DRUG ASSET FORFEITURE PROCEDURE/civil forfeiture proceedings, Illinois

DRUG ASSET FORFEITURE PROCEDURE/civil forfeiture proceedings

People ex rel. Devine v. $30,700.00 United States Currency, 316 Ill.
App. 3d 464. Opinion by FITZGERALD, J. FREEMAN, J., joined by McMORROW
and KILBRIDE, JJ., dissenting, March 21, 2002

The court examined whether claimants received proper notice of civil
forfeiture proceedings under the Act and whether such notice satisfied
procedural due process.

Reports of a man with a gun brought Chicago police to the Drexel
National Bank in May of 1998. A search of the man, Rashawn Carter,
revealed $30,700 in cash on his person, along with keys to a safe
deposit box registered to his grandmother, which contained $20,811. A
trained drug-sniffing dog later "alerted" to all this cash as having a
residue odor of narcotics. The currency was made the subject of this
statutory proceeding for its forfeiture as a drug asset. By the time the
forfeiture proceeding was initiated in Cook County over two months
later, Carter was incarcerated in Vandalia Correctional Center on an
unrelated matter.

Two challenges to this forfeiture are at issue here. The State attempted
to utilize the U.S. mail to meet its obligation of notifying Rashawn.
Statute provides for "notice by certified mail, return receipt
requested." The State used certified mail and requested a receipt, but
no signed receipt was ever returned. In this decision, the Illinois
Supreme Court held that return of the signed receipt is not a
requirement; what is required is that it be requested. The giving of the
required notice could be considered to be complete when the otherwise
appropriate materials were mailed.

It was also alleged in this appeal that due process was denied when the
State mailed the notice to Rashawn's former address, rather than to his
prison address. The supreme court rejected this argument also, since
statute requires a claimant to give notice of his change of address,
which Rashawn did not do, and since there was no evidence that the
seizing agency knew or should have known that, six weeks after the
seizure, the claimant would be placed in incarceration in another county
on an unrelated matter.

The circuit court's entry of a default judgment forfeiting the currency
was upheld.