Court Opinion

ID: 9483644
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:27:41.137278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:45.496839
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The particularity requirement of Rule E(2)(a) relating to a complaint for forfeiture does not give the Government a license to take money from a citizen, absent a showing of probable cause that the money was connected with narcotic activity. Senior United States District Judge Elmo Hunter of the Western District of Missouri, a distinguished jurist with a reputation for fairness of view and soundness of decision-making, struck the complaint for forfeiture “[bjecause the tenuous facts recited in the affidavit are devoid of any sufficient nexus between the defendant currency and any proscribed activity ...” Dist. Ct. Order dated December 11, 1991 at 12. I agree with this conclusion and adopt for this dissent the opinion of Judge Hunter.
State and local law enforcement agencies share in federal forfeiture proceeds. See United States v. Trotter, 912 F.2d 964 (8th Cir.1990) (en banc). In this forfeiture proceeding, the smell of marijuana on the currency was the only direct evidence linking the money to narcotic activity. The rights of citizens are endangered when we permit the Government to deprive a citizen of his possessions on such vacuous opinion evidence coming from a police officer whose department would receive a direct financial benefit from the forfeiture. The “smell of money” should not motivate law enforcement agencies to argue that a “smell on money” is sufficient proof of illicit narcotic activity.
Courts should be vigilant in protecting the rights of all under law. Here, Johnson need not prove where and how he received the money; this is not an Internal Revenue Service investigation. The Government must establish a connection between the money and dealing in drugs. As Judge Hunter so cogently reasoned, that connection does not exist except as a matter of imagination.
ORDER
The suggestion for rehearing en banc is denied. The petition for rehearing is also denied. Judge BRIGHT would grant the petition.