Government Likely Loser in High Court Forfeiture Case

You know your U.S. Supreme Court argument isn’t going well when the justices say that your theory is “odd” and “troubling,” can’t be understood and can’t be found in the text of the particular statute at issue.

Those were statements from Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen G. Breyer, respectively, directed at the federal government March 29 in a forfeiture case (Honeycutt v. United States, U.S., 16-142, argued 3/29/17).

A loss for the government would make forfeiture more difficult to obtain in criminal cases.

Here, the government is trying to get the proceeds of ...