Civil forfeiture as jeopardy

Article Abstract:

The U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Ursery held that civil forfeiture is not a punishment and thus does not raise double jeopardy concerns when a criminal prosecution is pursued for the same offense. The court should instead have regarded civil forfeiture as a punitive measure, except when the forfeited property is contraband or proceeds from a crime. The arguments given by the court are overly formalistic, based on the distinction between in rem and in personam actions. A better balance could have been attained between the government's law enforcement interest and protection of individual rights.

Double jeopardy

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Innocent owners and guilty property

Article Abstract:

The U.S. Supreme Court reached the correct decision in Bennis v. Michigan, but based its opinion too much on precedent and thus failed to adequately deal with the constitutional issues related to the case. The case involved abatement of a car under Michigan's public nuisance statute, without any wrongdoing or negligence attributed to the owner. The court cited the past practice of in rem forfeiture and rejection of 'innocent owner' defenses in support of its position. The court should, however, have given a more reasoned analysis of the precedents and their relevance to the case.

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The guilty and the "innocent": an examination of alleged cases of wrongful conviction from false confessions

Article Abstract:

Richard Leo and Richard Ofshe investigated 60 cases of alleged police-induced false confessions by suspects and concluded that 29 of these cases resulted in erroneous convictions. However, they based their research largely on secondary sources such as newspaper accounts of trials rather than on primary sources. Detailed analysis of the primary records from nine of the cases showed that the convictions were correct. Leo and Ofshe's over-generalizations exaggerated and distorted the false confession problem.

United States, Research, Criticism and interpretation, Confession (Law), Confessions (Law), Judicial error, Leo, Richard A., Ofshe, Richard J.

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