Abstract
"'Ladies and gentlemen, said U.S. Attorney Michael Norton, this is a gold mine." With these enticing words, Norton addressed Wyoming and Colorado law-enforcement officers at a federal asset forfeiture seminar held in Denver in August of 1991. The "gold mine" to which Norton referred is the vast amount of cash and property seized pursuant to federal and state civil forfeiture laws. And, indeed, civil forfeiture has proven to be exactly the monetary "gold mine" for law-enforcement agencies that Norton promised. Aside from its lucrativeness, the most alluring aspect of civil forfeiture is thatthe guilt or innocence of the possessor of the property is irrelevant. Instead, forfeiture is premised on the legal fiction that once property is used in a criminal enterprise, the property itself becomes the guilty party.
Recommended Citation
Wolferts, Judith Dennison
(1993)
"In re One Hundred Two Thousand
Dollars: Cash-Friendly
Civil Forfeiture,"
Utah Law Review: Vol. 1993:
No.
3, Article 6.
Available at:
https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol1993/iss3/6