A Win for Civil Forfeiture, but the Supreme Court Is Skeptical

SIAP

National Review

quote:

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The Supreme Court this morning, in Culley v. Marshall, handed a modest victory to aggressive civil-forfeiture schemes, but the Court’s lineup may presage trouble for civil forfeiture at the Court in the near future. Culley involved two Alabama cases where police arrested a driver for having drugs in a car they didn’t own, and seized the car, requiring the owners to wait months to get the car back. In one case, the driver was the owner’s college-aged son who had the car on campus; in the other, it was the owner’s friend who had borrowed the car.

The owners argued that the due-process clause required not only a prompt hearing on whether the government could keep the car permanently, but also a preliminary hearing on whether the car could be held by the government pending the final hearing. The Court voted 6–3 on ideological lines for the government, ruling that the due-process clause requires only a prompt hearing to determine the propriety of seizure, and not an additional preliminary hearing.

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If you read the article fully, it's clear this was not the case to rule on the constitutionality of civil forfeiture.

Unfortunate, except they seem to want to really get this in front of them.

I hope they do.