Nevada’s legislative Democrats, who enjoy a comfortable majority in Carson City, have an unfortunate habit of taking too many cues from their California counterparts. They would be better off looking east instead of west.
This month, Colorado became the second state in the nation to guarantee property owners the right to an attorney in civil forfeiture cases. The proposal passed as part of a broader reform package which included a requirement that courts pause civil forfeiture cases until there is a conviction in a related criminal case.
The bipartisan legislation passed overwhelmingly. “Colorado now has some of the strictest laws in the country governing police’s use of civil asset forfeiture,” reason.com noted this week. These are important protections that other states — including Nevada — should emulate.
Civil forfeiture laws — which became popular in the 1980s as a means of separating drug kingpins from their ill-gotten loot — allow law enforcement to confiscate cars, cash, real estate and other valuables if the authorities suspect they may have been involved in a crime. The owner need never be charged, let alone convicted, of wrongdoing. Property owners who seek to contest such actions must prove their innocence.
The practice raises Fourth Amendment and due process concerns and has come under increased scrutiny thanks to several high-profile instances of abuse involving innocent property owners. Nevada has experienced its share of such horror stories.
In 2021, for instance, federal officials agreed to return nearly $87,000 to Stephen Lara, a retired Marine sergeant who was pulled over on a Nevada highway while traveling from Texas to California. Mr. Lara consented to a search of his vehicle, and a Nevada Highway Patrol officer discovered the cash — his life savings — in a backpack, along with bank receipts for the withdrawals. Working with the federal government, the Highway Patrol seized the cash under the guise that it was connected to illegal activity. Mr. Lara never received so much as a traffic ticket.
“I left there confused. I left there angry,” Mr. Lara told The Washington Post. “And I could not believe that I had just been literally robbed on the side of the road by people with badges and guns.”
Mr. Lara was fortunate. Most innocent owners lack the means to contest a civil forfeiture action, which is complicated, expensive and time-consuming. This works to the advantage of law enforcement, which often gets to keep a cut of the loot confiscated, creating a financial incentive to elevate forfeiture cases above other priorities.
Colorado’s reforms are a major step forward. State lawmakers should pass a similar bill when they reconvene next February to provide Nevadans with similar protections.
