Opinion ID: 2389823
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: federal constitution's sixth amendment right to counsel and due process clause of the fifth amendment

Text: The U.S. Supreme Court has addressed the issues of whether the federal drug forfeiture statute, 21 U.S.C. § 853, authorizes a district court to enter a pretrial order freezing assets in a defendant's possession, even where the defendant seeks to use those assets to pay an attorney, and whether such an order is permitted under the U.S. Constitution. In a 5-4 decision in Caplin & Drysdale Chartered v. United States, 491 U.S. 617, 109 S.Ct. 2646, 105 L.Ed.2d 528 (1989), the sharply divided Supreme Court held that neither the Fifth nor Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution requires Congress to permit a defendant to use assets adjudged to be forfeitable to pay that defendant's legal fees. In Caplin, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court held that the federal forfeiture statute did not impermissibly burden a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to retain counsel of his choice. The majority reasoned that the statute deprived a defendant of any right, title, and interest in property obtained by illicit means. In the relation-back provision of the statute, [a]ll right, title and interest in property subject to criminal forfeiture rests in the United States upon the commission of the act giving rise to forfeiture. . . . 21 U.S.C. § 853(c) [1] . The statute does not differentiate property that is contraband per se from derivative contraband. Utilizing this legal fiction, the majority concluded that a defendant cannot give good title to property in which he had a possessory interest to an attorney because title to any forfeitable assets rests in the United States at the time of the criminal act giving rise to forfeiture. The majority stated, There is no constitutional principle that gives one person the right to give another's property to a third party, even where the person seeking to complete the exchange wishes to do so in order to exercise a constitutionally protected right. Caplin, 491 U.S. at 627-628, 109 S.Ct. at 2654, 105 L.Ed.2d at 543. The majority's initial analysis of the defendant's property interest in forfeitable assets segued easily into its ultimate conclusion that [a] defendant has no Sixth Amendment right to spend another person's money for services rendered by an attorney, even if those funds are the only way that the defendant will be able to retain the attorney of his choice. 491 U.S. at 625-626, 109 S.Ct. at 2652, 105 L.Ed.2d at 542. The majority held that the federal forfeiture statute does not prevent a defendant from hiring the attorney of his choice or disqualify any attorney from serving as a defendant's counsel. The amendment guarantees defendants in criminal cases the right to adequate representation, but those who do not have the means to hire their own lawyers have no cognizable complaint so long as they are adequately represented by attorneys appointed by the courts. 491 U.S. at 624, 109 S.Ct. at 2652, 105 L.Ed.2d at 541. Thus, while the Sixth Amendment guarantees a defendant the right to be represented by an attorney whom the defendant can afford to hire, the defendant may be deprived of that right by the government's retroactive seizure of assets that would have otherwise been available to secure legal representation. Speaking for the four dissenting justices, Justice Blackmun stated, Those jurists who have held forth against the result the majority reaches in these cases have been guided by one core insight: that it is unseemly and unjust for the Government to beggar those it prosecutes in order to disable their defense at trial. Caplin and Monsanto, 491 U.S. at 600, 109 S.Ct. at 2667, 105 L.Ed.2d at 512. While weakening the defendant's ability to hire counsel of his choice is advantageous for the government, the dissenters rejected the notion that it is a legitimate governmental interest that can defeat a constitutional right. Justice Blackmun stated, The Government claims a property interest in forfeitable assets, predicated on the relation-back provision, § 853(c), which employs a legal fiction to grant the Government title in all forfeitable property as of the date of the crime. The majority states: Permitting a defendant to use assets for his private purposes that, under this provision, will become the property of the United States if conviction occurs, cannot be sanctioned. Monsanto, ante, 491 U.S., at 612-13, 109 S.Ct., at 2665. But the Government's insistence that it has a paramount interest in the defendant's resources simply begs the constitutional question rather than answering it. Indeed, the ultimate constitutional issue might well be framed precisely as whether Congress may use this wholly fictive device of property law to cut off this fundamental right of the accused in a criminal case. If the right must yield here to countervailing governmental interests, the relation-back device undoubtedly could be used to implement the governmental interests, but surely it cannot serve as a substitute for them. In re Forfeiture Hearing as to Caplin & Drysdale, 837 F.2d 637, 652 (CA4 1988) (en banc) (dissenting opinion). Furthermore, the relation-back fiction gives the Government no property interest whatsoever in the defendant's assets before the defendant is convicted. In most instances, the assets the Government attempts to reach by using the forfeiture provisions of the Act are derivative proceeds of crime, property that was not itself acquired illegally, but was purchased with the profits of criminal activity. Prior to conviction, sole title to such assets  not merely possession, as is the case in the majority's bank robbery example, Caplin & Drysdale, ante, 491 U.S., at 624-28, 109 S.Ct., at 2652-2653  rests in the defendant; no other party has any present legal claim to them. Yet it is in the preconviction period that the forfeiture threat (or the force of a § 853(e)(1) restraining order) deprives the defendant of use of the assets to retain counsel. The Government's interest in the assets at the time of their restraint is no more than an interest in safeguarding fictive property rights, one which hardly weighs at all against the defendant's formidable Sixth Amendment right to retain counsel for his defense. 491 U.S. at 652-53, 109 S.Ct. at 2676-2677, 105 L.Ed.2d at 558-59. In Caplin and Monsanto, the majority rejected not only the challenge to the forfeiture statute under the Sixth Amendment, but also the challenge made under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The majority did not perceive that the petitioner's due process claim added anything to his Sixth Amendment claim because the elements of the fair trial guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment are largely defined by the provisions of the Sixth Amendment. Having concluded that the Sixth Amendment is not offended by the forfeiture statute, the majority found no merit in the petitioner's Fifth Amendment claim. Although the federal drug forfeiture statute is not identical to that of Pennsylvania, we conclude that the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Caplin and its companion case, United States v. Monsanto, 491 U.S. 600, 109 S.Ct. 2657, 105 L.Ed.2d 512 (1989) are dispositive of the federal constitutional issues raised by Mr. Hess in this appeal.