforcement agencies padding
their budgets and financing boondoggles by, for example, smelling, or
imagining to smell, or pretending to smell, marijuana in cars they covet.
None of this is surprising to Madisonians, which all sensible Americans
are. James Madison warned that government power "is of an encroaching
nature." If unresisted, it produces iniquitous sharing of other people's
property.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt