(Daniel Jennings) Simply carrying a large amount of cash in a
grocery sack in your car is now sufficient grounds for a police officer to seize
your money, a US circuit court has ruled. A panel of the Eighth US Circuit Court
of Appeals found that all a deputy has to do to seize cash from a person is say
it is drug money.
The court refused to return the $63,530 that Deputy Dave Wintle seized from a disabled veteran named Mark A. Brewer during a
traffic stop in 2011. Brewer was never charged with a crime or even given a
traffic ticket. Yet the decorated Air Force veteran lost his savings when a
drug-sniffing dog smelled marijuana on it, even though no cannabis was found in
Brewer’s car or his home.
Brewer saved the money from disability payments and his Air Force pay — as
documents deputies found in the car indicated. He said he was traveling to Los
Angeles to visit his uncle and to use the money as a down payment for a house. He added he was hoping his uncle
could help him get a job there.
“The record here does not make clear whether the seized currency constitutes
property used to facilitate a drug offense or proceeds from a drug offense,”
Judge Bobby E. Shepherd wrote in a March 23 opinion upholding the seizure. “For the purposes of analysis, however, we will
assume that the currency facilitated a drug offense and is thus subject to [to
be seized].”
It was taken through a legal mechanism called civil forfeiture. (Listen to
Off The Grid Radio’s report on civil forfeiture here.)
Brewer’s ordeal began when he was driving through Douglas County, Nebraska,
outside of Omaha on Interstate 680 in November 2011. Wintle, a Douglas County
sheriff’s deputy, pulled him over for not signaling when he made a lane change,
and then Wintle asked for permission to search the vehicle.
Keeping Cash in a Grocery Bag Can Lead to Seizure
Wintle had just run a background check on Brewer and found he had “no major
violations” on his record when he had the dog search the car. The search was
apparently prompted by Wintle’s discovery of $1,000 in cash in Brewer’s pocket.
He then found the other money in grocery sacks in a backpack.
