presumed guilty.txt

黑客培训教程

     Twenty-one seizing agencies questioned all said the tainted money was
deposited in a local bank - which means it's back in circulation.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

POLICE PROFIT BY SEIZING HOMES OF INNOCENT
PART THREE: INNOCENT OWNERS

     The second time police came to the Hawaii home of Joseph and Frances
Lopes, they came to take it.

     "They were in a car and a van. I was in the garage. They said, 'Mrs.
Lopes, let's go into the house, and we will explain things to you.' They sat in
the dining room and told me they were taking the house. It made my heart beat
very fast."

     For the rest of the day, 60-year-old Frances Lopes and her 65-year-old
husband, Joseph, trailed federal agents as they walked through every room of
the Maui house, the agents recording the position of each piece of furniture
on a videotape that serves as the government's inventory.

     Four years after their mentally unstable adult son pleaded guilty to
growing marijuana in their back yard for his own use. the Lopeses face the
loss of their home. A Maui detective trolling for missed forfeiture
opportunities spotted the old case. He recognized that the law allowed him to
take away their property because they knew their son had committed a crime on
it.

     A forfeiture law intended to strip drug traffickers of ill-gotten gains
often is turned on people, like the Lopeses, who have not committed a clime.
The incentive for the police to do that is financial, since the federal
government and most states let the police departments keep the proceeds from
what they take.  The law tries to temper money-making temptations with
protections for innocent owners, including lien holders, landlords whose
tenants misuse property, or people unaware of their spouse's misdeeds. The
protection is supposed to cover anyone with an interest in a property who can
prove he did not know about the alleged illegal activity, did not consent to
it, or took all reasonable steps to prevent it.

     But a Pittsburgh Press investigation found that those supposed safe-guards
do not come into play until after the government takes an asset, forcing
innocent owners to hire attorneys to get their property back - if they ever do.
"As if the law weren't bad enough, they just clobber you financially," says
Wayne Davis, an attorney from Little Rock, Ark.

---

FEARED FOR THEIR SON

     In 1987, Thomas Lopes, who was then 28 and living in his parents' home,
pleaded guilty to growing marijuana in their back yard. Officers spotted it
>from a helicopter.

     Because it was his first offense, Thomas received probation and an order
to see a psychologist. From the time he was young, mental problems tormented
Thomas, and though he visited a psychologist as a teen, he had refused to
continue as he grew older, his parents say.

     Instead, he cloistered himself in his bedroom, leaving only to tend the
garden.

     His parents concede they knew he grew the marijuana.

     "We did ask him to stop, and he would say, 'Don't touch it,' or he would
do something to himself," says the elder Lopes, who worked for 49 years on a
sugar plantation and lived in its rented camp housing for 30 years while he
saved to buy his own home.

     Given Thomas' history and a family history of mental problems that caused
a grandparent and an uncle to be committed to institutions, the threats stymied
his parents.

     The Lopeses, says their attorney Matthew Menzer, "were under duress.
Everyone who has been diagnosed in this family ended up being taken away.  They
could not conceive of any way to get rid of the dope without getting rid of
their son or losing him forever."

     When police arrived to arrest Thomas, "I was so happy because I knew he
would get care," says his mother. He did, and he continues weekly doctor's
visits. His mood is better, Mrs. Lopes says, and he has never again grown
marijuana or been arrested.  But his guilty plea haunts his family.

     Because his parents admitted they knew what he was doing, their home was
vulnerable to forfeiture.

     Back when Thomas was arrested, police rarely took homes. But since,
agencies have learned how to use the law and have seen the financial payoff,
says Assistant U.S. Attorney Marshall Silverberg of Honolulu.

     They also carefully review old cases for overlooked forfeiture
possibilities, he says. The detective who uncovered the Lopes case started a
forfeiture action in February - just under the five-year deadline for staking
such a claim.

     "I concede the time lapse on this case is longer than most, but there was
a violation of the law, and that makes this appropriate, not money-grubbing,"
says Silverberg. "The other way to took at this, you know, is that the Lopeses
could be happy we let them live there as long as we did."  They don't see it
that way.

     Neither does their attorney, who says his firm now has about eight
similar forfeiture cases, all of them stemming from small-time crimes that
occurred years ago but were resurrected. "Digging these cases out now is a
business proposition, not law enforcement," Menzer says.

     "We thought it was all behind us," says Lopes. Now, "there isn't a day I
don't think about what will happen to us."

     They remain in the house, paying taxes and the mortgage, until the
forfeiture case is resolved. Given court backlogs, that likely won't be until
the middle of next year, Menzer says.

     They've been warned to leave everything as it was when the videotape was
shot.

     "When they were going out the door," Mrs. Lopes says of the police, "they
told me to take good care of the yard. They said they would be coming back one
day."

---

"DUMB JUDGMENT"

     Protections for innocent owners are a neglected issue in federal and state
forfeiture law," concluded the Police Executive Research Forum in its March
bulletin.

     But a chief policy maker on forfeiture maintains that the system is
actively interested in protecting the rights of the innocent.

     George J. Terwilliger III, associate deputy attorney general in the
Justice Department, admits that there may be instances of "dumb judgment." And
says if there's a "systemic" problem, he'd like to know about it.

     But attorneys who battle forfeiture cases say dumb judgment is the
systemic problem. And they point to some of Terwilliger's own decisions as
examples.

     The forfeiture policy that Terwilliger crafts in the nation's capital he
puts to use in his other federal job: U.S. attorney for Vermont.

     A coalition of Vermont residents, outraged by Terwilliger's forfeitures
of homes in which small children live, launched a grass-roots movement called
"Stop Forfeiture of Children's Homes." Three months old, the group has about 70
members, from school principals to local medical societies.

     Forfeitures are a particularly sensitive issue in Vermont where state law
forbids talking a person's primary home. That restriction appears nowhere in
federal law, which means Vermont police departments can circumvent the state
constraint by taking forfeiture cases through federal courts.

     The playmaker for that end-run: Terwilliger.

     'It's government-sponsored child abuse that's destroying the future of
children all over this state in the name of fighting the drug war," says Dr.
Kathleen DePierro, a family practitioner who works at Vermont State Hospital,
a psychiatric facility in Waterbury.

     The children of Karen and Reggie Lavallee, ages 6,9 and 11, are
precisely the type of victims over which the Vermonters agonize. Reggie
Lavallee is serving a 10-year sentence in a federal prison in Minnesota for
cocaine possession.

     Because police said he had been involved with drug trafficking, his
conviction cost his family their ranch house on 2 acres in a small village 20
miles east of Burlington. For the first time, the family is on welfare, in a
rented duplex.

     "I don't condone what my husband did, but why victimize my children
because of his actions? That house wasn't much, but it was ours. It was a home
for the children, with rabbits, chicken, turkeys and a vegetable garden. Their
friends were there, and they liked the school, " says Mrs. Lavallee, 29.

     After the eviction, "every night for months, Amber cried because she
couldn't see her friends. I'd like to see the government tell this 9-year-old
that this isn't cruel and unusual punishment."

     Terwilliger's dual role particularly troubles DePierro. "It's horrifying
to know he is setting policy that could expand this type of terror and abuse to
kids in every state in the nation."

     Terwilliger calls the group's allegations absurd. "If there was someone
to blame, it would be the parents and not the government."

     Lawyers like John MaeFadyen, a defense attorney in Providence, R.I.,
find it harder to fix blame.

     "The flaw with the innocent owner thing is that life doesn't paint itself
in black and white. It's oftentimes gray, and there is no room for gray in
these laws," MaeFadyen says. As a consequence, prosecutors presume everyone
guilty and leave it to them to show otherwise. "That's not good judgment.  In
fact, it defies common sense."

---

PROVING INNOCENCE

     Innocent owners who defend their interests expose themselves to
questioning that bores deep into their private affairs. Because the forfeiture
law is civil, they also have no protection against self-incrimination, which
means that they risk having anything they say used against them later.

     The documentation required of innocent owner Loretta Steams illustrates
how deeply the government plumbs.

     The Connecticut woman lent her adult son $40,000 in 1988 to buy a home in
Tequesta, Fla., court documents show.  Unlike many parents who treat such
transactions informally, she had the foresight to record the loan as a mortgage
with Palm Beach County.  Her action ultimately protected her interest in the
house after the federal government seized it, claiming her son stored cocaine
there. He has not been charged criminally.

     The seizure occurred in November 1989, and it took until last May before
Mrs. Steams convinced the government she had a legitimate interest in the
house.

     To prove herself an innocent owner, Mrs. Steams met 14 requests for
information, including providing "all documents of any kind whatsoever
pertaining to your mortgage, including but not limited to loan application,
credit reports, record of mortgages and mortgage payments, title reports,
appraisal reports, closing documents, records of any liens, attachments on the
defendant property, records of payments, canceled checks, internal
correspondence or notes (handwritten or typed) relating to any of the above
and opinion letter from borrower's or lender's counsel relating to any of the
above."

     And that was just question No. 1.

---

LANDLORD AS A COP

     Innocent owners are supposed to be shielded in forfeitures, but at times
they've been expected to become virtual cops in order to protect their property
>from seizure.

     T. T. Masonry Inc. owns a 36-unit apartment building in Milwaukee, Wis.,
that's plagued by dope dealing.  Between January 1990, when it bought the
building, and July 1990, when the city formally warned it about problems, the
landlord evicted 10 tenants suspected of drug use, gave a master key to local
beat and vice cops,. forwarded tips to police and hired two security firms -
including an off -duty city police officer - to patrol the building.

     Despite that effort, the city seized the property.

     Assistant City Attorney David Stanosz says "once a property develops a
reputation as a place to buy drugs, the only way to fix that is to leave it
totally vacant for a number of months. This landlord doesn't want to do that."

     Correct, says Jerome Buting, attorney for Tom Torp of Masonry.

     "If this building is such a target for dealers, use that fact," says
Buting.  "Let undercover people go in. But when I raised that, the answer was
they were short of officers and resources."

---

IT LOOKS LIKE COKE

     Grady McClendon, 53, his wife, two of their adult children and two
grand-children - 7 and 8 -- were in a rented car headed to their Florida home
in August 1989. They were returning from a family reunion in Dublin, Ga.

     In Fitzgerald, Ga., McClendon made a wrong turn on a one-way street.
Local police stopped him, checked his identification and asked permission to
search the car. He agreed.

     Within minutes, police pulled open suitcases and purses, emptying out
jewelry and about 10 Florida state lottery tickets. They also found a
registered handgun.

     Then, says McClendon, the police "started waving a little stick they said
was cocaine. They told me to put on MY glasses and take a good look. I told
them I'd never seen cocaine for real but that it didn't look like TV."  For
about six hours, police