Opinion ID: 1770580
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Private Property Rights

Text: We independently determine that § 1550(A)(7)(c) infringes upon the far reaching protections afforded to private property owners by the Louisiana Constitution. As we noted in Manuel and Green Van, any forfeiture procedure must comply with the protections extended by Article I, Section 4 of the 1974 Constitution. The basic right protected is the right to own and enjoy private property. Forfeiture of contraband per se is not an infringement on that right because an individual can have no ownership interest in items that are intrinsically illegal. Forfeiture of derivative contrabanditems which are not intrinsically illegal but which are used as the immediate instrument of a crimealso does not infringe on a protected interest because the right to own property is subject to reasonable statutory restrictions and the reasonable exercise of the police power. Art. I, § 4. However, because forfeiture of derivative contraband by the state is an exception to the basic right of an individual to own private property, the state necessarily must bear the burden of proving that the property in question qualifies as derivative contraband. As noted by the spokesman for the Declaration of Rights Committee at the 1973 Louisiana Constitutional Convention: the purpose of this language [Article I, Section 4's allowance for reasonable statutory restrictions and the reasonable exercise of police power] is to limit ... the exercise of the police power to a standard of reasonableness. Moreover, since the rule is protection of property rights and the exception is regulation of those rights, the burden of proof must shift from the owner to its regulator. In other words, it is not the duty of the property owner to demonstrate that a given regulatory scheme is wholly arbitrary; instead it is the responsibility of the state to show its reasonableness. XII Constitutional Convention of 1973, Verbatim Transcripts, 6, 20-21; Jenkins, The Declaration of Rights, 21 Loy.L.Rev. 9, 20 (1975) (Emphasis added). See also Hargrave, Declaration of Rights, 35 La.L.Rev. 1, 12 (1974). Article I, Section 4 expressly mandates that [p]ersonal effects, other than contraband, can never be taken. (Emphasis added). Once again, it should be the state's burden to prove the exception to the rulethat the personal effects in question were used as an immediate instrument of a crime and therefore are forfeitable. Any statutory provision which purports to relieve the state of that burden is not a reasonable statutory restriction or exercise of police power. La.R.S. 32:1550(A)(7)(c) is unconstitutional because it relieves the state of the burden of proving that seized currency is derivative contraband.