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 4/10 Good --- www.thenewspaper.com http://www.thenewspaper.com/rss/rss.xml
| TheNewspaper: A Journal of Driving and Politics ... |
Thursday, May 15, 2008 --- 69 days ago http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/23/2373.asp
 The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit earlier this month began to reexamine its stance on the expanding scope of property seizures in Illinois. A unanimous three-judge panel found that Chicago Police violated the federal Constitution in seizing automobiles without offering any opportunity for the accused to challenge the move for up to six months. This finding overturned a 1994 decision, Jones v. Takaki, in which the court sided with Chicago police officers who had taken Marcy Jones' 1990 Chevrolet Camaro and held it for fifty days without ever finding any drugs or filing any criminal charges against Jones. Jones unsuccessfully argued she had a right to a prompt hearing. "We seemed to reject the claim in Jones," Judge Terence T. Evans wrote for the court. "But our present reexamination of the issue convinces us that the answer is not so clear." Under Illinois law, vehicles and cash can be permanently confiscated by law enforcement as long as an officer asserts probable cause that it was involved in a drug crime. For a car worth less than $20,000, a local police force can hold a car on its own authority up to 187 days before even filing notice with a court of law or allowing any sort of hearing. More expensive vehicles merit a hearing within 97 days of seizure. After this period, a court could initiate a forfeiture proceeding. "Our reconsideration of the issue leads us to find that the procedures set out in [the Illi ... |
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