
The Pittsburgh Press
Monday, August 12, 1991

                P R E S U M E D   G U I L T Y
             The Law's Victims in the War on Drugs

        Drug agents far more likely to stop minorities

By Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty

Part Two: The way you look

        Look around you carefully the next time you're at any of the nations
big airports, bus stations, train terminals, or on a major highway
because there may be a government agent watching you. If you're black,
Hispanic, Asian or look like a "hippie," you can almost count on it. 

        The men and women doing the spying are drug agents, the
frontline troops in the governments war on narcotics. They count their
victories in the number of people they stop because they suspect
they're carrying drugs or drug money. 

        But each year in the hunt for suspects, thousands of guiltless
citizens are stopped, most often because of their skin color.

        A 10-month Pittsburgh Press investigation of drug seizure and
forfeiture included an examination of court records on 121 "drug
courier" stops where money was seized and no drugs were discovered.
The Pittsburgh Press found that black, Hispanic and Asian people
accounted for 77 percent of the cases. 

        In making stops, drug agents use a profile, a set of
speculative behavioral traits that gauge the suspect's appearance,
demeanor and willingness to look a police officer in the eye. 

        For years, the drug courier profile counted race as a
principal indicator of the likelihood of a person's carrying drugs. 

        But today the word "profile" isn't officially mentioned by
police. Seeing the word scrawled in a police report or hearing it from
a witness chair instantly unnerves prosecutors and makes defense
lawyers giddy. Both sides know the racial implications can raise
constitutional challenges. 

        Even so, ar away from the courtrooms, the practice persists. 

        In Memphis, Tenn., in 1989, drug officers have testified,
about 75 percent of the people they stopped in the airport were black.
The latest figures available from the Air Transport Association show
that for that year only 4 percent of the flying public was black. 

        In Eagle County, Colo., the 60-mile-long strip on Interstate
70 that winds and dips past Vail and other ski areas is the setting of
a class-action suit that charges race was the main element of the
profile used in drug stops. 

        According to court documents in one of the cases that led to
the suit, the sheriff and two deputies testified that "being black or
Hispanic was and is a factor" in their drug courier profile. 

        Lawyer David Lane says that 500 people -- primarily Hispanic
and black motorists -- were stopped and searched by Eagle County's
High Country (ED: What an appropriate name :-)) Drug Task Force during
1989 and 1990. Each time, Lane charged, the task force used an
unconstitutional profile based on race, ethnicity and out-of-state
license plates. 

        Byron Boudreaux  was one of those stopped. 

        Boudreaux was driving from Oklahoma to a new job in Canada
when Sgt. James Perry and three other task force officers pulled him
over. 

        "Sgt. Perry told me that I was stopped because my car fit the
description of someone trafficking drugs in the area," Boudreaux says.
He let the officers search his car. 

        "Listen, I was a black man travelling alone up in the
mountains of Eagle County and surrounded by four police officers. I
was going to be as cooperative as I could," he recalls. 

        For almost an hour the officers unloaded and searched the
suitcases, laundry baskets, and boxes that were wedged into Bodreaux's
car. Nothing was found. 

        "I was stopped because I was black, and that's not a great
testament to our law enforcement system," says Boudreaux, who is now
an assistant basketball coach at Queens College in Charlotte, N.C.

        In a federal trial stemming from another stop Perry made on
the same road a few months later, he testified that because of
"astigmatism and color blindness" he was unable to distinguish among
black, Hispanic and white people. 

        U.S. District Court Judge Jim Carrigan didn't buy it and
called the sergeant's testimony "incredible.

        "If this nation were to win its war on drugs at the cost of
sacrificing its citizens' constitutional rights, it would be a Pyrrhic
victory indeed," Carrigan wrote in a court opinion. "If the rule of
law rather than the rule of man is to prevail, there cannot be one set
of search and seizure rules applicable to some and a different set
applicable to others."

Livelihood in jeopardy

        In Nashville, Tenn., Willie Jones has no doubt that police
still use a profile based on race.

        Jones, owner of a landscaping service, thought the ticket
agent at the American Airlines counter in Nashville Metro Airport
reacted strangely when he paid for his round-trip ticket to Houston. 

        "She said no one ever paid in cash anymore and she'd have to
go in the back and check on what to do," Jones says.

        What Jones didn't know is that in Nashville -- as in other
airports -- many airline employees double as paid informers for the
police. 

        The Drug Enforcement Administration usually pays them 10
percent of any money seized, says Capt, Judy Bawcum, head of the
Nashville police division that runs the airport unit. 

        Jones got his ticket. Ten minutes later, as he waited for his
plane, two drug team members stopped him.

        "They flashed their badges and asked if I was carrying drugs
or a large amount of money. I told them I didn't have any drugs, but I
had money on me to go buy some plants for my business," Jones says.

        They searched his overnight bag and found nothing. They patted
him down and felt a bulge. Jones pulled out a black plastic wallet
hidden under his shirt. It held $9,600.

        "I explained that I was going to Houston to order some
shrubbery for my nursery. I do it twice a year and pay cash because
that's the way the growers want it," says the father of three girls. 

        The drug agents took his money. 

        "They said I was going to buy drugs with it, and the dogs
sniffed it and said it had drugs on it," Jones says. He never saw the
dog.

        The officers didn't arrest Jones, but they kept the money.
They gave him a DEA receipt for cash. But under the heading of amount
and description, Sgt. Claude Byrum wrote, "Unspecified amount of U.S.
currency." 

        Jones says losing the money almost put him out of business. 

        "That was to buy my stock. I'm known for having a good
selection for unusual plants. That's why I go South twice a year to buy
them. Now, I've got to do it piecemeal, run out after I'm paid for a
job and buy plants for the next one," he says. 

        Jones has receipts for three years showing that each fall and
spring he buys plants from nurseries in other states. 

        "I just don't understand the government. I don't smoke. I
don't drink. I don't wear gold chains and jewelry, and I don't get
into trouble with the police," he says. "I didn't know it was against
the law for a 42-year-old black man to have money in his pocket."

        Tennessee police records confirm that the only charge ever
filed against Jones was for drag racing 15 years ago. 

        "DEA says I have to pay $900, 10 percent of the money they
took from me, just to have the right to try to get it back," Jones
says. 

        His lawyer, E.E. "Bo" Edwards filled out government forms
documenting that his client couldn't afford the $900 bond. 

        "If I'm going to feed my children, I need my truck, and the
only way I can get that $900 is to sell it," Jones says.

        It's been more than five months, and the only thing Jones has
received for DEA are letters saying that his application to proceed
without paying the $900 bond was deficient. "But they never told us
what those deficiencies were," says Edwards. 

        Jones is nearly resigned to losing the money. "I don't think
I'll ever get it back. But I think the only reason they thought I was
a drug dealer was because I'm black, and that bothers me."

        It also bothers his lawyer.

        "Of course he was stopped because he was black. No cop in his
right mind would try that with a white businessman. Those seizure laws
give law enforcement a license to hunt, and the target of choice for
many cops is those they believe are least capable of protecting
themselves: blacks, Hispanics, and poor whites," Edwards says.

Money still held

        In Buffalo, N.Y., on Oct. 9, Juana Lopez, a dark-skinned
Dominican, had just gotten off a bus from New York City when she was
stopped in the terminal by drug agents who wanted to search her
luggage. 

        They found no drugs, but DEA Agent Bruce Johnson found $4,750
in cash wrapped with rubber bands in her purse. The money, the
28-year-old woman said, was to pay legal fees or bail for her
common-law husband. After he began questioning her, Johnson realized
that he had arrested the husband for drugs two months earlier in the
same bus station. 

        Johnson called the office of attorney Mark Mahoney, where Ms.
Lopez said she was heading, and verified her appointment. 

        Johnson then told the woman she was free to go, but her money
would stay with him because a drug dog had reacted to it. 

        Ms. Lopez has receipts showing the money was obtained legally
-- a third of it was borrowed, another third came from the sale of
jewelry that belonged to her and her husband, and the rest from her
savings as a hair stylist in the Bronx. 

        It has been more than nine months since the money was taken,
and Assistant U.S. attorney Richard Kaufman says that the investigation
is continuing. 

        Robert Clark, a Mobile, Ala., lawyer who has defended many
travellers, says profile stops are the new form of racism. 

        "In the South in the 30's, we used to hang black folks. Now,
given any excuse at all, even legal money in their pockets, we just
seize them to death," he says.

Trivial pursuit

        "If you took all the racial elements out of profiles," you'd
be left with nothing, says Nashville lawyer Edwards, who heads a new
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers task force to
investigate forfeiture law abuses.

        "It would outrage the public to learn the trivial indicators
that police use as the basis for interfering with the right of the
innocent."
        
        Examination of more than 310 affidavits for seizure and
profiles used by 28 different agencies reveals a conflicting collection
or traits that agents say they use to hunt down traffickers.

        Guidelines for DEA drug task force agents in three adjacent
states give conflicting advice on when officers are supposed to become
suspicious. 

        Agents in Illinois are told its suspicious if their subjects
are among the first people off a plane, because it shows they're in a
hurry. 

        In Michigan, the DEA says that being the last off a plane is
suspicious because the subject is trying to appear unconcerned. 

        And in Ohio, agents are told suspicion should surface when
suspects deplane in the middle of a group they may be trying to lose
themselves in the crowd. 

        One of the most mentioned indicators is that suspects were
travelling to or from a source city for drugs. 
        
        But a list of cities favored by drug couriers gleaned from the
DEA affidavits amounts to a compendium of every major community in the
United States. 

        Seeming to be nervous, looking around, pacing, looking at a
watch, making a phone call -- all things that business travellers
routinely do, especially those who are late or don't like to fly --
sound alarms to waiting drug agents. 

        Some agents change their mind about what makes them suspicious.

        In Tennessee, an agent told a judge he was leery of a man
because he "walked quickly through the airport." Six weeks later, in
another affidavit, the same agent said his suspicions were aroused
because the suspect "walked with intentional slowness after getting
off the bus."

        In Albuquerque, N.M., people have been stopped because they
were standing on the train platform watching people. 

        Whether you look at a police officer can be construed to be a
suspicious sign. One Maryland said he was wary because the subject
"deliberately did not look at me when he drove by my position." Yet
another Maryland trooper testified that he stopped a man because the
"driver stared at me when he passed."

        Too much baggage, or not enough will draw the attention of the
law. 

        You could be in trouble with drug agents if you're sitting in
first class and don't look as if you belong there. 

        DEA agent Paul Markonni, who is considered the "father" of the
drug courier profile, testified in a Florida court about why he
stopped a man.

        "We do see some real slimeballs, you know, some real dirtbags,
that obviously could not afford, unless they were doing something, to
fly first class," he told the court. 

        The newest extension of drug courier profiles are pagers and
cellular telephones. 

        Based on the few cases that have reached the courts, the
communication devices -- which are carried by business people, nervous
parents and patients waiting for a transplant as well as drug couriers
-- are primarily suspicious when they are found on the belts or in the
suitcases of minorities or long-haired whites. 

        for police intent on stopping someone, any reason will do.

        "If they're black, Hispanic, Asian or look like a hippie,
that's a stereotype, and the police will find some way to stop them if
that's their intent," says San Antonio lawyer Gerald Goldstein. 

The perfect profile

        A DEA agent thought that former New York Giants center Kevin
Belcher matched his profile. When Belcher got off a flight from
Detroit on March 2, he was stopped by DEA's Dallas/Fort Worth Airport
Narcotics Task Force. 

        The Texas officers had been called a short while earlier by a
DEA agent at Detroit's Metro Airport. A security screener had spotted
a big, black man carrying a large amount of money in his jacket
pocket, the Detroit agent reported to his southern colleagues. 

        Belcher was questioned about the purpose of the trip and was
asked whether he had any money. He gave the agents $18,265. 

        Belcher explained that he was going to El Past to buy some
classic old cars -- "1968 or '69 Camaros are what I'm looking for."
Belcher, whose professional football career ended after a near-fatal
traffic accident in New Jersey, told the agents he owned four Victory
Lane Quick Oil Change outlets in Michigan. The money came from sales,
he said, and cash was what auctioneers demanded. 

        A drug-sniffing dog was called, it reacted, and the money was
seized. 

        Agent Rick Watson to Belcher he was free to go "but that I was
going to detain the monies to determine the origin of them."

        In his seizure affidavit, Watson listed the matches he made
between Belcher and the profile of "other narcotic currency couriers
encountered at DFW airport."

        Included in Watson's profile was that Belcher had bought a
one-way ticket on the date of travel; was traveling to a "source"
city, El Paso, "where drug dealers have long been known to be
exporting large amounts of marijuana to other parts of the country";
and was carrying $100, $50, $20, $10, and $5 bills, "which is
consistent with drug asset seizures."

        Watson made no mention as to what denomination other than $1
bills was left for non-drug traffickers to carry. 

        "The drug courier profile can be absolutely anything that the
police officer decides it is at that moment," says Albuquerque defense
lawyer Nancy Hollander, one of the nation's leading authorities on
drug profile stops.

Wide net cast

        Officials are reluctant to reveal how many innocent people
are ensnared each day by profile stops. Most police departments say
they don't keep that information. Those that do are reluctant to
discuss it. 

        "We don't like to talk much about what we seize at the
(Nashville) airport because it might stir up the public and make the
airport officials unhappy because we are somehow harassing people. It
would be great if we could keep the whole operation secret," says
Capt. Bawcum, in charge of the Airport's drug team. 

        Capt. Rudy Sandoval, commander of Denver's vice bureau, says
he doesn't keep the airport numbers but estimated his police searched
more than 2,000 people in 1990, but arrested on 49 and seized money
from fewer than 50. 

        At Pittsburgh's airport, numbers are kept. The team searched
527 people last year, and arrested 49. 

        A federal court judge in Buffalo, N.Y., says police stop too
many innocent people to catch to few crooks. 

        Judge George Pratt said he was shocked that police charged
only 10 of the 600 people stopped in 1989 in the Buffalo airport and
decried encroaching on the constitutional rights of 590 innocent
people.

        In his opinion in the case, Pratt said that by conducting
unreasonable searches: "It appears that they have sacrificed the
Fourth Amendment by detaining 590 innocent people in order to arrest
10 who are not -- all in the name of the 'war on drugs.' When, pray
tell, will it end? Where are we going?"-- 


Part three of the six-part series.

-------------------------------------------

The Pittsburgh Press, Tuesday, August 13, 1991

The following article appeared as the HEADLINE on the FRONT PAGE

                P R E S U M E D   G U I L T Y 
            The Law's Victims in the War on Drugs

        Police profit by seizing homes of innocent

by Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty

Part Three: Innocent owners

        The second time police came to the Hawaii home of Joseph and
Frances Lopes, they came to take it. 

        "They were in a car and a van. I was in the garage. They said,
'Mrs. Lopes, let's go into the house, and we will explain things to
you.' They sat in the dining room and told me they were taking the
house. It made my heart beat very fast."

        For the rest of the day, 60-year-old Frances and her
65-year-old husband, Joseph, trailed federal agents as they walked
through every room of the Maui house, the agents recording the
position of every piece of furniture on a video-tape that serves as
the government's inventory.

        Four years after their mentally unstable adult son pleaded
guilty to growing marijuana in their back yard for his own use, the
Lopeses face the loss of their home. A Maui detective trolling for
missed forfeiture opportunities spotted the old case. He recognized
that the law allowed him to take away their property because they knew
their son had committed a crime on it. 

        A forfeiture law intended to strip drug traffickers of
ill-gotten gains often is turned on people, like the Lopeses, who have
not committed a crime. The incentive for police to do that is
financial, since the federal government and most states let the police
departments keep the proceeds from what they take. 

        The law tries to temper maoney-making temptations with
protections for innocent owners, including lien-holders, landlords
whose tennants misuse property, or people unaware of their spouse's
misdeeds. The protection is supposed to cover anyone with an interest
in a property who can prove he did not know about the alleged illegal
activity, did not consent to it, or took all reasonable steps to
prevent it. 

        But a Pittsburgh Press investigation found that those supposed
safeguards do not come into play until after the government takes an
asset, forcing innocent owners to hire attorneys to get their property
back -- if they ever do. 

        "As if the law weren't bad enough, they just clobber you
financially," says Wayne Davis, an attorney from Little Rock, Ark.

Feared for their son

        In 1987, Thomas Lopes, who was then 28 and living in his
parents' home, pleaded guilty to growing marijuana in their back yard.
Officers spotted it from a helicopter. 

        Because it was his first offense, Thomas recieved probation
and an order to see a psychologist. From the time he was young, mental
problems tormented Thomas, and though he visited a psychologist as a
tenn, he had refused to continue as he grew older, his parents say. 

        Instead, he cloistered himself in his bedroom, leaving only to
tend the garden. 

        "We did ask him to stop, and he would say, 'Don't touch it',
or he would do something to himself," says the elder Lopes, who worked
on a sugar plantation and lived in its rented camp housing for 30
years while he saved to buy his own home.

        Given Thomas' history, and a family history of mental problems
that caused a grandparent and an uncle to be committed to
institutions, the threats stymied his parents. 

        The Lopeses, says their attorney Matthew Metnzer, "were under
duress. Everyone who has been diagnosed in this family ended up being
taken away. They could not conceive of any way of getting rid of the
dope, without getting rid of their son, or losing him forever."

        When police arrived to arrest Thomas, "I was so happy because
I knew he would get care," says his mother. He did, and he continues
weekly doctor visits. His mood is better, Mrs. Lopes says, and he had
never again grown marijuana or been arrested. 

        But his guilty plea haunts his family. 

        Because his parents admitted they knew what he was doing,
their home was vulnerable to forfeiture. 

        Back when Thomas was arrested, police rarely took homes. But
since, agencies have learned how to use the law, and have seen the
financial payoff, says Assistant U.S. Attorney Marshall Silverberg, of
Honolulu. 

        The also carefully review old cases for overlooked forfeiture
possibilities, he says. The detective who uncovered the Lopes case
started a forfeiture action in February -- just under the five-year
deadline for staking such a claim. 

        "I concede the time lapse on this case is longer than most,
but there was a violation of the law, and that makes this appropriate,
not money-grubbing," says Silverberg. "The other way to look at this,
you know, is that the Lopeses could be happy we let them live there
as long as we did."

        They don't see it that way. 

        Neither does their attorney, who says his firm now has about
eight similar forfeiture cases, all of them stemming from small-time
crimes that occured years ago but were resurected. "Digging these
cases out now is a business proposition, not law enforcement," Menzer
says. 

        "We thought it was all behind us," says Lopes. Now, "there
isn't a day I don't think about what will happen to us."

        They remain in the house, paying taxes and mortgage, until the
forfeiture case is resolved. Given court backlogs, that won't likely
be until the middle of next year, Menzer says. 

        They've been warned to leave everything as it was when the
videotape was shot. 

        "When they were going out the door," Mrs. Lopes says of the
police, "they told me to take good care of the yard. They said they
would be coming back one day."

'Dumb judgement'


Protections for innocent owners are "a neglected issue in federal and
state forfeiture law," concluded the Police Executive Research Forum
in its March bulletin. 

        But a chief policy maker on forfeiture maintains that the
system is actively interested in protecting the rights of the
innocent. 

        George J. Terwilliger III, associate deputy general in the
Justice Department, admits that there may be instances of 'dumb
judgement.' And says if there's a 'systemic' problem, he'd like to
know about it. 

        But attorneys who battle forfeiture cases say dumb judgement
is the systemic problem. And they point to some of Terwilliger's own
decisions as examples. 

        The forfeiture policy that Terwilliger crafts in the nation's
capital he puts to use in his other federal job: U.S. attorney for
Vermont. 

        A coalition of Vermont residents, outraged by Terwilliger's
forfeitures of homes in which small children live, launched a
grass-roots movement called "Stop Forfeiture of Children's Homes."
Three months old, the group has about 70 members from school
principals to local medical societies. 

        Forfeitures are a particularly sensitive issue in Vermont
where state law forbids taking a person's primary home. That
restriction appears nowhere in federal law, which means Vermont police
departments can circumvent the state constraint by taking forfeiture
cases through federal courts.

        The playmaker for that end-run: Terwilliger.

        "It's government sponsored child abuse that's destroying the
future of children all over this state in the name of fighting the
drug war," says Dr. Kathleen DePierro, a family practitioner who works
at Vermont State Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Waterbury. 

        The children of Karen and Reggie Lavallee, ages 6, 9 and 11,
are precisely the type of victims over which the Vermonters agonize.
Reggie Lavalle is serving a 10-year sentence in a federal prison in
Minnesota for cocaine possesion. 

        Because police said he had been involved in drug trafficking,
his conviction cost his family their ranch house on 2 acres in a small
village 20 miles east of Burlington. For the first time, the family is
on welfare, in a rented duplex. 

        "I don't condone what my husband did, but why victimize my
children because of his actions? That house wasn't much, but it was
ours. It was a home for the children, with rabbits, chicken, turkeys
and a vegetable garden. Their friends were their and they liked the
school," says Mrs. Lavallee, 29.

        After the eviction, "every night for months, Amber cried
because she couldn't see her friends. I'd like to see the government
tell this 9-year-old that this isn't cruel and unusual punishment."

        Terwilliger's dual role particularly troubles DePierro. "It's
horrifying to know he's setting policy that could expand this type of
terror and abuse to kids in every state in the nation."

        Terwilliger calls the groups allegations absurd. "If there was
someone to blame, it would be the parents and not the government."

        Lawyers like John MacFadyen, a defense attorney in Providence,
R.I., find it harder to fix blame. 

        "The flaw with the innocent owner thing is that life doesn't
paint itself in black and white. It's oftentimes gray, and there is no
room for gray in these laws," MacFadyen says. As a consequence,
prosecutors presume everyone guilty and leave it to them to show
otherwise. "That's not good judgement. In fact, if defies common
sense."

Proving innocence

Innocent owners who defend their interests expose themselves to
questioning that bores deep into their private affairs. Because the
forfeiture law is civil, they also have no protection against self
incrimination, which means they risk having anything they say used
against them later. 

        The documentation required of innocent owner Loretta Stearns
illustrates how deeply the government plumbs. 

        The Connecticut woman lent her adult son $40,000 in 1988 to
buy a home in Tequesta, Fla., court documents show.

        Unlike many parents who treat such transactions informally,
she had the foresight to record the loan as a mortgage with Palm Beach
County. Her action ultimately protected her interest in the house
after the federal government seized it, claiming her son stored
cocaine there. He has not been charged criminally. 

        The seizure occured in November, and it took until last May
before Mrs. Stearns convinced the government she had a legitimate
interest in the house. 

        To prove herself an innocent owner, Mrs. Stearns met 14
requests for information, including providing "all documents of any
kind whatsoever pertaining to your mortgage, including but not limited
to, loan application, credit reports, record of mortgage and mortgage
payments, title reports, appraisal reports, closing documents, records
of any liens, attachments on the defendant's property, records of
payments, cancelled checks, internal correspondence or notes
(handwritten or typed) relating to any of the above and opinion letter
from borrower's or lender's counsel relating to any of the above." 

        And that was just question No. 1.

Landlord as cop

        Innocent owners are supposed to be sheilded in forfeitures,
but at times they've been expected to become virtual cops in order to
protect their property from seizure. 

        T.T. Masonry Inc. owns a 36-unit apartment building in
Milwaukee, Wis. that's plauged by dope dealing. Between January, 1990,
when it bought the building, and July 1990, when the city formally
warned it about problems, the landlord evicted 10 tenants suspected of
drug use, gave a master key to local beat and vice cops, forwarded
tips to police, and hired two security firms -- including an off-duty
police officer -- to patrol the building. 

        Despite that effort, the city seized the property. 

        Assistant City Attorney David Stanosz says "once a property
develops a reputation as a place to buy drugs, the only way to fix
that is to leave it totally vacant for a number of months. This
landlord doesn't want to do that."

        Correct, says Jerome Buting, attorney for Tom Torp of Masonry.

        "If this building is such a target for dealers, use that
fact," says Buting. "Let undercover people go in. But when I raised
that, the answer was they were short of officers and resources."

It looks like coke

        Grady McClendon, 53, his wife, two of their adult children and
two grandchildren -- 7 and 8 -- were in a rented car headed to their
Florida home in August 1989. They were returning from a family reunion
in Dublin, Ga.

        In Fitzgerald, Ga., McClendon made a wrong turn on a one-way
street. Local police stopped him, checked his identification, and
asked his permission to search the car. He agreed. 

        Within minutes, police pulled open suitcases and purses,
emptying-out jewelry and about 10 Florida state lottery tickets. They
also found a registered handgun. 

        Then, says McClendon, the police "started waving a little
stick they said was cocaine. They told me to put on my glasses and
take a good look. I told them I'd never seen cocaine for real, but
that didn't look like TV."

        For about six hours, police detained the McClendon family at
the police station where officers seized $2,300 in cash and other
items as "instruments of drug activity and gambling paraphernalia" --
a reference to the lottery tickets. 

        Finally, they gave the McClendon's a traffic ticket and
released them, but kept the family possessions. 

        For 11 months, McClendon's attorney argued with the state,
finally forcing it to produce lab test results on the "cocaine."

        James E. Turk, the prosecutor who handled the case, will say
only "it came back negative."

        "That's because it was bubble gum," says Jerry Froelich,
McClendon's attorney. A judge returned the McClendon's items. 

        Turk considers the search "a good stop. They had no proof of
where they lived beyond drivers' licenses. They had jewelry that could
have been contraband, but we couldn't prove it was stolen. And they
had more cash than I would expect them to carry."

        McClendon says, "I didn't see anything wrong with them asking
to search me. That's their job. But the rest of it was wrong, wrong,
wrong."

Seller, beware

        Owners who press the government for damages are rare. Those
who do are often helped by attorneys who forgo their usual fees
because of their own indignation over the law. 

        For nearly a decade, the lives of Carl and Mary Shelden of
Moraga, Calif., have been intertwined with the life of a convicted
criminal who happened to buy their house. 

        The complex litigation began when the Shelden's sold their
home in 1979, but took back a deed of trust from the buyer -- an
arrangement that made the Shelden's a mortgage holder on the house. 

        Four years later the buyer was arrested and convicted of
running an interstate prostitution ring. His property, including the
home on which the Shelden's held the mortgage, was forfeited. The
criminal, pending his appeal, went to jail, but the government allowed
his family to live in the home rent-free.

        Panicked when they read about the arrest in the newspaper, the
Shelden's discovered they couldn't forclose against the government and
couldn't collect mortgage payments from the criminal. 

        After tortuous court appearances, the Shelden's got back the
home in 1987, but discovered it was so severely damaged while in
government control that they can now stick their hands between the
bricks near the front door. 

        The home the Shelden's sold in 1979 for $289,000 was valued at
$115,500 in 1987 and now needs nearly $500,000 in repairs, the
Sheldens say, chiefly from uncorrected drainage problems that caused a
retaining wall to let loose and twist apart the main house. 

        Disgusted, they returned to court, saying their Fifth
Amaendment rights had been violated. The amendment prohibits the
taking of private property for public use without just compensation.
Their attorney, Brenda Grantland of Washington, D.C., argues that when
the government seized the property but failed to sell it promptly and
pay off the Sheldens, it violated their rights. 

        Between 1983 and today, the Sheldens have defended their
mortgage through every type of court: forclosures, U.S. District
Court, Bankruptcy, U.S. Claims. 

        In January, 1990, a federal judge issued an opinion agreeing
the Sheldens rights had been violated. The government asked the judge
to reconsider, and he agreed. A final opinion has not been issued. 

        "It's been a roller coaster," says Mrs. Shelden, 46. A
secretary, she is the family's breadwinner. Shelden, 50, was
permanently disbaled when he broke his back in 1976  while repairing
his home. Because he was unable to work, the couple couldn't afford
the house, so they sold it -- the act that pitched them into their
decade-long legal quagmire. 

        They've tried to rent the damaged home to a family -- a real
estate agent showed it 27 times with no takers -- then resorted to
renting to college students, then room-by-room boarders. Finally,
they and their children, ages 21 and 16, moved back in.

        "We owe Brenda (Grantland) thousands at this point, but she's
really been a doll," says Shelden. "Without people like her, people
like us wouldn't stand a chance."-- 


