Civil Forfeiture Laws: Effective Policing Or Overreach?

Speaker:

• Darpana Sheth, Attorney for the Institute for Justice

Civil asset forfeiture laws--both at the federal and state level--permit law enforcement to seize a person's property based on a suspicion that the property was the fruit of criminal activity or was used in a crime, even if no criminal charges are ever filed. Several billion dollars’ worth of property have been seized under these programs, which have been increasingly criticized on due process and other grounds.
 
Darpana Sheth, an attorney with the Institute for Justice in Washington, D.C., has been involved in high profile legal challenges to asset forfeiture laws. Most recently, the Institute for Justice and a group of property owners brought a class action lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia arising out of its asset forfeiture program, which seized over $64 million dollars from 2002 to 2012, and which allegedly sent property owners to a mysterious "Courtroom 478", staffed only by prosecutors and a scheduler, to contest the seizure. She will speak to the chapter about the history, purpose, and challenges to civil asset forfeiture programs.

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