Seized money saga
Finally, Arizona prosecutors have let loose of $39,500 seized from a small-business trucking company owner who had hoped to spend the cash to buy a truck at auction.
The ordeal has lasted well over two and a half years. Even now, it is not yet over.
The money was seized Aug. 17, 2020, after Jerry Johnson had flown into Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. He was headed to Ritchie Bros. Auction to buy a third truck for his small fleet. He brought cash with him. It was stowed in cardboard boxes, one in his carry-on backpack and another in his checked luggage.
At baggage claim, airport police stopped him to interrogate him. On the pretext that it smelled like marijuana, the money was confiscated on suspicion that it was drug money being laundered. Johnson was not charged with a crime. Officers seized the money, and prosecutors put up a strong fight to keep it.
Johnson owns Triple J. Logistics, which is licensed in Maryland. He works from the Charlotte, N.C., area hauling dry van freight.
He is still running the two trucks he had when the ordeal began, a 2005 Peterbilt 587 with more than 1 million miles on it and a 2007 Peterbilt 587. He had hoped to purchase a 2016 Pete with a Cummins engine.
More than cash taken
When law enforcement officers seized the money, they took more than just the cash. Luckily, he said, his trucks didn’t break down while Arizona authorities held onto his money.
“They kept the money from me that I could have been investing in my company. If anything bad had happened in that time, I would have had to shut down,” he said.
They also robbed him of the opportunity of buying another truck. In August 2020, used truck prices were more affordable than they are now.
“I can’t buy a truck at present rates. Right now, the same truck would be 60-70 grand. I can’t even afford to buy another truck,” Johnson said.
The state returned Johnson’s money and paid less than 0.8% in accrued interest but refused to pay his attorneys’ fees and interest at Arizona’s statutory rate for judgments, according to a statement from Institute for Justice. It is the nonprofit public interest law firm that represented Johnson’s appeal to get his money back.
“Jerry’s case potently illustrates the injustice of civil forfeiture even when someone ultimately gets their property back,” Dan Alban, senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, said in a statement to the media. “It took 31 months for Jerry to finally get his savings back even though he was never even charged with a crime. In the middle of the COVID pandemic, Jerry had to find a way to keep operating his small trucking business after its working capital was seized while also scraping together money to hire an attorney (before the Institute for Justice took his case). We’re glad that the money has been returned, but Jerry still needs to be made whole.”
The Institute for Justice filed a motion for more interest and for legal costs to be paid. In early April, that demand was met. The civil asset forfeiture case against Johnson’s seized cash was dismissed with prejudice, meaning the case is at an end. The court ruled that Johnson is eligible to get 9% interest and to seek attorney’s fees.
Background
Before he flew to Phoenix in hopes of buying a truck, Johnson had put some trouble behind him. He had been convicted of possession of marijuana and cocaine, but it was 10 years or more in the past. Johnson had moved on.
At the Phoenix airport, a plain-clothes law enforcement officer stopped him. When Johnson told him he didn’t have time, the officer showed his badge.
He was asked if he was carrying any drugs, and Johnson replied no. Then he was asked if he had a large sum of money. Yes, he did. How did he get it, they asked? It was from his savings and from money loaned to him by an uncle, he told them.
They also asked if he had booked the flight and if he had done it within the past 24 hours. Yes, he booked the flight, but he wasn’t certain when he did it.
After a lengthy interrogation, he was offered a choice.
“He said you can sign this paper and you’re free to go. If you don’t sign it, he said I would be arrested for money laundering,” Johnson told Land Line in 2021.
The paper was a “disclaimer of ownership” form that said he was surrendering ownership of his money. Johnson didn’t read it, however, and did as he was told under threat. They gave him a paper verifying the amount taken from him.
With his bid money seized, Johnson didn’t even get to see the Peterbilt he had hoped to buy. He headed home the next day.
Johnson hired an attorney before the Institute for Justice stepped in. In the initial court proceedings to get his money back, the judge sided with prosecutors’ suspicions of Johnson’s money being involved in a drug money laundering operation. That was despite an affidavit from Johnson’s uncle explaining the source of the money and that prosecutors had no evidence to the contrary.
When that decision was appealed, the judges seemed disdainful of the previous ruling and the prosecutor’s arguments. One judge noted the prosecutor was “pretty dismissive” and asked what evidence showed it was not Johnson’s money.
“If I don’t know how much money I have in my wallet, should I be worried when I walk out the courthouse door that the police are going to take it?” Judge Peter B. Swann asked, according to a court transcript.
That hearing was Nov. 8, 2021. In late March, Johnson’s money was returned to him.
Wider problem
Shortly after Johnson’s money was seized in 2020, in May 2021 state law changed to require prosecutors to convict someone before property can be taken through civil asset forfeiture. Johnson’s case, however, was prosecuted under the previous statute.
The Institute for Justice issued an updated Policing for Profit report in 2020 that criticizes civil asset forfeiture, which involves filing lawsuits against property instead of people. That means even if the owner of the property is innocent, their property can be found “guilty” and can be confiscated. That money and property can be used by law enforcement agencies in myriad ways.
Even in states where lawmakers have tried to protect citizens’ rights from civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement agencies can make an end run around state law by bumping the case to federal agencies and still get a portion of the confiscated property.
New Mexico is the only state to ban civil asset forfeiture and allows only criminal forfeiture, which requires a criminal conviction, according to the Institute for Justice. While the organization gave New Mexico the grade of “A” for its civil forfeiture laws, even with its reforms Arizona was given a D-minus.
On the national level, the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act was introduced in the U.S. House and Senate in 2017 to raise the federal standards for civil asset forfeiture, but it died in committee. It was reintroduced in March by Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Tim Walberg, R-Mich. LL