Court Opinion

ID: 9480645
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:54:27.348723+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:49.260287
License: Public Domain

KRUPANSKY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority, in ruling that the government becomes, in effect, a judgment creditor against the entireties estate of Mitchell and Leah Marks (appellee) by virtue of Mitchell’s conviction for a narcotics offense, ignores the compelling public interest underlying the federal criminal penalty of forfeiture intended by Congress as an immediate, certain, and severe deterrent of uniform implementation calculated to curb the cascading nationwide drug trade. The majority’s result, which by operation of law converts the government-forfeitee into a life-long judgment creditor of the defendant-forfeitor, suspends the ultimate resolution of rights as compelled by the forfeiture pending the death of one of the spouses. While this may be the accommodation that has been achieved at state law between the customary rights of a judgment creditor seeking enforcement of a judgment and the traditional insulation of the entireties estate from the debts of a single spouse, it finds no support in either the federal criminal or civil forfeiture provisions, 21 U.S.C. §§ 853 and 881, and, moreover, is in direct conflict with the congressional commitment to repress the narcotics enterprises that are destroying the moral fiber of the country. The suggested result, in failing to strike a proper balance between an innocent spouse’s interest in jointly owned property and the interest of the government in punishing convicted drug dealers through forfeiture of property acquired or used in the furtherance of their illicit drug initiatives, marks an undesirable evisceration of the congressional declarations underlying the forfeiture laws.
The government argues persuasively that the overwhelmingly coercive policies of criminal and civil forfeitures would be critically eroded if the efficacy of forfeiture orders were made to depend upon disparate state property laws. The majority’s disposition — which represents an overweaning solicitude for state property law — amounts to a public announcement to criminal defendants that their property will be subjected to a wide disparity of treatment in different states, and that, therefore, the penal consequences of their conduct will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, despite their violation of federal laws.1 The better result is to preempt state law with a federal common law of forfeiture whenever, as here, the property interest of the innocent third party is defined by state law with less than certainty.
In reaching its disposition, the majority relies heavily on the absence of express language in 21 U.S.C. § 853 to support the result urged upon this court by the government. Section 853 is admittedly silent as to its application to real property held as an estate in the entireties. On its face, the statute does not clearly direct any of the results variously espoused by either the government or by the appellee. It does not mandate that a forfeiture be vacated upon the petition of an innocent spouse who holds real property with the criminal defendant by the entireties; it does not require that the innocent spouse be completely divested of her interest in real property held in an estate by the entireties; nor, admittedly, does it unequivocally endorse the result suggested herein — partial and instant divestiture of the convicted spouse’s interest in property held by the entireties as a means of equitably accommodating the interests of both the government and the innocent spouse.
“The starting point in every ease involving construction of a statute is the language itself.” Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U.S. 723, 756, 95 S.Ct. *3541917, 1935, 44 L.Ed.2d 539 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring). In conducting this inquiry, however, “we are not guided by a single sentence [of the statute] or member of a sentence, but look to the provisions of the whole law, and to its object and policy.” Massachusetts v. Morash, 490 U.S. 107, -, 109 S.Ct. 1668, 1673, 104 L.Ed.2d 98 (1989) (emphasis added).
This is not a case where the statute readily provides an answer to the question. Accordingly, the court must look beyond the language of the statute and resort to traditional tools of statutory construction. The majority concededly undertakes a serious effort to interpret the forfeiture statute, but in doing so completely ignores the paramount congressional interest in effectuating a uniform, immediate, certain, harsh and efficacious sanction against those who elect to profit from a venture as pernicious as trading in drugs. In reaching this result, the majority’s sole reference point extrinsic to 21 U.S.C. § 853 is the classical approach to an estate by the en-tireties as defined by state law. To conclude that this rather arcane and archaic definition of marital property rights, with all of its attendant obstacles (including insulation of the estate from the unilateral debts of one spouse), resolves the issues joined in the instant case with any clarity is to find guidance in the least promising of several sources extraneous to the statute.
Logic dictates that the most reasonable source of outside guidance inheres in the persuasive policies underlying federal forfeiture schemes.2 Where the federal policies in favor of a given result are overpowering, and the countervailing state rule of law so imperfectly defined, logic and sound judgment direct the evolution of a federal common law addressing the disposition of forfeited marital property which preempts contrary provisions of the myriad spousal estates recognized in the various states. The Supreme Court has not — as the majority opinion would imply — rendered state domestic property law insusceptible to the traditional principles under which federal law is given preemptive effect:
These principles are not inapplicable here simply because real property law is a matter of special concern to the States: “The relative importance to the State of its own law is not material when there is a conflict with a valid federal law, for the Framers of our Constitution provided that the federal law must prevail.” Free v. Bland, 369 U.S. 663, 666, 82 S.Ct. 1089, 1092, 8 L.Ed.2d 180 (1962).
Fidelity Federal Savings & Loan Assoc. v. De La Cuesta, 458 U.S. 141, 153, 102 S.Ct. 3014, 3022, 73 L.Ed.2d 664 (1981).
21 U.S.C. § 853, by its terms, permits and even invites this approach. In subsection (a) of the enactment, forfeiture is mandated “irrespective of any contrary provision of state law_” 21 U.S.C. § 853(a). In subsection (n), however, under which appellee initiated her petition to modify the forfeiture order, the degree to which forfeiture is amended in favor of innocent third parties tacitly relies on the extent of that third party’s interest in the property as defined by state law. Herein is created an internal tension, resolution of which is guided by subsection (o), which provides that section 853 be liberally construed so as to accomplish its remedial purposes.3 Thus, incorporated into the statute is a common rule of statutory construction: when the plain language is inadequate to *355resolve a given issue, resort, in the first instance, to a construction that will serve the statute’s purposes.4 Read in pari materia, these three subsections require that: 1) state law define the scope of a petitioner’s interest; 2) state law not undermine the intent and purpose of forfeiture; and 3) any difficulties in construing the various provisions of the statute should be resolved so as to serve its “remedial purposes.” These provisions permit reconciliation of the competing interests involved in the instant case in a manner that is not accomplished by the majority’s disposition.
Federal criminal forfeiture policies demand that defined property of Mitchell Marks, the convicted narcotics dealer, be subject to the sanction of forfeiture. Solicitude for appellee’s interests as an innocent spouse counsels against completely divesting her of her interest in the property. The statute, inconsistently perhaps, mandates both that state law not interfere with forfeiture and that state law be consulted to define the rights that must be preserved in third parties. When, as in this case, state law defines those rights ambiguously, it stands to reason that a preemptive federal common law be developed to define the rights resulting from the guilty spouse’s conviction with certainty, immediacy, and some degree of spontaneous penal force.
This may seem harsh, but the compelling nature of these policies and the likelihood and acceptability of severe results has been underscored and approved in two recent decisions of the Supreme Court in which the forfeiture provisions were upheld against constitutional challenges. United States v. Monsanto, — U.S. -, 109 S.Ct. 2657, 105 L.Ed.2d 512 (1989); Caplin & Drysdale, Chtd. v. United States, — U.S.-, 109 S.Ct. 2646, 105 L.Ed.2d 528 (1989). In the Monsanto case the Court rejected the argument that assets which an accused had designated for the retention of legal counsel of his choice were implicitly excepted from the statute’s enumeration of forfeitable property. The Court admitted that the plain meaning of the statute could conceivably result in “harsh” consequences, making it difficult if not impossible for the accused to retain the counsel of his choice — possibly forcing resort to court-appointed counsel — but that the forfeiture statute “mandates” such harsh results. 109 S.Ct. at 2665.5
In the companion Caplin & Drysdale case, the Court addressed substantially the same issue in constitutional terms, concluding that, under the sixth amendment, a criminal defendant could be deprived of assets intended for the retention of legal counsel of his choice. In language that affirmed in no uncertain terms the paramount character of the policies underlying the federal forfeiture provisions, the Court concluded “that there is a strong governmental interest in obtaining full recovery of all forfeitable assets, an interest that overrides any Sixth Amendment interest in permitting criminals to use assets adjudged *356to be forfeitable to pay for their defense.” 109 S.Ct. at 2655.
Accordingly, I would conclude that absent meaningful language in the statute to the contrary, it was certainly erroneous for the district court in the case at bar to award an innocent spouse a full, unencumbered fee simple interest in the property. Such a gift constitutes a windfall, conferring on the innocent spouse more than she had before her husband exposed the property to forfeiture by engaging in his illicit drug enterprise. It is equally in error for the panel majority to place the government in the position of a life-long judgment creditor, thus holding realization of its rights, and of the rights of the spouse, in abeyance pending the demise of one of the parties to the marital relationship. Moreover, the majority places upon the district court not only the burden of formulating a plan for the investment and management of the res over a protracted period of time, but also the time-consuming burden of monitoring the fund in a fiduciary capacity for the balance of the Marks’s lives.
In support of its conclusions, the panel majority cites to a footnote in the Eleventh Circuit’s recent opinion in United States v. One Single Family Residence, 894 F.2d 1511 (11th Cir.1990), in which that court under circumstances somewhat similar to those presented in the case at bar conjectured that the government could “file[] a lis pendens against the property” noticing the public of an inchoate, undefinable potential cloud on title to the realty. See id. at 1516-17 n. 6. This is a forfeiture in name only, devoid of practical consequence. The forfeiture in One Single Residence was nominal because, as the majority fails to note, the decision awarded the entire estate to the innocent spouse, and the reference to the recording of a lis pendens was, in essence, a palliative sop to the government. Specifically, the Eleventh Circuit, invoking convoluted reasoning, concluded that the innocent spouse in an en-tireties estate stands to lose nothing in the wake of the defendant spouse’s conviction, because her interest in the estate theoretically extended to the entire property. Conveniently ignoring the very tangible ownership interest of the convicted spouse (which, too, extended to the entire property), the Eleventh Circuit concluded that “no interest exist in the subject property which can be forfeited to the government....” Id. at 1516. The district court in the case at bar, treating the proceeds from the sale of the subject property as a substitute res, arrived at the same conclusion as the Eleventh Circuit in One Single Family Residence, yet the majority disposition in the instant case vacates the district court’s judgment. Thus, the majority inconsistently expresses approval of the Eleventh Circuit’s resolution of the issue confronting this appeal, yet reverses the district court’s disposition. Moreover, the Eleventh Circuit’s lis pendens obiter, as does the majority disposition herein, effectively places a final resolution of the real property rights between the owners of the entireties estate and the government in abeyance pending divorce or death. It is also relevant to note that the Eleventh Circuit’s suggestion that the government record a lis pendens constitutes a resolution that is even more indefinite and uncertain than the majority’s disposition herein.
The equitable resolution of the uncomfortable conflicts exposed in this case is neither a judgment lien nor a lis pendens, but rather a severance of the entireties estate in favor of a flexible tenancy in common between appellee and the government. At once, this solution serves the overriding national need for immediacy, certainty, uniformity, and efficacy in forfeiture, equitably mitigates the pain that ap-pellee must inevitably suffer in the wake of her husband’s criminal transgressions, and resolves the matter with the immediacy, certainty, and finality that is to be expected in the wake of a criminal conviction.
I would, for the reasons expressed herein, reverse the district court and remand the case for final disposition not inconsistent with this opinion.

. The majority suggests that the "relation back” provision of the criminal forfeiture statute, 21 U.S.C. § 853(c), by which the government may invalidate a conveyance and compel the forfeiture of property that has been transferred to third parties after "commission of the act giving rise to the forfeiture," obviates any concern for artful planning on the part of drug dealers. The majority’s reliance on this provision is misplaced in light of the sophistication of many of these specialized criminals, who are sagacious enough to insulate their property from forfeiture before commission of the act giving rise to the forfeiture.

. Many familiar canons of statutory construction have "long been subordinated to the doctrine that courts will construe the details of an act in conformity with its dominating general purpose, will read text so far as the meaning of words fairly permits so as to carry out in particular cases the general expressed legislative policy.” Securities and Exchange Comm'n v. C.M. Joiner L. Corp., 320 U.S. 344, 350-51, 64 S.Ct. 120, 123, 88 L.Ed. 88 (1943), cited with approval in Herman & McLean v. Huddleston, 459 U.S. 375, 388 n. 23, 103 S.Ct. 683, 690 n. 23, 74 L.Ed.2d 548 (1983).

. "Remedial purposes," as the term is applied to the entirety of section 853, is an inherently ambiguous phrase. One can perceive numerous "remedial purposes” incorporated into the provisions of section 853, not the least of which are subsection (a)’s remedial purpose of deterring crime through threatening drug dealers with loss of their assets, and subsection (n)’s remedial purpose of protecting the interests of innocent third parties.

. The purpose underlying the statute is reflected in its legislative history. The criminal forfeiture provision was part of a bill “designed to enhance the use of forfeiture, and in particular, the sanction of criminal forfeiture, as a law enforcement tool in combatting two of the most serious crime problems facing the country: racketeering and drug trafficking.” 1984 U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News 3182, 3374. As Judge Greenberg of the Third Circuit recently remarked in his dissent to that court’s denial of a petition for rehearing en banc in a case involving the meaning of the “innocent owner” exception to forfeiture, Congress clearly intended “to make forfeiture one of the strongest weapons in the government's arsenal in the war against drug trafficking.” United States v. Property Known as 6109 Grubb Road, 890 F.2d 659, 663 (3rd Cir.1989) (Greenberg, J., dissenting).

. This court has not avoided interpreting the criminal forfeiture statute in a manner that produces admittedly “harsh" results. United States v. Campos, 859 F.2d 1233, 1238 (6th Cir.1988) (“We recognize that this interpretation of the forfeiture statute [denying unsecured creditors cognizable rights in forfeited property] mandates a harsh result, but it is a result frequently mandated by forfeiture procedures") (emphasis added). Other courts likewise have not been reluctant to visit the hardships of forfeiture on innocent spouses. See, e.g., United States v. One Parcel of Real Estate, 715 F.Supp. 355, 356-57 (S.D.Fla.1989), in which the court noted that “[t]he fruits of [the convicted husband's] endeavors were swift but devastating,” and that the future rights of the parties were subject to drastic alteration through the "somewhat harsh” operation of the forfeiture statutes.