A invoice handed by the Senate final week would make it tougher for police to grab and preserve money and different property they believe is said to the drug commerce.
The replace comes after a civil rights committee blasted the Bay State’s legal guidelines as woefully old-fashioned.
“The civil forfeiture laws in Massachusetts are some of the most outdated in the country with some statutes dating back over 230 years,” the Massachusetts Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights mentioned in a memo backing the invoice. “The Commonwealth holds the distinction as having the lowest burden of proof of any state for police and prosecutors to confiscate the property of individuals.”
Current regulation permits the police and prosecutors to grab property and money they allege has been concerned in a criminal offense. The burden of proof for seizure beneath present regulation is possible trigger. And as soon as that property has been seized, an individual is pressured to show it was obtained lawfully.
The apply has been criticized for incentivizing departments to grab money and property.
The Committee famous that “law enforcement agencies keep up to 100 percent of asset forfeiture proceeds. In certain instances, civil forfeiture funds allow local police departments to purchase equipment without approval from the public, circumventing disclosure.”
The Senate invoice handed final week would enhance the burden of proof, solely permitting for seizures when the products will be proven as ill-gotten beneficial properties by a preponderance of proof.
The invoice additionally permits entry to state-appointed attorneys for folks to attempt to reclaim their property in forfeiture proceedings.
“Under current Massachusetts law, individuals who believe that their possessions were wrongly forfeited are required to demonstrate that these items were not involved in a crime or otherwise do not meet the standard required for forfeiture. This puts the burden of proof on the accused, rather than on law enforcement or prosecutors, making it difficult and time-consuming to repossess forfeited items,” Senate President Karen Spilka’s workplace mentioned after the invoice handed Thursday.
“(The bill) rectifies this by requiring that law enforcement or prosecutors prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that property seized is in fact subject to civil asset forfeiture under Massachusetts law,” they mentioned.
Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni criticized the change, saying mentioned the invoice ignores the impression of crime on communities.
“This bill affords no respect to those who have lost a loved one to drug addiction, no respect to our neighborhoods and communities fighting against drug dealers, no respect to law enforcement who’s working every day to hold dealers and traffickers accountable, and no respect to the taxpaying citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” he mentioned.
The invoice now awaits motion within the House the place it joins a bunch of different acts lined up for passage earlier than the tip of their two-year session on July 31.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”