Shelby County DA Lynda Russell

This is one of those stories that slipped past me.  Thanks to Friend of Justice, James Canup for bringing it to my attention.  AGB

Authorities in the Deep East Texas town of Tenaha have been making the most of Texas forfeiture law.  According to a CNN report,  law enforcement in this town of 1,000 on the Louisiana border raked in $3 million between 2006 and 2008.  Most of the money, you will be surprised to learn, was seized from black and Latino motorists.

Forfeiture law sounds like a good idea.  Law enforcement seizes assets from drug dealers and funnels the filthy lucre into the war on drugs.  The good guys enrich themselves at the expense of the bad guys–who could ask for anything more?

Unfortunately, if you focus your attention on low-status minority drivers, you can forget about probable cause.  Why else would a black or brown individual have more than $20 in his pocket?  Amounts larger than that are clearly drug assets, right?

So you make the guy an offer he can’t refuse.  A Tennessee man was cruising through the Shelby County town a few years ago when the local cops pulled him over–he was doing 37 in a 35 zone (irrefutable evidence of drug dealing in itself).  Roderick Daniels was told that if he forfeited the $8500 they found in his wallet, money laundering charges wouldn’t be pressed. 

Daniels cooperated with the officers, then quietly sued the county.

 Daniels claims he intended to spend the $8500 on a car.  Who would pay cash for a used car, you ask?  Working class folks, that’s who.  I know people  who cash their pay check and then drive around to all the utility companies to pay their bills in cash.  Bank accounts are largely a middle class phenomenon; hard living folk prefer to deal in cash money.

Who knows, maybe Daniels was fresh from a big drug deal; but he doesn’t have to prove his innocence.  (If the picture above is anything to go by, Shelby County DA, Lynda Russell looks pretty suspect herself.)

Here’s the practical result of giving law enforcement a license to print money–motorists from out-of-town are considered guilty until they prove their innocence . . . or kiss the cash in their pockets good-bye.

In March of this year (just before joining staff of The Stars and Stripes) Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune wrote a feature story on Tenaha’s forfeiture frenzy.  “If used properly, it’s a good law-enforcement tool to see that crime doesn’t pay,” John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee, told Witt. “But in this instance, where people are being pulled over and their property is taken with no charges filed and no convictions, I think that’s theft.”

Can we safely assume that law enforcement will make “proper use” of forfeiture laws that can put $3 million in the pockets of a little town like Tenaha?  Whitmire clearly doesn’t think so–he and other Texas politicians have been working to rewrite the law to prevent further abuses.

Witt’s story in the Tribune highlights the work of the Nacogdoches attorney who filed a federal lawsuit on Daniel’s behalf.  David Guillory “combed through Shelby County court records from 2006 to 2008 and discovered nearly 200 cases in which Tenaha police seized cash and property from motorists. In about 50 of the cases,” Witt reports “suspects were charged with drug possession.  But in 147 others, Guillory said the court records showed, police seized cash, jewelry, cell phones and sometimes even automobiles from motorists but never found any contraband or charged them with any crime.”

Guillory was able to contact 40 of the motorists directly.  All but one of them were black. 

Here’s Guillory’s conclusion:

The whole thing is disproportionately targeted toward minorities, particularly African-Americans.  None of these people have been charged with a crime, none were engaged in anything that looked criminal. The sole factor is that they had something that looked valuable.

Tenaha may be the more aggressive at going after forfeiture money than most Texas towns, but the problem on display in this little town are ubiquitous.