Minnesota Now Requires A Criminal Conviction Before People Can Lose Their Proper

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In a big win for property rights and due process, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton signed a bill yesterday to curb an abusive—and little known—police practice called civil forfeiture. Unlike criminal forfeiture, under civil forfeiture someone does not have to be convicted of a crime, or even charged with one, to permanently lose his or her cash, car or home.


The newly signed legislation, SF 874, corrects that injustice. Now the government can only take property if it obtains a criminal conviction or its equivalent, like if a property owner pleads guilty to a crime or becomes an informant. The bill also shifts the burden of proof onto the government, where it rightfully belongs. Previously, if owners wanted to get their property back, they had to prove their property was not the instrument or proceeds of the charged drug crime. In other words, owners had to prove a negative in civil court. Being acquitted of the drug charge in criminal court did not matter to the forfeiture case in civil court.

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Not only was there an appalling lack of due process for civil forfeiture proceedings, law enforcement can keep up to 90 percent of the proceeds from forfeited property. That clearly creates a perverse incentive to police for profit. A report by the Institute for Justice, “A Stacked Deck: How Minnesota’s Civil Forfeiture Laws Put Citizens’ Property at Risk,” found that forfeiture revenue grew by 75 percent from 2003 to 2010, earning police almost $30 million. In 2012 alone, there were 6,851 property seizures worth a collective $6.7 million, according to the state auditor’s office. This growth occurred despite the fact that the crime rate was actually dropping in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

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