Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-97-05008/USCOURTS-caDC-97-05008-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 30, 1998 Decided February 20, 1998 

No. 97-5008

RICHARD SMALL,

APPELLANT

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 96ms00199)

Miriam R. Nemetz argued the cause as amicus curiae

supporting appellant, with whom Roy T. Englert, Jr., appointed by the Court, was on the briefs.

Richard Small, appearing pro se, was on the brief for 

appellant.

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William R. Cowden, Assistant United States Attorney, 

argued the cause for appellee, with whom Mary Lou Leary,

United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, R. 

Craig Lawrence, Robert E.L. Eaton, Jr., and Linda Otani 

McKinney, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the 

brief.

Before: WALD, TATEL and GARLAND, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WALD.

WALD, Circuit Judge: Richard Small asserts that the United States failed to make adequate efforts to give him notice of 

forfeiture proceedings affecting property that he claims to 

own. The district court granted summary judgment for the 

United States, concluding that the United States's efforts to 

contact Small met the standards set by the Due Process 

Clause. On appeal, Small contests this finding. We find that 

the United States should have tried harder to contact Small 

before implementing the forfeiture, and that, as a result, the 

purported forfeiture was unconstitutionally effected.

I. BACKGROUND

On January 29, 1993, Richard Small was arrested in Washington, D.C.'s Union Station for suspected narcotics offenses. 

During the arrest, agents of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration ("DEA") took $1,813.10 in cash from 

Small. Shortly thereafter, the DEA initiated administrative 

forfeiture proceedings.

Administrative forfeiture is a device that permits the United States to determine whether property in its custody is 

unclaimed, and, if it is, to take ownership without the trouble 

and expense of court proceedings. The procedures invoked 

by the United States in this case apply by their terms to 

forfeitures conducted by customs officials; they are made 

applicable to seized drugs and associated property by 21 

U.S.C. § 881(d) (1994). Under these procedures, the first 

step is to send written notice to "each party who appears to 

have an interest in the seized article," and to publish notice of 

the intended forfeiture for three successive weeks. 19 U.S.C. 

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§ 1607(a) (1994). Possible claimants then have twenty days 

in which to file a claim and post a bond. See 19 U.S.C. 

§ 1608 (1994). If no claims are filed, the property is forfeited, and may be sold at auction or otherwise disposed of, see

19 U.S.C. § 1609 (1994); if there are claimants, the United 

States may either give them the property, or, if it wishes to 

contest their claim, it may initiate civil forfeiture proceedings 

in court.

This was the basic procedure the DEA attempted to carry 

out in this case. The agency published a notice of the 

forfeiture in USA Today, and sent notices by certified mail to 

the two addresses it had for Smallhis previous home address, and his address at the D.C. Jail, where he was being 

held pending trial. Somebody (it is unclear who) signed for 

the letter sent to Small's previous home address, but apparently failed to forward the letter to Small.

The exact trajectory of the letter sent to the D.C. Jail is 

uncertain. The letter was mailed on March 1, 1993, and the 

receipt for the letter was signed by somebody other than 

Small, presumably D.C. Jail staff, on March 11, 1993.1 For 

reasons unclear, however, the letter was then returned to the 

DEA, stamped "RETURN TO SENDER." It appears that 

the letter was initially accepted at the D.C. Jail, but later 

refused, so that the DEA received back first a signed receipt, 

and then, later, a returned letter; the date on which the DEA 

received the returned letter is unknown. The DEA made no 

further attempts to contact Small. Instead, it went ahead 

and completed the administrative forfeiture process, on April 

16, 1993.

We now shift scenes to the Western District of Virginia. 

Some time after the United States wrapped up its forfeiture 

proceedings, Small was tried and convicted in that district on 

narcotics charges. (He is now an inmate at a federal prison 

in Indiana.) At the conclusion of his trial, Small filed a pro se

__________

1 The United States listed this date as March 3 in a declaration 

filed in the district court. But March 11 is the handwritten date 

that appears on the copy of the receipt that is in the record; on 

appeal, the United States concedes that March 11 is the right date.

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motion seeking the return of his seized property. The district court found, applying Fourth Circuit caselaw, see United 

States v. Garcia, 65 F.3d 17, 19-20 (4th Cir. 1995), that this 

motion could only be made in the district in which the 

property was seized, and denied it. Small then filed his 

motion anew in the District for the District of Columbia; the 

district court (properly) construed the motion as a civil complaint.

The United States then moved to dismiss or in the alternative for summary judgment, asserting that the administrative 

forfeiture had conclusively terminated Small's claim to the 

money, and, in particular, that the United States had made 

adequate efforts to notify Small of the forfeiture. The district court agreed, and granted summary judgment for the 

United States. On appeal, Small challenges the district 

court's conclusion that the United States's efforts to give him 

notice were adequate.2

II. ANALYSIS 

"An elementary and fundamental requirement of due process in any proceeding which is to be accorded finality is 

notice reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to 

apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action and 

afford them an opportunity to present their objections." 

Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306, 

314 (1950). As Mullane made clear, the Due Process Clause 

does not demand actual, successful notice, but it does require 

a reasonable effort to give notice. "[P]rocess which is mere 

gesture is not due process. The means employed must be 

such as one desirous of actually informing the absentee might 

reasonably adopt to accomplish it." Mullane, 339 U.S. at 315.

The means employed by the government here were not 

reasonably designed to inform Small of the pending forfeiture. As to the notice published in USA Today, the Mullane

Court observed that "[c]hance alone brings to the attention of 

__________

2 This court appointed an amicus curiae to represent Small on his 

appeal, a task that she discharged very well.

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even a local resident an advertisement in small type inserted 

in the back pages of a newspaper." Mullane, 339 U.S. at 315. 

Almost fifty years after Mullane, in an increasingly populous 

and mobile nation, newspaper notices have virtually no chance 

of alerting an unwary person that he must act now or forever 

lose his rights; they are no more effective than publishing a 

notice in the Federal Register. Mullane recognized that 

notice by publication is adequate only in certain circumstances; "in the case of persons missing or unknown, employment of an indirect and even a probably futile means of 

notification is all that the situation permits." Id. at 317.

The notice sent to Small's house was clearly insufficient; 

when the government knows (or can easily ascertain) where a 

person may be found, it must direct its notice there, and not 

to some other address where the designee formerly resided. 

Here, the government knew that Small was in prison, and it 

had an obligation to send adequate notice to him there. See 

Robinson v. Hanrahan, 409 U.S. 38, 40 (1972) (per curiam).

The notice sent to (and returned from) the D.C. Jail proved 

inadequate as well. The United States asserts, citing Sarit v. 

DEA, 987 F.2d 10, 14 (1st Cir. 1993), that the adequacy of 

mailed notice is "measured from the moment at which the 

notice was sent." Thus, the United States avers, if notice is 

adequate when mailed, it cannot become inadequate in light 

of later information or developments. We disagree.

Sarit involved facts resembling, but distinguishable from, 

those here. In Sarit, the DEA sent a notice of forfeiture to 

known claimants; the notice was returned unclaimed. The 

DEA made no further efforts to give notice, despite the fact 

that it knew the name and address of the claimants' counsel. 

The panel observed that the case was "a close one," id. at 14, 

but concluded that the United States in a court filing had set 

forth enough information on the planned forfeiture to put 

counsel on notice that it would occur. See id. at 15-16. 

There was no comparable filing in this case.

As to Sarit's dictum that the adequacy of notice is measured at the time notice is sent, Sarit said that only in 

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quired to try to give notice again after it has learned that its 

initial attempt has failed. Id. at 15. Sarit's suggestion that 

this duty is limited to "exceptional circumstances" seems to 

us inconsistent with Mullane's rule that "[t]he means employed must be such as one desirous of actually informing the 

absentee might reasonably adopt to accomplish it." 339 U.S. 

at 315. A reasonable person presented with a letter that has 

been returned to sender will ordinarily attempt to resend it if 

it is practicable to do so; this is true not only in "exceptional 

circumstances," but also in the most mundane ones, such as 

when mail is returned for insufficient postage or because it 

was misaddressed. See Armendariz-Mata v. United States 

Dept. of Justice, 82 F.3d 679, 683 (5th Cir. 1996) (applying 

Mullane to returned mail without requiring "exceptional circumstances"); Torres v. $36,256.80 U.S. Currency, 25 F.3d 

1154, 1161 (2d Cir. 1994) (same). Of course, if sending the 

letter again would require an "impracticable and extended 

search[ ]" for its addressee, Mullane, 339 U.S. at 317, then a 

reasonable person would not try again, and due process does 

not require another attempt.

The question, then, is under what circumstances the government must resend notice after learning its notice was not 

delivered on the first attempt. Timing is one element of the 

answer. The point of Mullane is to define what process is 

required "in any proceeding which is to be accorded finality." 

339 U.S. at 314. At some point, a forfeiture will reach a point 

of no return; if the United States makes a constitutionally 

adequate effort to give notice before then, the proceeding will 

be accorded finality, and the United States need not reopen it 

in light of information acquired afterwards. The United 

States suggested at oral argument that the letter it sent to 

the D.C. Jail may not have been returned to it until after the 

administrative forfeiture became final. But the United States 

failed to record the date on which it received the letter back; 

information on that issue is within the government's exclusive 

control, and so the government, and not Small, must bear the 

burden of this gap in the record.

The effect of later-acquired information also turns on what 

the United States knows about a claimant. When the United 

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States learns that a letter has not been delivered, it may in 

some cases be able to aver that it has done its best, and that 

it must now treat the claimant as "missing." Mullane, 336 

U.S. at 317.3 But if the United States has some additional 

piece of information that a reasonable person would use to 

locate the claimant, it is obliged under Mullane to try again, 

unless it would be burdensome to do so. See, e.g., United 

States v. Rodgers, 108 F.3d 1247, 1252-54 (10th Cir. 1997) 

(finding that, when a notice mailed to one address was 

returned undelivered, the government should have tried another address at which it knew that the claimant received 

mail, stored property, and paid the utility bills); Montgomery 

v. Scott, 802 F. Supp. 930, 936-37 (W.D.N.Y. 1992) (finding 

that, under the circumstances, the government should have 

tried to locate a claimant against whom it knew state criminal 

charges were pending, either through the court or through 

his attorney).

Certainly, if, as is true here, the government knows that a 

claimant is in prison, it cannot, with a straight face, claim it 

does not know where he is. The government can easily call 

the prison or the Bureau of Prisons, and find out whether the 

prisoner has been moved or released (and if so, to what 

address), or whether some problem at the prison prevented 

delivery. See Armendariz-Mata, 82 F.3d at 683 (finding, on 

facts indistinguishable from those here, that the government 

must try to give notice again when a notice sent to a jail is 

returned undelivered); Torres v. $36,256.80 U.S. Currency, 25 

F.3d at 1161 (finding that, after a notice was returned with 

the notation "Not at Chester County Prison," the government 

was obliged to call the Bureau of Prisons and inquire about 

the inmate's whereabouts). That, or something like it, is 

what the United States should have done here; there is no 

indication that it would have been at all burdensome for the 

United States to take this route. Its failure to do so renders 

__________

3 This is not to say that this claim will always be credible; it is 

possible that, before giving up, a reasonable person would try other 

ways of locating a claimantchecking telephone listings, for instance. We do not address this question here.

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its efforts to give notice constitutionally inadequate, and 

invalidates the forfeiture.

III. CONCLUSION 

We accordingly reverse the district court's order granting 

summary judgment. On remand, the district court shall 

grant Small a hearing on the merits of the forfeiture. See 

Boero v. DEA, 111 F.3d 301, 307 (2d Cir. 1997).

So ordered.

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