David Seal

Guest Columnist

David Seal is an educator, business owner, artist, former county commissioner, and Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee activist who lives in Jefferson County.

Both of my children, ages 24 and 27, have been advised to never carry cash in their vehicles, especially westbound on Interstate 40, where they are 10 times more likely to be stopped than motorists in the eastbound lane and have their cash seized by law enforcement.

Westbound traffic is targeted because it is believed that cash travels west after illicit drugs have traveled east for delivery. Cops are able to do this without ever charging, let alone winning conviction of a property owner under Tennessee’s civil forfeiture law. Reasonable suspicion from law enforcement is all it takes to trigger a potential seizure.

Law enforcement agencies are incentivized because they get to keep most -- and sometimes all -- of the cash and property they seize. According to the Institute for Justice, Tennessee has “appalling civil forfeiture laws,” earning a D-.

Law-abiding citizens should not have to travel in fear while using public roads. But the list of well-documented abuse cases is likely to grow because Tennessee lawmakers are reluctant to repeal a decades-old set of statutes that were enacted to combat major drug trafficking operations by depriving suspected criminal cartels of their resources.

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These laws aren’t working as intended.

Tennessee is still arresting drug offenders at an extremely high rate compared with other states. If forfeiture was working, we should see a decrease and not an increase in drug-related arrests. Drug overdose deaths have also continued to rise under this failed practice.

Civil forfeiture in Tennessee has strayed far from its original design, sweeping up thousands of people in small-scale seizures that are just not practical for innocent victims to fight in court. A far cry from the kingpins this was intended to target.

Even worse, Tennessee’s laws require property owners to prove the innocence of their property. This is difficult and expensive in a system already designed to favor the government. Our founders wisely anticipated this possibility when they included due process in the Bill of Rights.

Tennessee forfeiture laws turn due process on its head.

But courts are beginning to take notice of the due process concerns caused by civil forfeiture. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in Leonard v. Texas: “Aggressive use of forfeiture proceedings has in recent decades become a favorite means of levying fines and is a practice that is often oppressive, unfair, and constitutionally dubious in its own right.”

Law enforcement is not the enemy and should not be blamed for an unconstitutional process that is authorized by state law. Instead of relying on unconstitutional seizures to fund their departments, we should ensure they receive the necessary and appropriate funding through a transparent budget process.

Other states have recognized this unconstitutional practice and have enacted reforms. Three states have banned the process entirely and 16 states require a conviction before proceeding on a forfeiture case.

The proper constitutional approach for Tennessee is to abandon civil asset forfeiture entirely and replace it with criminal asset forfeiture.

The latter requires a property owner to be convicted of a criminal offense eligible for forfeiture before their property can be kept by law enforcement. This ensures that crime doesn’t pay, while requiring a properly high standard of evidence, guaranteeing due process, and restoring the doctrine of innocent until proven guilty.

Criminal asset forfeiture would give law enforcement the tools to fight crime while preserving the God-given rights of law-abiding citizens.

David Seal is an educator, business owner, artist, former county commissioner, and Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee activist who lives in Jefferson County.