Behind the Scenes of the Caswell Forfeiture Victory

back in 2009 the federal government filed a forfeiture action against a motel in Tewksbury Massachusetts the name of the case had one of those absurd civil forfeiture names United States of America versus 434 Main Street Tewksbury Massachusetts this is a case that epitomized everything that was wrong with civil forfeiture and we were determined to put a stop to it we first heard about this case when I received an email from a local attorney in Massachusetts who was trying to help out the kaswell's he was an old family friend who's a business lawyer never done a forfeiture case and he had read about our work challenging civil forfeiture so he wrote to us basically asking for more information I read about this case checked into it a little bit more was outraged about what the federal government was doing to the Caswell family and thought this is a case we definitely have to check out to see if it would make a good case for I Jane I traveled to Tewkesbury chooses to meet with the kaswell's and their local attorney and I sat in their house toward the motel Caswell and really got to know the family they are a hard-working family that had owned the motel for a long time they're a very close-knit family and they had never had any trouble with the law they were law-abiding citizens and yet they faced the loss of everything that they had worked for because some guests over the course of a 15 year period engaged in some drug activity if the government would have won this case it would have set a very dangerous precedent because the government was basically arguing that all they have to show is that certain crimes occurred on your property and then the burden shifted to the property owner to try to get the property back the case went to trial and we had a four day trial in federal court in Boston election week in November of 2012 trials are always incredibly grueling experiences and there's a lot of unexpected twists and turns along the way but one thing that came out very clearly during the trial is that Russ had always tried to work with the police he had absolutely nothing to hide and the judge saw that and saw how weak the government's case was against him well there was a lot of pretty amazing things that we found out in this case both during discovery and at trial one of the things we found out in Discovery is that there is a DEA agent whose job it is is to search online for properties to forfeit and this is how this case came to the attention of the Tewksbury Police Department a DEA agent said there's been some problems at the motel Caswell let's work together to try to take it another thing that happened during the trial is that the government wanted to make a big production out of the fact that there was a so-called meth lab operating one of the rooms at the motel Caswell and they made a big deal about this and the press and also with the judge that this was like something out of Breaking Bad well what the trial showed is what this really was was a guy and his girlfriend with a hot plate in a fishing bowl nobody knew about it until somebody a cop came to the door and it really demonstrated the problem with the government's case is that Russ and his employees had no way of knowing what people were doing behind closed doors and anytime that they heard something or were suspicious of something they contacted the police well in January of 2013 I was sitting at my desk working on something else and an email popped up saying that a decision had been reached in the Caswell case and I knew all of the other lawyers in the office got the same email we were all anxiously looking through the opinion and we were absolutely thrilled that the judge ruled in Russ's favor on basically everything in the case so I got the whole team that had worked on the case together in my office and we got to call Russ and let him know what had happened and it was one of those calls that you just really never forget it's three-year wait that had been on the kaswell's shoulders had been lifted and we told him that he was going to be able to keep his property and that everything was going to be okay not only was this decision and a great victory for the Caswell family but it will stand as a very important precedent in protecting other innocent owners like Russ when facing civil forfeiture well Russ is doing great he's still running the motel Caswell he just recently turned 70 and he's thinking about selling the motel and truly retiring only now any proceeds from the sale of that motel will go to his family rather than to the federal government he's also indulging in a side passion of his which is racecar driving so he's not only winning important property rights victories he's also winning races now too and the other thing that Russ is doing which is great is that he has now become a citizen activist he is willing to do whatever it takes to try to prevent the government from doing to others what it did to him you

Channel: Institute for Justice

Views: 441,897

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Id: oJrM44GwiTg

Length: 5min 59sec (359 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 27 2014