There’s no shortage of incredible stories about wrongs done, whether unusual or sadly commonplace. What there is, however, is a serious shortage of reliable stories, stories that make sense. The reporting, too often, is just awful, leaving us with either a gross misimpression of what happened or, most of the time, just confused.
Radley Balko, who does a great job ferreting out stories of abuse and misconduct, twitted about a bizarre forfeiture Holly Springs, North Carolina.
When Gaybbrell Shereise Cofield pleaded guilty last year to selling crack cocaine, he agreed to let the government take his grandmother’s home as well as property that has been in the family for generations.
But Ernestine Ward Cofield says her grandson was in no position to forfeit her property to the government and is fighting the move in court. Cofield says that until three federal marshals turned up on her front porch in August, she had no idea that she was the target of a federal law that allows the government to seize the property and assets of drug dealers.
That makes no sense at all. A defendant can’t agree to forfeit something he doesn’t own. To the extent he did, it would be meaningless. Where’s the fight?
Later in the story, it takes a twist:
In March, Holly Springs police Det. Dan Gledhill delivered a letter to Ernestine Cofield’s home on Sand Dune Way saying that a police informant had made two undercover drug purchases on Jan. 7 and Feb. 3 “from the property that you own on the dirt path that runs between Blalock Street and Third Street,” the location of the address listed on Gaybbrell Cofield’s earlier arrest warrants.
In the letter, Gledhill told Ernestine Cofield that repeated drug activity on her property could result in forfeiture under federal law. She said she did not respond to the letter because the dirt path is two doors down from her homes on Blalock Street.
“I didn’t respond because I don’t own that property,” she said.
So now it’s not the defendant who has done the dirty deed, but a second, weird attempt that facially bears no connection to the grandmother who, the story claims, is the victim of this government overreaching. But then another twist.
In his federal court petition, her attorney, Spurgeon Fields III, claimed federal marshals told Cofield she could not challenge the government’s claim. Nor would they allow one of her daughters in her home at the time to listen to what they were telling her, Fields said in the petition.
Fields also claimed that the marshals told Ernestine Cofield that if she did not sign the forfeiture papers, she could be “taken downtown” and that it could cost her grandson 65 years in prison instead of 22. Cofield signed.
So what’s this story about? Is it about a defendant who, in exchange for a good deal, agreed to forfeit property he didn’t own? Is it about a government that claimed one property and then took another? Is it about a government that coerced and manipulated an old women into signing away her property because she was told she had no choice, or that it would cost her grandson a life in prison?
And where was the grandson’s lawyer in all this? Even assuming the oddly named young man had CJA counsel, was his name a secret so that grandma couldn’t call him and find out what the heck was going on?
It made no sense to me, so I let Radley know. His understanding of the story was that the feds took grandma’s house because of her failure to prevent Gaybbrell’s drug dealing on her property. That’s likely the underlying legal rationale for the seizure, but it’s hardly the story reported.
The point of this rather long-winded explanation is that commentary depends upon the accuracy and thoughtfulness of reporting. Forfeiture abuse, for example, is an issue that’s been of grave concern, as one of the most abused mechanisms by government to impoverish defendants, strip them of their ability to fight, destroy lives in a way that’s at best tangentially related to the claimed wrong and do so with essentially no opportunity to dispute it, given the absurdly low burden of proof, lack of meaningful due process (because it’s pigeonholed as civil rather than criminal, and in rem rather than in personam) and, usually, timing (in that it’s pursued contemporaneously with a criminal prosecution, and admissions in the civil forfeiture case could be devastating to the defense of the criminal case).
And maybe this story is about a monumentally horrific case of forfeiture abuse. I just can’t tell.
People are kind enough to send me links to stories all the time, usually from the hinterlands (see a New Yorker’s view of the world) and some rinky-dink newspaper. They stories, more often than not, are atrocious. They are long on rhetorical conclusion, and devoid of meaningful detail. I can’t tell if there’s a terrible wrong, a meaningful point, or just the impression of some kid who took a journalism class in night school who hasn’t got the slightest clue about the law, the cops or the courts. Sorry, but without the background information, I can’t just take a reporter’s conclusion for granted.
Having spent a decent amount of time talking with reporters of varying skill, and knowing a few of them pretty well, the complaint I hear back is that they only had so much room. They get 500 words, or maybe 6 ‘graphs, or sometimes 7 inches. They can only squeeze in so much.
Tough nuggies. Granted real estate in a newspaper is valuable, and if they fill it with substance, there won’t be any room for the money-makers, the advertisements, that pay their salaries. I get the economics. What I don’t get, and can’t accept, so easily is that reporters whose grasp of legal issues is usually tenuous at best, and facile at worst, can’t be bothered to report the facts and instead think their lay opinions are sufficient to constitute reportage of news.
Serious stuff happens, and needs to be told. No doubt every reporter thinks they know everything there is to no know about every subject about which they report. No doubt your opinions on matters far afield are fascinating. Stop complaining that 7 inches is too short. It’s not the length, but how you use it. If you can’t manage to get the facts into your 7 inches, then it’s just waste space. And 7 inches is terrible thing to waste.
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“everything there is to no”??? Fumble!
Stercus accidit.