Michigan’s out-of-control drug forfeiture laws make national news

Ginnifer Hency testifies before
 the House Judiciary Committee

Michigan’s drug forfeiture laws, known by critics as “legalized larceny” by the cops, have made national news.

Forbes has a story that sheds light on the civil forfeiture process by focusing on Tuesday’s hearing of the state House Judiciary Committee. It is not a pretty picture.

Here’s what Annette Shattuck, a medical marijuana patient who was raided by the St. Clair County Drug Task Force, told lawmakers:

“After they breached the door at gunpoint with masks, they proceeded to take every belonging in my house,” Shattuck said. The cops’ haul included bicycles, her husband’s tools, a lawn mower, a weed whacker, her children’s Christmas presents, cash (totaling $85) taken from her daughter’s birthday cards, the kids’ car seats and soccer equipment, and vital documents such as driver’s licenses, insurance cards, and birth certificates.

“How do you explain to your kids when they come home and everything is gone?” Shattuck asked. She added that her 9-year-old daughter is now afraid of the police and “cried for weeks” because the cops threatened to shoot the family dog during the raid. Although “my husband and I have not been convicted of any crime,” Shattuck said, they cannot get their property back, and their bank accounts remain frozen.

Laws that were intended to target the assets of big-time drug dealers are being abused by law enforcement, some legislators believe, because of a perverse incentive: All the stuff cops take is liquidated and the proceeds flow into forfeiture funds for the police departments and prosecutor’s offices.

In February, the Detroit Free Press highlighted the Michigan process that allows police to take assets allegedly linked to crime without so much as filing charges, let alone obtaining a conviction. “Police seized more than $24 million in assets from Michiganders in 2013,” the paper reported. “In many cases the citizens were never charged with a crime but lost their property anyway.”

Jacob Sullum, a contributor to Forbes and a nationally syndicated columnist, summed up the situation this way:

“Now a bipartisan group of state legislators is trying to reform the laws that have turned Michigan cops into robbers.”
Sullum noted that bills backed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Klint Kesto (R-Commerce Township), Rep. Peter Lucido (R-Shelby Township) and Rep. Gary Glenn (R-Midland) would substantially revise the process by setting a much higher bar for cops seeking to seize assets.

Michigan first received a black eye on the national level in a 2010 report on forfeiture abuse from the Institute for Justice. Five years later, those laws remain on the books.

The Forbes piece may shame the House and Senate into taking action.

Another victim who testified on Tuesday was Ginnifer Hency of Smiths Creek, a medical marijuana patient who suffers from multiple sclerosis. Her home was raided last July. “They took everything,” she told the committee, including TV sets, ladders, her children’s cellphones and iPads.

The anti-drug unit found six ounces of marijuana and arrested Hency for possession with intent to deliver, “even though I was fully compliant with the Michigan medical marijuana laws.” She is allowed to possess and deliver as a state-registered caregiver for five other patients. A mother of four, Hency uses marijuana for pain relief based on her neurologist’s recommendation.
According to Forbes, a St. Clair County judge last week dismissed the charges against her. But when she asked about getting back her property, “the prosecutor came out to me and said, ‘Well, I can still beat you in civil court. I can still take your stuff.’”

When she heard that, Hency said, “I was at a loss. I literally just sat there dumbfounded.”