ROCHESTER, N.Y.—On Monday, the United States District Court for the Western District of New York ruled that a Rochester woman was not entitled to attorney fees and interest payments after police seized $8,040 from her in 2020 and held onto it for years, without ever charging her with any crime. Cristal Starling and her attorneys from the Institute for Justice (IJ) will appeal this decision to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“This has been a long fight with a lot of ups and downs, but I’m going to keep fighting until I get full justice, so I can make sure other people in similar situations can also get justice,” said Cristal.
In October 2020, Rochester Police raided two different homes they believed were affiliated with Cristal’s then-boyfriend. The first was a home owned by the boyfriend’s mother, where police found drugs during the raid. The second was Cristal’s apartment, where they found nothing illegal. What they did find was Cristal; her grandnephew, whom she cares for; her then-boyfriend; and $8,040 in cash Cristal had saved to invest in her food cart business.
Cristal’s ex was acquitted of all charges, and Cristal was never arrested or charged with anything. Still, police seized her personal vehicle, work vehicle, and the cash. The vehicles were returned fairly quickly, but local police sent the money to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for civil forfeiture through a process known as the equitable sharing program.
After years of trying to navigate the complex system alone, in April 2022, Cristal teamed up with IJ to file an appeal asking for her day in front of a judge to fight the forfeiture. In August 2023, the court ruled she was entitled to her day in court. The federal government, faced with having to prove it was entitled to keep Cristal’s money, immediately gave up and returned the cash. Cristal then sought to recover attorneys’ fees and interest under the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA), which Congress enacted in 2000 to create a path for victims of civil forfeiture to be made whole.
“Forfeitures often deal with relatively small sums of money, often far less than the cost of legal fees to get the money back,” said IJ Senior Attorney Paul Sherman. “Congress recognized that this creates perverse incentives for law enforcement to seize money from vulnerable people knowing they can’t afford to challenge it. CAFRA was intended to stop this abuse by making the government liable for attorneys’ fees and interest when forfeiture victims win.”
But the court on Monday ruled that Cristal was not entitled to attorneys’ fees or lost interest. Even though Cristal recovered all the money taken from her, the court ruled she had not “substantially prevailed” in her case because the government could theoretically go after her money again—a possibility the court itself described as “extremely unlikely.”
“Yesterday’s ruling gives the government a ‘get-out-of-fees free’ card that can only lead to more forfeiture abuse,” said IJ Senior Attorney Rob Johnson. “Under this ruling, law enforcement has every incentive to seize as much money as possible and then ‘voluntarily’ return it whenever it looks like they’ll have to put up a fight, leaving victims holding the bag. That is exactly the problem Congress sought to fix with CAFRA, and we will be appealing this dangerous ruling.”
IJ and Cristal have 60 days from the decision date to file a notice of appeal.