Editor’s note: New England Public Media and The Republican collaborated on a monthslong investigation into the practice of civil asset forfeiture in western Massachusetts. This story is one part of that series. You can read the other stories here.
When a Greenfield woman was arrested in 2005 on a drug crime, state police seized less than $100 from her and another man.
It wasn’t until 15 years later that police and prosecutors notified her she had an opportunity to fight for the return of the money.
Her case highlights the “lack of clear timelines required for reporting property seized,” the state’s advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights later wrote in a 2023 report.
The money was taken through civil asset forfeiture laws, which allow police to seize property if they say there’s probable cause that it’s connected to a crime, most often drug trafficking. Separate from any criminal charges, prosecutors file a case in civil court to formally seize the money and make it available for law enforcement to spend. It’s easier in Massachusetts than any other state to take property through civil asset forfeiture — that’s because it has the lowest burden of proof in the nation.
In 2020, the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office filed a civil asset forfeiture case to take hold of the funds seized from the Greenfield woman and dozens of other people when state and Greenfield police arrested them in unrelated cases across Franklin County.
The amounts ranged from 38 cents to $1,126 and averaged $225.
The 50 different seizures dated back as early as 1988 and as recently as 2017, with many from the 1990s and early 2000s. The related criminal cases had long been adjudicated.
So much time had passed, the Northwestern DA’s office didn’t have contact information for the people whose property was taken, and their addresses had likely changed, the prosecutor told the court.
Instead of directly contacting them, the DA’s office put a notice in the classified section of The Recorder in Greenfield – a long list of names in small print notifying them of the court case and telling them to reply in court in the next two months. It was published once a week for three weeks. “Address currently unknown,” the legal notice says after each person’s name.
No one replied in court, and all the defendants defaulted on the money, a total of $11,000.
The Greenfield woman arrested in 2005 now lives in Chicopee and does not read The Recorder. She had no idea about the case until a reporter contacted her.
“I’d like my money back, but I don’t think that’s going to happen,” the woman said in an interview. “I think it’s a world where your rights are not respected and people justify it because you’re an addict. … That’s true in the courts and it’s true in the corrections system.”
The woman had spent time in jail and 2005 was a turning point in her life and in her battle with addiction, she said. She entered recovery, and was later able to seal her criminal record. NEPM and The Republican are withholding her name at her request to maintain her privacy.
Another woman now living in Springfield included in the case was also unaware of it until NEPM and The Republican contacted her. She said she wanted her money back and declined an interview.
The delayed case was one of two clusters of filings years after the fact found in the region’s courts in a review of more than 60 cases.
The same DA’s office filed a similar case in 2020 in Hampshire Superior Court, lumping together about 40 people’s funds, ranging from 71 cents to $7,000, seized at their arrests between 1991 and 2017. State police conducted all but one of those arrests. As in the Franklin County case, the DA’s office told the court it didn’t have current contact information and published an ad in the Daily Hampshire Gazette’s classified section notifying people about the case.
Without any response in court, all of the defendants defaulted on the money, totaling $24,501.
It is not clear why the cases were filed so many years after some of the arrests.
“It was a one-off,” Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan said. “I think it was because all that money had been sitting there in [police departments’] evidence lockers for a significant period of time.”
Sullivan said all of the cases involved people who had been convicted in the criminal cases linked to the seizures. Though assets can still be taken from anyone whose case was overturned because of the state’s drug lab scandals in which misconduct in two state drug labs led to tens of thousands of people having their convictions overturned. That was the case for at least one person who had money taken in the 2020 forfeiture actions.
State police did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Todd Dodge, the chief of the Greenfield Police Department since earlier this year, did not know why there was such a delay in filing the case. “Our entire Accounting and Treasurer Depts have resigned and the administration, as you know, has completely changed hands,” he wrote in an email. “I wouldn't even know who to ask for an answer to this.”
When the state’s advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights studied civil asset forfeiture, it flagged the large and delayed Franklin county case in its 2023 report.
Some of the small amounts of money stuck out to the commission's chair, David Harris.
“This is part of the war on drugs — the idea is we’re going to get the kingpins, we’re going to milk them dry,” he said with a laugh. Police are taking small amounts of money, he said, “and putting our residents through hell over this.”
Only 3% of forfeiture cases filed in Hampden County were for less than $250 in fiscal year 2023, according to the most recent year of statistics published by the trial court. In Hampshire and Franklin Counties, the trial court statistics list no forfeitures less than $250, even in the year that the two omnibus cases were filed with amounts as low as 71 cents. That’s because in cases with multiple dollar amounts involved, the court took the highest amount for its data.
Early this year, Sullivan directed his staff not to pursue forfeitures for amounts less than $250 in eligible drug cases.
“The whole idea behind forfeitures was to go after big-time dealers, and that small amount was not going to address any large trafficking organizations,” Sullivan said. “So I felt it was the moral and legal thing to do.” In a memo to staff, he wrote that the low amounts are uncommon and inefficient to pursue, adding that “our office continuously strives to avoid prosecuting poverty.”
While not an explicit policy, Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said his office’s practice is to not file cases for less than $250 and would be open to making that state law. Gulluni, who served a year-long term as president of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association until this November, said the majority of prosecutors agree.
