New Jersey’s method of financing police and prosecutors through civil forfeiture is unconstitutional, Superior Court Judge G. Thomas Bowen of Salem County has ruled. Under New Jersey’s civil forfeiture law (N.J.S.A 2C:64-6a) prosecutors and police had been entitled to keep the money and property confiscated from individuals through the state’s civil forfeiture law, thus giving them a direct financial stake in the outcome of forfeiture efforts. The court ruled that this provision violates the Due Process clauses of the U.S. and New Jersey constitutions. "We are thrilled with the court’s ruling," said Scott Bullock, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest law firm that litigated the New Jersey case. "The decision will ensure that police and prosecutors make decisions on the basis of justice, not on the potential for profit."

From 1998 to 2000, New Jersey police and prosecutors collected nearly $32 million in property and currency through the application of the civil forfeiture law. During that same period, on average, close to 30 percent of the discretionary budgets of county prosecutor offices came from civil forfeiture proceeds. As the judge recognized in his opinion, forfeiture money has been used for "rent for a motor pool crime scene facility, office furniture, telecommunications and computer equipment, automobile purchase, fitness and training equipment purchase, a golf outing, food, including food for seminars and meetings, and expenses of law enforcement conferences, at various locations."

By ruling the statute unconstitutional, the decision affects every county in New Jersey. And the decision could prove a harbinger of future challenges to laws in other states. David Smith, an Alexandria, Va., attorney who has written a treatise on forfeiture laws and is a former deputy chief of the Department of Justice’s asset forfeiture office declared last month, "This is the single most important civil forfeiture case being litigated anywhere." Several other states and the federal forfeiture law also permit police and prosecutors to keep forfeited property and proceeds.

On the federal level, Congress passed the first drug-related civil asset forfeiture law as part of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. The forfeiture provision, 21 USC § 881, authorized the government to seize and forfeit illicit drugs, manufacturing and storage equipment, and conveyances used to transport drugs. In 1978 and throughout the 1980s, Congress passed a number of "anti-drug" laws that expanded the government’s power to seize and forfeit property. Ostensibly aimed at attacking the proceeds of illicit drug traffickers, civil asset forfeiture has become a corrupting cash cow for law enforcement, and a serious threat to Americans’ constitutional rights. What was once a means to an end, has become an end in itself.

For additional information please visit: Institute For Justice: Litigation Backgrounder and Policy Briefing: Asset Forfeiture.