Opinion ID: 685598
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Dealing With The Dilemma

Text: 77 One possible solution to this problem would be to divide potentially innocent owners into two categories, pre-illegal-act owners and post-illegal-act transferees, and apply the 6109 Grubb Road disjunctive test to the first category but the conjunctive test to the second one. 26 That approach is, in fact, what one federal district court in Florida has taken. See United States v. One Parcel of Real Estate Located at 6640 S.W. 48th St., 831 F.Supp. 1578 (S.D.Fla.1993). In 6640 S.W. 48th Street, the court was confronted with essentially the same problem in this case (except that it was applying Sec. 881(a)(7)). The court recognized that 92 Buena Vista Avenue created a problem in applying the innocent owner provision to post-illegal-act transferees in jurisdictions (including its own) following the 6109 Grubb Road approach, since it realized that under such an approach, the claimant would be declared an innocent owner because [he] could not possibly have consented to ... the illegal activities. Id. at 1585. To avoid that result, the court declined to follow the 6109 Grubb Road approach in such a context, and concluded that the consent language should be ignored altogether when considering a post-illegal-act transferee: Consent is simply irrelevant when examining the innocent owner claims of post-illegal act transferees. Id. 78 By performing what might be termed an act of judicial legislation, the court closed a loophole in the statute and prevented post-illegal-act transferees with knowledge at the time of the transfer of the property's taint from escaping the forfeiture statute. But the statute simply draws no such distinction between pre-illegal-act owners and post-illegal-act transferees. We cannot justify reading the very same language in a statute disjunctively with respect to one class of owners and conjunctively with respect to another, in the absence of any instruction from Congress to do so. The dissent contends that a failure to draw such a distinction would constitute judicial abdication, citing cases which require us to construe a statute to avoid absurd results, if alternative interpretations are available and consistent with the legislative purpose. United States v. Schneider, 14 F.3d 876, 879-80 (3d Cir.1994) (citing Griffin v. Oceanic Contractors, 458 U.S. 564, 102 S.Ct. 3245, 73 L.Ed.2d 973 (1982)). The obligation as expressed in these cases does not involve or support, however, reading statutory language variably in the absence of a justification in either the language of the statute or the legislative history. In this case, there is no such instruction in either the statute or the legislative history. 79 Given that the language of the statute as interpreted by 6109 Grubb Road favors Goodman in this context, we are faced with, at the very least, an ambiguity in the statutory language. Because Sec. 881(a)(4) is punitive and quasi-criminal in nature, see Austin v. United States, --- U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 113 S.Ct. 2801, 2810-11, 125 L.Ed.2d 488 (1993) (holding that Secs. 881(a)(4) and 881(a)(7) are punitive in nature), we must apply the rule of lenity, which requires us to resolve the ambiguity in favor of the claimant, see United States v. Thompson/Center Arms Co., --- U.S. ----, ---- & n. 10, 112 S.Ct. 2102, 2110 & n. 10, 119 L.Ed.2d 308 (1992) (applying the rule of lenity in construing a punitive tax statute in a civil setting). 27 Thus, on remand, if Goodman can show that he did not know that the Rolls Royce was being used or going to be used in the DiSalvo or Ianarella meetings at the time they took place, then he will be able to show that he did not consent to the use and, under 6109 Grubb Road, will be entitled to the innocent owner defense. 80 We might be tempted to draw a similar distinction to that drawn by the court in 6640 S.W. 48th Street despite the absence of any guidance from Congress if the result we have reached here were unreasonable. But it is not unreasonable to think that post-illegal-act transferees of property interests would not be subject to forfeiture, at least with respect to Secs. 881(a)(4) and (7) forfeitures. The principal goal of Secs. 881(a)(4) and (7), which are aimed at forfeitures of property used to facilitate drug trafficking, is to give owners of property an incentive to prevent use of that property in the drug trade. People who are not owners at the time the act is committed are simply in no position to prevent the improper use. Penalizing such owners would do little to accomplish the ends of those forfeiture statutes. 28 81 Moreover, at a much more fundamental level, the Supreme Court's decision in 92 Buena Vista Avenue creates substantial doubt that post-illegal-act transferees without knowledge of the illegal act until after it happened are within the scope of the forfeiture statutes. In 92 Buena Vista Avenue, the Court discussed, in dicta, the question whether such owners were within the scope of Sec. 881(a)(6). Although the plurality suggested that equitable principles (and not the statutory language) might prevent a post-illegal-act transferee with knowledge of the illegal act at the time of the transfer from having the benefit of the innocent owner defense, it ultimately avoided the issue by stating that respondent has assumed the burden of convincing the trier of fact that she had no knowledge of the alleged source of [the property]. --- U.S. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 1137. In a concurring opinion, however, Justice Scalia stated that it would not be absurd to think that the forfeiture statutes did not reach post-illegal-act transferees who knew about the act creating the taint at the time of transfer, but not at the time it occurred:I do not find inconceivable the possibility that post-illegal-act transferees with post-illegal-act knowledge of the earlier illegality are provided a defense against forfeiture. The Government would still be entitled to the property held by the drug dealer and by close friends and relatives who are unable to meet their burden of proof as to ignorance of the illegal act when it occurred. 82 92 Buena Vista Avenue, --- U.S. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 1142 (Scalia, J., concurring). If Justice Scalia is right, allowing post-illegal-act transferees with post-illegal-act knowledge to be outside the scope of the forfeiture statute is defensible, and thus a straightforward application of 6109 Grubb Road to post-illegal-act transferees would not create an absurd result. 29 83 In his dissent in 92 Buena Vista Avenue, Justice Kennedy complained that the plurality's opinion leaves the forfeiture scheme that is the centerpiece of the Nation's drug enforcement laws in quite a mess. In the context of the present case, Justice Kennedy was only partially right. It is not so much the plurality's opinion in 92 Buena Vista Avenue that leaves the civil forfeiture laws in chaos, nor for that matter is it this court's interpretation of the statute in 6109 Grubb Road. In our estimation, the problem originated in Congress when it failed to draft a statute that takes into account the substantial differences between those owners who own the property during the improper use and some of those who acquire it afterwards. Although a schizophrenic reading of the text might solve the problem, the better solution, we believe, is to apply 6109 Grubb Road. Congress should redraft the statute, if it desires a different result. The judgment of the district court will be vacated and the case remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.