Originially from:
Asset Forfeiture in the United States - 2nd Edition - Hardcover
Asset Forfeiture in the United States - 2nd Edition - Electronic
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§ 23-1 Overview
As we have seen, property belonging to a person other than
the defendant cannot be forfeited in a criminal case.1 This is a
consequence of the way criminal trials are conducted. Unlike a
civil forfeiture case in which the forfeitability of the property is
adjudicated in a proceeding in which anyone claiming an interest
in the property is allowed to participate, the forfeitability of
property in criminal case is determined in the course of a criminal
trial in which the only parties are the Government and the
defendant.2 By the time a third party is allowed to intervene in a
criminal case, the court (or the jury) has already determined that a
crime has been committed and that the property in question was
derived from or used to commit that crime. Obviously, such a
Stefan D. Cassella, as a federal prosecutor, was one of the federal government's leading experts on asset forfeiture law for over thirty years, and now serves as an expert witness and consultant to law enforcement agencies and the financial sector as the CEO of AssetForfeitureLaw, LLC. As a Deputy Chief for the Justice Department's Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section and later as the Chief of the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Baltimore, MD, he litigated some of the Government's most significant forfeiture and money laundering cases and drafted many of the federal forfeiture and money laundering statutes. Mr. Cassella handled the forfeiture in one of the largest forfeiture cases ever brought by the United States - the forfeiture of $1.2 billion in assets from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), was the principal author of much of the federal forfeiture legislation, including the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA), and the applicable sections of the Federal Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure, and is the author of numerous law review articles on asset forfeiture and money laundering. In the 1980s, Mr. Cassella was Senior Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has a J.D. from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Physics from Cornell University. This book was written in the author's private capacity as a lawyer, and the book does not in any way constitute an official statement of the law or policy or otherwise reflect the views of the United States Department of Justice or any of its agencies.
