Nevada Judge to Nevada Cops: You Can’t Use This Loophole To Get Around Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform
In the first decision of its kind in Nevada, a judge ruled last week that state law enforcement can’t evade stricter requirements for seizing cash and property by partnering with the federal government.
The plaintiff in that lawsuit, a Marine veteran named Stephen Lara, had nearly $90,000 in cash seized from him in 2021 by two Nevada Highway Patrol officers. The cops admitted to Lara that there was nothing illegal about carrying large amounts of cash. But they decided that Lara’s money was likely drug proceeds, and they coordinated with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to forfeit it through a process called civil asset forfeiture.
The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, sued the NHP and DEA on Lara’s behalf in 2021, arguing not only that should Lara get his money back—the DEA agreed to return it shortly after the suit was filed—but that the NHP exceeded its legal authority to hand the case over to the feds rather than following Nevada’s stricter asset forfeiture laws.
This was the first time Nevada courts had considered police participation in the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program, in which federal law enforcement “adopts” civil forfeiture cases from local police. The local department gets up to 80 percent of the forfeiture proceeds, and the rest goes into a Justice Department pool that is doled out to other participating departments around the country.Â
Nevada Second Judicial District Judge Connie J. Steinheimer held that forfeiture laws are required to be strictly interpreted, and that there was no way to do that while allowing the NHP to unilaterally undercut them.
“Without a clear dictate from the Nevada Legislature,” she wrote, “NHP cannot undermine this bedrock policy and effect
Article from Reason.com
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