Opinion ID: 842413
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: majority's reliance on irrelevant cases

Text: I cannot recall an opinion of this Court that employs caselaw as much to obscure as to illuminate. The several dozen cases cited in the majority opinion, with a single exception, either stand for undisputed propositions of law or are irrelevant to the question whether the surrounding circumstances and implications of illegally seized property may be considered to support a forfeiture. With that single exception, the cases cited by the majority can fairly be characterized as standing for three distinct propositions of lawnone of which is in dispute and none of which actually supports the rule announced by the majority. These propositions of law may be stated as follows: (1) illegally seized property may only be offered into evidence for the limited purpose of establishing its existence and the court's jurisdiction over it; (2) illegally seized property may still be forfeited, as long as the forfeiture is supported by sufficient untainted evidence; and (3) the circumstances surrounding the lawful seizure of property, such as the amount or value of the property, a claimant's lack of legitimate income, the place where the property was seized, and a claimant's false statements, can be relied on to support a forfeiture. There is no dispute, for example, that illegally seized property may be offered into evidence for the limited purpose of establishing its existence and the court's jurisdiction. Moreover, there is no dispute that illegally seized property may be forfeited on the basis of other, lawfully obtained evidence. However, the cases cited by the majority in support of these commonplace propositions of law do not speak to the permissibility of allowing consideration of the surrounding circumstances or implications of illegally seized property. From a commonplace proposition, the majority proceeds to an invented proposition. Indeed, some of the cases cited by the majority are not merely irrelevant, but support the opposite of the majority's new rule. For example, in $639,558, evidence of a positive drug-dog sniff of the claimant's luggage and money seized from his luggage were suppressed because of an illegal search. With that evidence suppressed, the only remaining untainted evidence was the fact that the claimant was engaged in a suspicious form of travel and that he was departing from a city known to be a source of drugsevidence that bears a striking similarity to the untainted evidence in the instant case. Solely on the basis of the untainted evidence, the prosecutor conceded, [7] and the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals did not dispute, that there was insufficient evidence remaining to support the forfeiture. In other words, the surrounding circumstances of the illegally seized money, such as the fact that the claimant was carrying a large amount of money, were not considered and, therefore, the forfeiture proceeding was dismissed. Likewise, in Monkey, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals did not rely on the surrounding circumstances of the evidence illegally seized from the fishing vessel, but rather held that a forfeiture was supported in spite of the suppression on the basis of inferences resulting from the claimant's criminal trial and certain admissions made by the claimant in his appellate brief. Finally, the majority purports to set forth a catalog of cases supporting its view that the surrounding circumstances and implications of illegally seized property may be considered to support a forfeiture. However, each of these cases, with, as already noted, a single exception, involved legal searches and seizures. Once more, there is no dispute that evidence drawn from lawfully seized property is fully admissible in support of a forfeiture. Any information concerning such evidence, including their surrounding circumstances and implications, was admissible in support of their forfeiture. Most certainly, these cases do not stand for the majority's proposition that unlawfully obtained evidence may be relied on to sustain its own forfeiture. [8] Once the majority's irrelevant caselaw is set aside, there is not much left. All that remains is a single trial court decision containing not a single sentence of reasoning and not a single word of analysis, indeed a decision subsequently rendered a nullity by the appellate court. United States v. $22,287 in United States Currency, 520 F.Supp. 675, 680 (E.D.Mich., 1981). [9] In $22,287, the court noted that $22,287, which had been excluded, constituted an unusually large amount of cash for any individual to have on hand, [and] is very close to the price of `nineteen five' ($ 19,500.00) noted by Johnny [an alleged drug dealer] as the cost of a `lb[.]' (pound of heroin). As a result, the court relied on this excluded evidence, as well as other untainted evidence, to grant the forfeiture. The court reached this conclusion with absolutely no analysis justifying its reliance on the suppressed evidence. Moreover, the persuasive force of this casealready minimal to begin with given its absence of analysisis further diminished, if not altogether nullified, by the fact that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently determined that no illegal search had occurred and therefore rejected any exclusion of evidence. 709 F.2d 442 (C.A.6, 1983). [10]