Tuesday, 28 March 2000

From wire and staff reports
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/000328forfeiturew2flocalin.html

WASHINGTON Arizona officials failed yesterday in their Supreme Court bid to force a one-time drug-smuggling ring member to pay millions of dollars under a state drug-proceeds-forfeiture law.

The court, without comment, let stand rulings that said forcing Francisco Leyva and his wife to pay more than $50,000 would violate the Constitution's Eighth Amendment ban on excessive fines.

State officials had sought at least $10 million.

The court for the first time struck down a government fine as excessive in a 1998 decision that said forfeitures intended as punishment cannot be "grossly disproportionate" to the crime. The forfeiture in Leyva's case was civil not criminal but the justices in 1993 ruled that even civil forfeitures can be considered punishment subject to the excessive-fines ban.

The 1998 ruling did not involve a drug-trafficking case, and legal experts said courts likely would treat drug offenses as more serious crimes and allow larger forfeitures.

(Cameron Holmes, assistant chief of the Arizona Attorney General's financial remedies unit, said the money was not the key issue. "We knew years and years ago we'd never get millions of dollars actually paid by Mr. Leyva and his wife," he said.

(What officials wanted was a legal opinion on how a court calculates whether or not a particular civil sanction is constitutional.

(Yesterday's court order will have no effect on the type of forfeiture cases the Pima County Attorney's Office handles, said Deputy Pima County Attorney Tom Rankin, who supervises asset forfeitures.)