Source.

In the first decision of its kind in Nevada, a judge ruled last week that state law enforcement can’t evade stricter requirements for seizing cash and property by partnering with the federal government.

The plaintiff in that lawsuit, a Marine veteran named Stephen Lara, had nearly $90,000 in cash seized from him in 2021 by two Nevada Highway Patrol officers. The cops admitted to Lara that there was nothing illegal about carrying large amounts of cash. But they decided that Lara’s money was likely drug proceeds, and they coordinated with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to forfeit it through a process called civil asset forfeiture.

The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, sued the NHP and DEA on Lara’s behalf in 2021, arguing not only that should Lara get his money back—the DEA agreed to return it shortly after the suit was filed—but that the NHP exceeded its legal authority to hand the case over to the feds rather than following Nevada’s stricter asset forfeiture laws.

This was the first time Nevada courts had considered police participation in the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program, in which federal law enforcement “adopts” civil forfeiture cases from local police. The local department gets up to 80 percent of the forfeiture proceeds, and the rest goes into a Justice Department pool that is doled out to other participating departments around the country.

Nevada Second Judicial District Judge Connie J. Steinheimer held that forfeiture laws are required to be strictly interpreted, and that there was no way to do that while allowing the NHP to unilaterally undercut them.

“Without a clear dictate from the Nevada Legislature,” she wrote, “NHP cannot undermine this bedrock policy and effectively circumvent Nevada’s civil asset forfeiture statutes by electing to participate in the federal equitable sharing program.”

Steinheimer ruled that just because the federal government has the authority to adopt forfeiture cases doesn’t mean state police have the authority to accept the offer.

In a press release, Ben Field, an Institute for Justice attorney, called the ruling “a big step toward ending the abuse of civil forfeiture nationwide.”

Civil asset forfeiture laws are unconstitutional on their face, whether federal or state statutes. It’s highway robbery, and if I was the judge I would have put the cops who did this in prison, as well as any FedGov agents who participated in this obscene sin.

Furthermore, the biblical penalty for theft is to work in servitude to the offended party to pay the debt back three-fold. That would have been on my menu of penalties.

Then again, I’m not a judge and never will be believing things like this. The government doesn’t want justice. It wants control and money.