City Officials in Aurora, Illinois Trying to Keep $190,040 Seized from Two Brothers, Despite Court Order to Return Cash — UPDATED
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on December 9, 2010
Skyline of Aurora, Illinois
City officials seem to be engaged in some nefarious doings in Aurora, Illinois — Aurora is the second largest city in Illinois and is part of the Chicago metropolitan area.
City government tyranny… what weasels.
Reported by Chicago Tribune, Aurora not returning money it seized, despite a court order:
Aurora is trying to keep a little more than $190,000 it seized from two brothers after one of them was pulled over in a traffic stop that didn’t even result in a traffic ticket.
Officials have refused to hand back the money even though a judge has sided with the brothers. The matter is due back in court today.
Jesus Martinez, 27, was carrying $190,040 when his pickup truck was stopped by an Aurora police officer about 8:30 p.m. Oct. 18 near Indian Trail and Timberlake roads.
The police officer confiscated the cash, and the city has informed Martinez and his brother, Jose, 34, that Aurora will seek to keep it through civil forfeiture, a procedure that allows police agencies to seize property where the legal standard is lower than proof needed in a criminal forfeiture.
The brothers are home remodelers. Neither has been charged with a crime in this case, and neither has a criminal record, according to Kane County court records.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in 30 years of practice,” said Aurora attorney Patrick Kinnally, who is representing the brothers.
It gets worse…
A month after the stop, Kinnally filed a complaint arguing that Aurora had no right to keep the money. Eleven days after that, Kinnally and lawyers representing Aurora appeared before Kane County Circuit Judge Michael Colwell.
“Their lawyers basically said the city was going to file for forfeiture,” Kinnally said. “The judge asked on what basis. The lawyer said, ‘We don’t know,’ and the judge said: ‘This is America. Give it back.’”
The judge ordered the city to return the $190,040, along with a month’s interest and costs. But Kinnally said that when he brought the order to Aurora, the city refused to turn over the cash, saying it planned to appeal the judge’s order.
Aurora argued that the judge had overstepped his authority, but the 2nd District Appellate Court in Elgin rejected the appeal on Monday on technical grounds.
Aurora’s legal department has not responded to requests for information. And it now appears that the city no longer has the cash.
Jesus Martinez received a certified letter last weekend from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Dated Dec. 2, the letter states the Department of Homeland Security/Immigrations and Customs Enforcement seized the money from Aurora, and that the cash is subject to forfeiture under U.S. codes dealing with drug transactions.
Geneva attorney Kathleen Colton, who initially was approached by the Martinez family, said the brothers are “absolutely not involved in drugs or drug dealing.”
Colton did defend another Martinez brother and a cousin on 2002 drug charges. The men were convicted, but an appeals court later overturned the convictions. The charges against them were dropped, though both men were deported because they were not in the U.S. legally.
According to the complaint filed by their lawyer, Jesus Martinez and his passenger cooperated with the Aurora officer who stopped them. Martinez consented to be personally searched, and he allowed police to search his pickup. A canine unit was called in to assist.
The officer found the sack of cash and asked Martinez about it; he said it was the family’s savings. Colton said Jesus Martinez had just picked up cash his brother had collected from other family members and was on his way to his father’s to give him the money so his father could pay off his mortgage and retire to Mexico.
The matter is due back in Kane County court Thursday morning.
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Updated, December 13, 2010… the local government, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security, and the Aurora police are thumbing their figurative noses at the Martinez brothers. And they have no intention — at least, that’s how it appears — of returning their money to them.
This is an atrocity. Who do these people think they are? Oh, wait… they’re part of the statist “hopenchange” government — under Pres. Barack Obama.
Reported by New American, How to Steal $190,000 — and Get Away with It:
On October 18, brothers Jesus and Jose Martinez were robbed of over $190,000 by an armed man. They know who the man is and who employs him, and both the thief and his employer have admitted stealing the money. They took his employer to court to retrieve their money. A judge ordered the money returned, but the employer has refused to return it, saying that he has since passed it on to his superiors, who in turn have no intention of returning it.
Another hearing is scheduled in January, but even if the court again orders the return of the money, it is likely that the Martinez brothers will never see it again and that those who have so brazenly stolen it from them will get off scot-free.
How can this be? The answer is simple: The thief is a police officer, his employer is the city of Aurora, Illinois, and his employer’s superiors are in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
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…That appeal was rejected, and now the city says it no longer has the money, having passed it on to DHS, which sent Jesus Martinez a certified letter stating that it had “seized the money from Aurora, and that the cash is subject to forfeiture under U.S. codes dealing with drug transactions,” according to the Tribune. Another hearing, before a judge who took over the case after Colwell retired, is set for January 5; but with the money in the hands of the feds, the brothers’ chances of getting it back are slim.
This case — only one among many such cases across the country — raises some serious constitutional issues.
First, the cops, and then the feds, clearly deprived the Martinezes of their property without due process of law, in violation of the Fifth Amendment. Of course, this has long been the case with asset forfeiture laws. In his 1995 book Forfeiting Our Property Rights the late Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois wrote that asset forfeiture “has allowed police to view all of America as some giant national K-Mart, where prices are not just lower, but nonexistent — a sort of law enforcement ‘pick-and-don’t-pay.’” Hyde later sponsored the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000, which provides some protections for those victimized by government thieves. But, says the organization Forfeiture Endangers American Rights, “innocent owners who are never charged with a crime still must prove their innocence in complex proceedings, where many cases are lost before even coming to trial.” And as the Martinez case shows, even a court decision in favor of the property owner does not necessarily mean he will get his property back.
Second, there is absolutely no reason for the federal government to have its grubby mitts in this matter. The war on drugs is blatantly unconstitutional; and without the war on drugs, there is no justification for federal asset forfeiture laws and the subsequent seizing of the Martinez brothers’ money by DHS. Absent such federal overreach, the brothers would stand a much greater chance of retrieving their property.
The war on drugs should be abolished, asset forfeiture laws repealed, and the Martinezes’ money restored to their possession. As Judge Colwell said, “This is America.” In the land of the free, innocent people should not have to fear being robbed by their government.
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