From: [C reuters] at [clari.net] (Reuters)
Newsgroups: clari.usa.top,clari.usa.gov,clari.usa
Subject: Court Snubs Woman in Property Rights Case
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 12:00:16 PST
Expires: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 12:00:16 PST
                                         
         WASHINGTON (Reuter) - A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled  
Monday against a woman who protested when local authorities 
seized a car owned by her and her husband after he had sex in it 
with a prostitute. 
         Tina Bennis argued that confiscation of the 1977 Pontiac  
under a Michigan nuisance abatement law violated her 
constitutional right to due process and represented an 
unconstitutional taking of her property. But the high court, in 
a 5-4 opinion by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, upheld the 
forfeiture as constitutional. 
         Bennis said she did not know the car had been used by her  
husband for an illegal activity. At issue in the case was 
whether a so-called innocent owner's property can be seized if 
it is used in the commission of a crime. 
         Her husband was convicted of gross indecency after police in  
1988 observed him having oral sex with a prostitute in the car 
while it was parked on a Detroit street. Prosecutors seized the 
car, saying it had been used for prostitution. 
         The car had been bought a month before the seizure for $600  
and Bennis wanted compensation of her share -- $300. 
         But Rehnquist cited a long list of cases in which the  
Supreme Court has held that an owner's interest in property may 
be forfeited even if the owner did not know it had been used 
illegally. Because the forfeiture was lawful, he said the state 
cannot be required to compensate an owner for seizing property 
used in the commission of a crime. 
         ``The state here sought to deter illegal activity that  
contributes to neighborhood deterioration and unsafe streets,'' 
he wrote. ``The Bennis automobile, it is conceded, facilitated 
and was used in criminal activity.'' 
         Joining Rehnquist were the court's two other staunch  
conservatives, Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, as 
well as Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 
         In concurring opinions, Thomas said states and legislators  
have the main responsibility for making sure forfeiture laws are 
fair, while Ginsburg said ``Michigan, in short, has not embarked 
on an experiment to punish innocent third parties.'' 
         Justice John Paul Stevens in a strongly worded dissent said  
the logic of the court's decision gives states ``virtually 
unbridled power to confiscate vasts amounts of property where 
professional criminals have engaged in illegal acts.'' 
         Bennis was without responsibility for her husband's act,  
Stevens wrote. ``If anything, she was a victim of that 
conduct,'' he said. ``Fundamental fairness prohibits the 
punishment of innocent people.'' 
         Michigan defended the seizure on the grounds the state has  
broad police powers to fight crime and said the forfeiture was a 
civil, not a criminal, penalty. 
         The high court this term also has pending two other cases  
involving use of property forfeiture laws, which have been 
increasingly used by state and federal prosecutors since the 
1980s for drug and other crimes. 
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