(Adds government’s failure to work with the motel)
By Karen Freifeld
NEW YORK, Jan 25 (Reuters) – In a victory for property
rights, a U.S. judge shot down a government effort to seize a
family-owned motel in Tewksbury, Massachusetts.
The Justice Department sought forfeiture of the Motel
Caswell, introducing evidence of its connection to 15
drug-related incidents between 1994 and 2008.
Russell Caswell, 69, and his wife, Patricia, 71, own the
motel through a trust and he runs it. There is no contention
anyone from the family has ever been involved in criminal
activity, the judge said.
The government “has not met its burden in providing that the
property is forfeitable,” Magistrate Judge Judith Dein of U.S.
District Court in Massachusetts wrote in a decision Thursday
dismissing the civil forfeiture action.
“Punishing Mr. Caswell by forfeiting the motel obviously
would not punish those engaged in the criminal conduct.”
Dein, who heard the case in November without a jury, noted
the government identified a limited number of incidents spread
over years, none of which involved the motel owner or employees.
The judge said no one took steps to work with Caswell to
reduce drug activity at the motel. She added that no effort was
made to even warn about the possibility of forfeiture before the
case was filed.
The case “is easily distinguishable from other cases where
the ‘draconian’ result of forfeiture was found to be
appropriate,” the judge wrote in her decision.
The U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts said it was disappointed
in the ruling and weighing options for appeal.
The case was “strictly a law enforcement effort to crack
down on what was seen as a pattern of using the motel to further
the commission of drug crimes for nearly three decades,” the
office said in a statement.
The 56-room budget motel rents out about 14,000 rooms a
year, serving semi-permanent and transient guests.
The ruling “is a huge win for property owners everywhere,”
said Darpana Sheth, an attorney with the Institute for Justice,
in Arlington, Virginia, a libertarian law firm that represented
the motel with local counsel.
Sheth said the case exposed the injustices of forfeiture
actions, which she said are routinely brought against innocent
people.
“Civil forfeiture laws provide a direct financial incentive
for law enforcement to seize and take people’s property,” she
said. “Hopefully this decision will prevent prosecutorial
overreach.”
The case is United State of America v. 434 Main Street,
Tewksbury, Massachusetts, U.S. District Court, District of
Massachusetts, No. 09-11635JGD.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
