Victory! IJ Scores Civil Forfeiture Win At Michigan Supreme Court

 After years of litigation, IJ client Stephanie Wilson was recently fully vindicated by the Michigan Supreme Court, which held that Wayne County’s forfeiture of her 2006 Saturn Ion was illegal. 

Stephanie has been fighting alongside IJ since 2020 in a multi-front challenge to Detroit’s vehicle forfeiture machine. She is a named plaintiff in IJ’s federal class action lawsuit against Wayne County and has simultaneously been fighting the county’s attempted forfeiture of her car in state court. This victory is the final word on the latter suit.

Wayne County seized Stephanie’s car in 2019 after she picked up her son’s father—who was battling addiction—to take him to his mother’s house. When officers stopped Stephanie as she began driving away, they found no drugs on Stephanie, her passenger, or anywhere in her car. The officers nevertheless decided to seize Stephanie’s car for forfeiture, alleging that her passenger had purchased $10 worth of drugs shortly before getting into the car.

In the trial court, Stephanie argued that she had done nothing wrong. She also argued that—even if her passenger had purchased drugs at some point that day—giving a drug user a ride does not make a car subject to forfeiture under Michigan law. The trial court judge agreed and ordered Wayne County to return Stephanie’s car. (The judge also wondered aloud at the hearing whether the county might have “bigger fish to fry” than taking the car of a young single mother for an alleged $10 drug deal in which she had not been involved.) 

Wayne County appealed, and the Michigan Court of Appeals (the intermediate appellate court) overturned the previous ruling in Stephanie’s favor. That court held that, on the facts set out by the state, it was possible that Stephanie’s car had momentarily “transported” drugs in the brief time before her car was stopped, and that her passenger had used them or thrown them out the window to avoid detection prior to the officers’ search. That, the court found, would have been enough for forfeiture.

If left unchallenged, that decision could have affected people across the state who know or love someone battling addiction, making cars vulnerable to forfeiture simply for transporting someone who may have recently purchased or used drugs. So IJ urged the Michigan Supreme Court to overturn the appellate court’s ruling. 

In July, the state’s high court adopted IJ’s position. The Court held that, under Michigan’s vehicle forfeiture law, forfeiture is appropriate only when cars are used to transport illegal drugs with the intent of selling or receiving those drugs. Because Stephanie’s car had not been used in this way even in the government’s version of the story, it should never have been subject to civil forfeiture.

Stephanie’s big win energizes our ongoing broader constitutional challenge to Detroit’s vehicle forfeiture scheme—where we are currently in the midst of the discovery process in federal court. It also offers security and peace of mind to motorists in the Motor City and across Michigan.

Kirby Thomas West is an IJ attorney.