Court Opinion

ID: 9790477
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:53:33.409427+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:29.799052
License: Public Domain

KLEINSCHMIDT, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur with the result the majority reaches under the particular facts of this case. I see a fiction — arguably one that goes too far — in a case like United States v. Cre-tacci 62 F.3d 307 (9th Cir.1995) which held that property known to belong to the defendant was abandoned because the defendant did not file a claim in the forfeiture proceeding. I see a similar fiction in a case like United States v. Baird, 63 F.3d 1213 (3d Cir.1995), which held that currency found in the defendant’s house could be forfeited without implicating the double jeopardy clause because there was no finding that the property belonged to the defendant. But this is not a case in which a motor vehicle known to belong to the Defendant, or money found in her house were forfeited. Here, there is truly no way of knowing whether the Defendant had any interest in the money that was forfeited. For all we know, she was simply a go-between in the drug transaction. If she had no interest in the money, its forfeiture did not punish her in the slightest. See id. at 1217-19. Under these circumstances, I do not believe the guarantee against double *10jeopardy protects the Defendant from prosecution.