Jones v. Greene

• Decision Date: 04 December 1996
• Citation: 946 S.W.2d 817
• Parties: Freddie Lee JONES, Plaintiff/Appellant, v. Michael C. GREENE, Commission, Tennessee Department of Safety, Defendant/Appellee.
• Court: Tennessee Court of Appeals

Page 817

946 S.W.2d 817

Freddie Lee JONES, Plaintiff/Appellant, v. Michael C. GREENE, Commission, Tennessee Department of

Safety, Defendant/Appellee.

Court of Appeals of Tennessee,

Middle Section, at Nashville.

Dec. 4, 1996.

Application for Permission to Appeal

Denied by Supreme Court May 5, 1997.

E.E. Edwards, III, James A. Simmons, Nashville, for Plaintiff/Appellant.

Charles W. Burson, Attorney General and Reporter and Rebecca Lyford, Counsel to the State, Nashville, for Defendant/Appellee.

OPINION

KOCH, Judge.

This appeal involves over $45,000 seized during the search of a house in Memphis for illegal drugs. After the Commissioner of Safety ordered the forfeiture of the money, the person claiming the funds filed a petition for review in the Chancery Court for Davidson County asserting that the forfeiture statutes deprived him of his constitutional right to a jury trial and violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the United States and Tennessee Constitutions. The trial court upheld the forfeiture statutes and the forfeiture, and this appeal followed. We have determined that Tennessee's forfeiture statutes are constitutional and that the record contains substantial and material evidence supporting the commissioner's forfeiture order. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment.

I.

On May 26, 1989, the Shelby County Sheriff's Department obtained a warrant to search the house at 2491 Haischi Street in Memphis based on reliable information that cocaine was being stored and sold there. When the deputies executed the warrant on May 27, 1989, they encountered Halbert Brown ¹ who confirmed that he lived in the house. The search yielded four handguns, an M-1 carbine, 0.6 grams of cocaine, 1.5 grams of marijuana, and drug paraphernalia. The deputies also discovered $541 in Mr. Brown's pants pocket and $5,380 in a padlocked closet in one bedroom. In addition, they found a paper grocery sack hidden behind a built-in entertainment center containing over $40,065, divided into two thousand dollar rolls separately wrapped in plastic sandwich bags.

Mr. Brown was arrested and questioned at the scene. He denied that the seized money was his and insisted that he did not know to whom the money belonged. After Mr. Brown refused to sign a notice of seizure form, the deputies mailed him a copy of the form several days later by certified mail. The form stated that the money and other property would be forfeited unless a written claim was filed with the Commissioner of Safety within fifteen days after the date of the notice.

No one filed a timely claim for the property. On August 9, 1989, the Commissioner ordered the forfeiture of the $45,986 and notified Mr. Brown of his action by certified mail. On August 16, 1989, a lawyer representing both Mr. Brown and Freddie Lee Jones requested the Commissioner to reconsider his order. Mr. Jones asserted that he too resided at 2491 Haischi Street, that all the money found in the house, except the $541 in Mr. Brown's pocket, belonged to him, and that he had not received proper notice of the forfeiture proceeding. ² The Commissioner denied the petition for reconsideration, and the Chancery Court for Davidson County affirmed the Commissioner's decision. This court, however, reversed the denial of Mr. Jones's claim and remanded the case to the Commissioner for further proceedings. Brown v. Tennessee Dep't of Safety, App. No. 01A01-9102-CH-00043, slip op. at 11, 1992 WL 63444 (Tenn.Ct.App. April 1, 1992) (No Tenn.R.App.P. 11 application filed).

The Commissioner assigned the case to an administrative law judge after the remand. The ALJ denied Mr. Jones's motion to transfer the case to circuit court for a jury trial and conducted a hearing on Mr. Jones's petition for the return of the $45,445 on October 22 and 23, 1992. On June 10, 1993, the ALJ filed an initial order concluding that the $40,065 found in the paper bag hidden behind the entertainment center should be returned to Mr. Jones.

All parties appealed the ALJ's initial decision to the Commissioner. On October 4, 1994, the Commissioner filed an order denying Mr. Brown's recusal motion and declining to address the constitutionality of the forfeiture statutes. The Commissioner also concluded that Mr. Jones had failed to prove that he resided at 2491 Haischi Street when the money was seized and that Mr. Jones had failed to establish an interest in the seized money. Accordingly, the Commissioner ordered the forfeiture of the entire $45,986 to the seizing agency.

Mr. Jones filed a petition for review in the Chancery Court for Davidson County alleging that the forfeiture statute was unconstitutional in several particulars and that the Commissioner's decision was not supported by substantial evidence. The trial court determined that the forfeiture statutes were not constitutionally suspect and that the Commissioner's decision was supported by substantial evidence. This appeal followed.

II. EVOLUTION OF THE DRUG FORFEITURE STATUTES

Tennessee's drug forfeiture statutes have changed substantially over the past sixty years. The first civil forfeiture procedure was enacted in 1937 when the General Assembly passed the Uniform Narcotic Law. ³ The law required the forfeiture and disposal of "[a]ll narcotic drugs, ⁴ the lawful possession of which is not established or the title to which cannot be ascertained." See Tenn.Code Ann. § 52-1315. It also provided for a judicial forfeiture proceeding conducted by "the court or magistrate having jurisdiction." See Tenn.Code Ann. § 52-1315(a).

Eighteen years later, the General Assembly enacted additional legislation regarding the seizure and confiscation of contraband drugs. ⁵ The "contraband drugs" covered by this Act included marijuana and substances defined as "narcotic drugs" in the Uniform Narcotic Drug Law. See Tenn.Code Ann. § 52-1401 (repealed 1971). The new statutes not only authorized the forfeiture of contraband drugs but, for the first time, authorized the forfeiture of conveyances used to transport contraband drugs. See Tenn.Code Ann. § 52-1403 (repealed 1971).

In another significant departure from the Uniform Narcotic Drug Law, the 1955 statute provided for an administrative, rather than a judicial, forfeiture proceeding. ⁶ See Tenn.Code Ann. § 52-1404 (codified as amended at Tenn.Code Ann. § 53-11-201 (Supp.1996)). Persons claiming an interest in property seized as contraband were authorized to file a written claim with the Commissioner of Safety, and the Commissioner was empowered to conduct a hearing on the claim. ⁷ See Tenn.Code Ann. § 52-1404. Persons dissatisfied with the Commissioner's disposition of the claim were permitted to obtain judicial review by filing a common-law writ of certiorari in the Circuit Court for Davidson County. See Tenn.Code Ann. § 52-1405 (codified as Tenn.Code Ann. § 53-11-202(a)-(e)). The review was limited to the record of the proceedings before the Commissioner, and the parties were specifically not permitted to introduce additional evidence in the circuit court proceeding.

In 1971 the General Assembly replaced most of the Uniform Narcotic Drug Law with the "Tennessee Drug Control Act of 1971." ⁸ This Act again increased the number of drugs considered to be "controlled substances." ⁹ It also expanded the types of property subject to forfeiture to include raw materials and equipment used to produce illegal controlled substances, property used to contain illegal controlled substance or raw materials, and books, records, and other materials used to violate the law. ¹⁰ While retaining the administrative forfeiture procedure established in 1955, ¹¹ the Act empowered the circuit and criminal courts to enjoin violations of the controlled substance laws and gave defendants in these civil proceedings a statutory right to a jury trial. ¹²

During the intervening twenty-five years, the General Assembly has expanded the scope of the civil drug forfeiture laws on five occasions. In 1972 it added "money or any other thing of value" received in an illegal drug transaction to the list of property subject to forfeiture. ¹³ In 1983, it authorized the forfeiture of "all proceeds traceable" to an illegal drug transaction, ¹⁴ and one year later it authorized the forfeiture of "drug paraphernalia." ¹⁵ In 1986, and again in 1994, it modified the scope of the provision relating to the forfeiture of conveyances. ¹⁶

The caption and preamble of the 1986 Act amending the drug forfeiture procedures reveal that the General Assembly considered, but rejected, a provision authorizing the forfeiture of real property used to facilitate an illegal drug transaction. ¹⁷ The General Assembly revisited the issue four years later and determined that both real property used to facilitate an illegal drug transaction and interests in real property acquired with the proceeds of an illegal drug transaction should be subject to forfeiture. ¹⁸ Forfeitures of interests in real property differ from all other civil drug forfeitures in three material respects. First, the forfeiture cannot occur until the holder of an interest in the real property is convicted of a specified drug-related offense. ¹⁹ Second, the forfeiture procedure is judicial rather than administrative and is commenced by the filing of a "civil forfeiture suit" by a district attorney general or the State Attorney General and Reporter. ²⁰ Third, the defendants in these civil proceedings have a statutory right to a jury trial. ²¹

The final step in the evolution of Tennessee's civil drug forfeiture procedures occurred in 1994 when the General Assembly established a uniform procedure governing the forfeiture of personal property. ²² This new procedure does not apply to all types of forfeitures, but it does specifically apply to forfeitures of personal property authorized by Tenn.Code Ann. § 53-11-451. See Tenn.Code Ann. § 40-33-201 (Supp.1996) (amendments effective January 1, 1997). It will also supplant the procedure in ...