02.03.2023/Breaking News
Wrongfully Convicted Massachusetts Drug Defendants Seek Millions In Assets Seized By Police Over Ten Years
By Maggie Mulvihill
In a case highlighting the state’s controversial civil forfeiture law, five wrongfully convicted Massachusetts drug defendants claim state officials and law enforcement agencies are violating their civil rights - and those of tens of thousands of others as well.
How? By not returning millions in seized cash, cars, cellular telephones and other property, even after their convictions have long been dismissed.
“The plaintiffs in this civil rights case, and the many thousands of other people in Massachusetts whom they seek to represent, have been victimized twice,” said defense attorney Luke Ryan, of Sasson Turnbull Ryan & Hoose, in a statement. “First, they were the victims of wrongful prosecutions based on tainted drug evidence. Then, in connection with those very same drug cases, they have been victimized by an unfair ‘civil forfeiture’ system, one that Representative Ayana Pressley has rightly called ‘legalized theft,’” he added.
The five defendants submitted an amended complaint in a five-year old federal class action civil rights lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in 2018. That case had been stayed pending the resolution of a 2019 state lawsuit seeking the return of fines and fees paid by 30,000 wrongfully convicted drug defendants as part of their prosecutions.
Today’s action is the latest development in the now decade-old Massachusetts drug lab scandal – the largest in U.S. history. The state Supreme Judicial Court has dismissed 60,000 drug charges due to widespread misconduct at two state labs between 2003 and 2012. Two disgraced chemists, Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak, served collectively less than five years behind bars for either tampering with or stealing drug evidence at the labs, among other charges. Both women are now free.
No one else has ever been prosecuted in a criminal justice crisis that has cost – to date – a minimum of $44 million in taxpayer funds to remedy the damage caused. Scores of wrongfully convicted drug defendants lost their jobs, benefits, housing and driver’s licenses. Some had their children taken away from them, while others were deported because of their wrongful convictions.
The state case was settled last year when Massachusetts officials agreed to pay as much as $14 million to reimburse those drug defendants for case-related costs - including fees for parole, probation, drug analysis and the return of a driver’s license, among others.
But that, the plaintiffs claim, is far from enough.
Defense attorneys are now ramping up the federal civil rights litigation to seek a redress of the forfeiture harms they say were inflicted on their clients ensnarled in the drug lab fiasco.
In addition to the return of their seized money and property, the plaintiffs want a full accounting of the seizures by police and prosecutors dating back through the Dookhan and Farak era, which spanned nearly ten years.
Under a 1971 Massachusetts state law, assets seized during a criminal case can be divided between prosecutors and law enforcement agencies.
The law allows the state to forfeit property in criminal cases by either filing a motion in district or Superior Court or seeking forfeiture through a civil action in Superior Court. Forfeiture can be sought in felonies but not in simple drug possession cases.
The law also requires the state to give defendants at least seven days before a forfeiture hearing is held - or it is considered an “unlawful procedure.”
All five of the plaintiffs in Friday’s action either pleaded guilty or admitted to sufficient facts to establish guilt in their drug cases, which stemmed from arrests in Springfield, Marshfield, Lawrence and Pittsfield between 2006 and 2010, the complaint states. Police seized $22,000 in cash collectively during their arrests, as well as a 1994 Honda Accord.
But defense attorneys for the plaintiffs found that prosecutors and judges failed to comply with the most basic requirements of the state law when forfeiting seized money and property in the cases of the five plaintiffs and many more.
The mandate that prosecutors file criminal or civil motions in order to forfeit money or property was routinely flouted as courts ordered forfeiture as part of a criminal sentence in hundreds of instances, the complaint states.
That was accomplished through so-called “green sheets” comprised of plea agreements and sentencing proposals recommending forfeiture.
And forfeiture was allowed in dozens of drug possession cases, even though the state statute only allows for it in felonies, the complaint states.
Though the statute requires defendants being given seven days’ notice when forfeiture of property or assets is being sought, in at least 649 criminal cases later overturned due to Farak’s misconduct, courts allowed motions the same day prosecutors filed them, the complaint states.
The state’s civil forfeiture statute has been criticized as one of the weakest in the nation, with little transparency or oversight of money and property seized.
In 2019, a year after the original class action suit was filed in federal court in Boston, a special Legislative commission was formed to study the law and make changes. While the commission has recommended reforms, they have yet to be implemented.
The plaintiffs in today’s action also want the state to establish a clear process to ensure all the property is returned to them and there is a proven connection between the money or property seized and illegal drug activity.
The complaint also names a slate of new defendants beyond the state officials named in the original federal case, including newly elected Attorney General Andrea Campbell. In 2019, the complaint notes, Campbell called for greater transparency for the way forfeiture funds are spent by the Boston Police. At the time, Campbell was a Boston City Councilor.
Molly McGlynn, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, declined comment on the complaint.
Also named in today’s complaint are four of the state’s largest police departments – Brockton, Fall River, Boston and Springfield. Those agencies represent more than 100 other law enforcement agencies that have “have unlawfully forfeited and retained money and other property from Plaintiffs and many thousands of similarly situated individuals,” the complaint states.
There are an estimated 200 Massachusetts law enforcement agencies that received and failed to return seized assets in overturned Dookhan and Farak convictions, the complaint states.
Maggie Mulvihill is an Associate Professor of the Practice in Computational Journalism at Boston University. She can be reached at mmulvih@bu.edu.
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Maggie Mulvihill is an Associate Professor of the Practice of Computational Journalism at Boston University. She can be reached at mmulvih@bu.edu