Why do civil forfeiture?
If all forfeitures involve the commission of a crime, and the vast majority involve an arrest or prosecution, why does the government use civil forfeiture at all? It is not, as many contend, because it is necessarily easier. To the contrary, the easiest way to forfeit a criminal defendant’s property in many cases is not to file a separate civil action, but to present the forfeiture issue to the same jury that just convicted the defendant in the criminal case. But sometimes, criminal forfeiture isn’t available or doesn’t make sense. Take the administrative forfeiture cases for example. There is no point in including a criminal forfeiture count in an indictment and presenting the issue to a jury if the defendant is not going to contest the forfeiture. If a defendant facing criminal conviction for drug trafficking thinks it pointless to contest the forfeiture of the cash seized from him as drug proceeds at the time of his arrest, it is equally pointless to clutter the indictment with a fo
