From: pat@fitz.uucp (Patrick Fitzgerald)
Subject: Home Seized/Returned in AL (was Re: Cars seized in Oakland)
Organization: Intergraph Corporation, Huntsville, AL.
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 04:19:11 GMT

dougm@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>
>From Newsweek Aug. 17,1992, p. 6.
>Car Crackdown

That reminds me:  I sent this to the libernet mailing list, but I don't
think I posted it here.

[Reprinted without permission from "The Huntsville Times",
 Thursday, July 23, 1992]
 
	      WIDOW GETS BACK HOME SEIZED BY DRUG AGENTS
		       Pushers used front yard
 
		 by Jay Reeves, the Associated Press
 
MONTGOMERY - Gussie Mae Gantt says she tried to keep crack dealers off
her property.  The 69-year-old widow called police repeatedly, evicted
her drug-selling children and bolted the door.
 
The cocaine pushers didn't leave, though, and the federal
government said Mrs. Gantt didn't push hard enough.  So federal
marshals seized her house and took some of her belongings, all without
charges being filed against Mrs. Gantt or anyone in her home.
 
Mrs. Gantt fought back, and she won.
 
U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson this week ruled that the
mother of 10 was an innocent property owner targeted under a
federal drug seizure law.  He ordered the government to give back her
home and pay all her legal bills.
 
"I'm gonna move back in my house," Mrs. Gantt said Wednesday.
"I've got to wait until they take the padlocks off."
 
The government, however, has yet to abandon its fight against
the housekeeper, whose customers include the Montgomery County school
superintendent.  Prosecutors say they will decide soon whether to
appeal.
 
"This is a matter that is still under litigation," U.S.
Attorney Jim Wilson said Wednesday.  "We feel like we were exactly
right in the law."
 
At the center of the case is a federal drug law coming under
increasing criticism from civil livertarians.  The law lets
prosecutors seize people's property without charges or a conviction if
officers suspect it has links to drug dealing.
 
"It's repressive power.  Our country is not like that," said
Maurice Bell, a lawyer representing Mrs. Gantt.
 
But Wilson said the seizure law is a tool he intends to keep
using.
 
"We are putting people on notice," he said. [Indeed]
 
Mrs. Gantt's problems started in January, 1991, when her
husband died.  After that, the curving street in front of her modest,
frame home became a popular spot for heighborhood crack dealers.
 
The pushers included some of Mrs. Gantt's children and
grandchildren.
 
"You couldn't sleep for worrying about getting shot through your
window," said a neighbor who spoke on the condition that her name not
be used.  "A lot of the neighbors were scared when they heard she is
getting (the house) back."
 
Mrs. Gantt said she tried to get rid of the dealers, including the
ones related to her.
 
"I told some of them to get out when I found out they were in drugs,"
she said.
 
Mrs. Gantt and some of her relatives called police, and so did her
neighbors.  The judge's ruling said police received more than 100
complaints about the drug dealing between January 1991 and this
spring.
 
Mrs. Gantt posted a "No Trespassing" sign in her yard, the ruling
said, and she kept her front door locked to keep out pushers scurrying
for cover as police cruised by.
 
In response to all the complaints, police set up a surveillance camera
across from Mrs. Gantt's April Street home.  After six months of
videotaping, officers acted.
 
Police invited along the media for a raid in April, and 18 people were
arrested.  Since then, 17 of those have either pleaded guilty or been
convicted.
 
Neither Mrs. Gantt nor anyone living in her house was charged,
however.  Mrs. Gantt was not even home.
 
"She was at my house the day it happened," said Montgomery school
Superintendent Thomas Bobo, who has employed Mrs. Gantt for about 18
years.  "She's a friend of mine and a good lady."
 
In conjunction with the raid, Wilson's office began a forfeiture case
seeking the house, which Mrs. Gantt and her husband bought in 1972
with death benefits from her son, killed while serving in Vietnam.
 
The crux of the government's argument was that Mrs. Gantt did not do
enough to deter the traffickers.  Federal attorneys cited her refusal
to sign a trespassing warrant against the very drug dealers who
sometimes ran into her home for cover.
 
But the judge disagreed in an 11-page decision released Monday.
 
Thompson wrote he was "convinced that Gantt wanted the drug activity
in front of her home stopped."  He said she "took all reasonable steps
that a person of her abilities could be expected to take."
 
Still, the U.S. attorney insists Mrs. Gantt did not try hard enough.
He declined comment on what else she could have done to deter the
pushers.
 
"Anybody that owns property can do more than that to keep crack
dealers from selling drugs in their yard," Wilson said.

--
   ______   |o| Patrick Fitzgerald     |o| pat@fitz.b30.ingr.com
  / ___  )  |o| Sr. Software Analyst,  |o| (205) 730-3741
 / __)/ /__ |o| Intergraph Corporation |o| Mailstop GD3002
(_/it(_____)|o| TIM Documentation      |o| Huntsville, AL 35894-0001