The Supreme Court majority continued in relevant part: The Court’s decisions in $8,850 and Von Neumann make crystal clear that due process does not require a separate preliminary hearing to determine whether seized personal property may be retained pending the ultimate forfeiture hearing. In $8,850, the Court addressed the process due when the Customs Service seized currency from an individual entering the United States but did not immediately file for civil forfeiture of the currency. The Court concluded that a post seizure delay “may become so prolonged that the dispossessed property owner has been deprived of a meaningful hearing at a meaningful time,” 461 U. S., at 562–563, and prescribed factors for courts to consider in assessing whether a forfeiture hearing is timely. Id., at 564– 565.
In Von Neumann, a property owner failed to declare the purchase of his new car upon driving it into the United States, and a customs official seized the car after determining that it was subject to civil forfeiture. The plaintiff filed a petition for remission of the forfeiture—in essence, a request under federal law that the Government exercise its discretion to forgive the forfeiture—which the Government did not answer for 36 days. The plaintiff sued, arguing that the Government’s delay in answering the remission petition violated due process. The Court rejected that claim, broadly holding that due process did not re quire a pre-forfeiture-hearing remission procedure in the first place. See 474 U. S., at 249–250. Instead, Von Neumann held that a timely forfeiture hearing satisfies due process in civil forfeiture cases, and that $8,850 specifies the standard for when a forfeiture hearing is timely.
Petitioners’ argument for a separate preliminary hearing appears to be a backdoor argument for a timelier forfeiture hearing to allow a property owner with a good defense to recover her property quickly. But the Court’s precedents already require a timely hearing, and a property owner can raise $8,850-based arguments to ensure a timely hearing. Petitioners’ efforts to distinguish Von Neumann on the ground that the statutory remission procedure in that case was discretionary fail because that fact played no role in the Court’s constitutional analysis. Petitioners also cannot distinguish the relevant language in Von Neumann as dicta, as the Court ruled for the Government on the ground that a timely “forfeiture proceeding, without more, provides the post-seizure hearing required by due process” in civil forfeiture cases. 474 U. S., at 249.
Another interesting issue related to forfeitures is whether criminal defendants should be allowed to negotiate a “global” result regarding the criminal and related civil forfeiture cases. An argument against such negotiations is that they can be a roundabout way to relinquish money and property in exchange for a favorable disposition of the criminal case. While it would be illegal an unethical to offer to give the prosecutor’s office money and valuables in exchange for their not seeking a prison sentence, the practice is often tolerated with civil forfeiture cases.
