Homeowners sue Philly D.A. over seizure of Property via Forfeiture

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Plaintiffs Markela and Chris Sourovelis embrace as they stand beside attorney Darpana Sheth during a Tuesday news conference about a federal lawsuit alleging that the City of Philadelphia has been seizing and selling millions in property from city residents, including those not charged with crimes. MATT ROURKE / Associated Press

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Christos Sourovelis already considered May 8 - the day he dropped his son off for a stint in court-ordered rehab - as one of the worst in his life. Then, it got worse.

That afternoon, more than a month after police arrested their son for selling $40 worth of drugs outside of their house in the city's Somerton section, Sourovelis received a frantic call from his wife. Officers had returned, and this time they were looking to take their home.

So began his family's introduction to the city's civil forfeiture dragnet - a program ostensibly aimed at depriving drug traffickers of cash, cars and other fruits of their crimes but one increasingly under a microscope for cases like Sourovelis', in which homeowners never accused of anything still face eviction from houses only tangentially related to a crime.

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"The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office has turned this tool into a veritable machine, devouring real and personal property from thousands of residents, many of whom are innocent, and converting that property into a $5.8 million average annual stream of revenue," said Darpana Sheth, a lawyer with the Virginia-based Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public-interest law firm with libertarian leanings.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in a federal court in Philadelphia, alleges that the city's Public Nuisance Task Force makes millions each year in a Kafkaesque system designed to grind down or trick often innocent property owners until they give in or make procedural missteps that can result in the loss of their property.

The plaintiffs seek only a nominal $6 in damages each, but have asked a judge to shut down the city's civil forfeiture program on constitutional grounds. Their lawyers are seeking class-action status for the case.

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Proceeds from seized properties are funneled back to local prosecutors and police. And unlike criminal cases, which must be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt," the civil route offers prosecutors many advantages.

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Proceeds make up almost 20 percent of the annual budget of the District Attorney's Office. Forty percent pays for prosecutor salaries, including those of the lawyers involved in forfeiture proceedings. Critics say those numbers create a clear profit motive for city prosecutors to pursue forfeiture actions at all costs.

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