COUNTYWIDE : Judge Rejects Ranch Seizure in Slave Case

A federal judge denied Tuesday a government request to seize about $5 million in property from a Somis flower rancher charged with enslaving at least 60 Mexican laborers at his 50-acre compound during the 1980s.

U. S. District Judge Robert Takasugi ruled that federal prosecutors had not shown a likelihood that a jury would convict Edwin M. Ives of racketeering, one of 46 counts in a federal indictment against the rancher. Property confiscation is allowed only under racketeering law.

Takasugi also ruled that prosecutors had not shown that Ives and his wife, Dolly, a co-defendant, had obtained the property--including three ranches--with money from illegal activity. Such a finding is also required to begin confiscation.

Defense attorneys have argued that new charges filed against the Iveses and seven former Somis ranch employees in January were part of a plan to freeze the couple’s assets and force a 10-lawyer defense team out of the case.

“This effort was clearly unfair,” attorney Robert M. Talcott said Tuesday after the ruling. “It’s a distortion and an abuse of the system.”

Assistant U. S. Atty. Alfredo X. Jarrin, co-prosecutor in the slavery case, said the judge had ruled against the government partly because it was already assured that the Ives property could not be sold before trial, which is scheduled for September.

Prosecutors have protected their claim to the property by filing a document that warns prospective buyers that the Ives ranches are the subject of litigation and that their title is unclear, Jarrin said.