High Court to Hear Property Seizure Case

The Supreme Court, agreeing to hear a case that grew out of a faulty police raid in West Covina, said Monday that it would decide whether police officers who seize an innocent homeowner’s cash and valuables must tell him how to get his property back.

The case, to be heard in the fall, renews the dispute between the U.S. appeals court in California and the high court over the scope of constitutional rights.

Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the city of West Covina violated the constitutional rights of a local couple when it failed to clearly tell them how they could recover $2,469 in cash taken from their home.

The case began in May 1993, when Lawrence and Clara Perkins returned home to find their doors damaged, their belongings in disarray and their cash savings missing from a locked closet. They also found a notice, which included the name and phone number of a detective, saying that their house had been searched by West Covina police under a warrant issued by a municipal judge.

The police had been searching for Marcus Marsh, a reputed gang member and murder suspect who had rented a room from the Perkinses. At the time of the raid, he no longer lived there.

According to his complaint, when Lawrence Perkins went to see the detectives, they asked him for help in finding Marsh. When the homeowner could not help them, the detectives told him that they could not return his property. Only the court was authorized to do that, they said.

At the courthouse, Perkins was told that he needed the number of the search warrant. But officials later told him the warrant was sealed and the number unavailable.

“This was worse than a run-around. They wanted him to give them [the detectives] information he couldn’t give them in exchange for getting his money back,” said Patrick S. Smith, who filed a civil rights suit against the city on behalf of the couple.

The homeowner also went to see the judge who had authorized the warrant but was told that he was on vacation. More than a year later, after the civil suit was set to go to trial, the money was returned to the couple.

In its defense, the city said that it followed California law, which requires a homeowner to file a motion in court seeking to have property returned.

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“It’s easy to do. There is an adequate remedy, and he didn’t follow it,” said Priscilla F. Slocum, a Pasadena lawyer who represented the city. “This is a case of a person who halfheartedly tried to get his money back, made one more try and then gave up.”

The appeals court saw it differently, ruling that the notice to the homeowners was not “adequate.”

“Here, the notice left at the Perkins’ home did not mention the availability of any procedure for protesting the seizure of his property, let alone the existence of a formal judicial procedure for obtaining its return,” wrote Judge Robert Boochever. “It did not provide essential information necessary to invoke that procedure,” such as the number of the search warrant, he added.

Under the 9th Circuit’s ruling, the city of West Covina would be forced to pay damages to the Perkins family for depriving them of their right to due process of law.

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However, city attorneys for 67 California municipalities, including Los Angeles and San Diego, joined West Covina in appealing the case.

Police officers and municipal officials have no duty “to provide legal advice” to people whose property has been legally seized, they said.

On Monday, the justices issued a one-line order agreeing to hear the case (City of West Covina vs. Perkins, 97-1230).

Meanwhile, the court, in a 5-4 vote, made it slightly easier for civil rights plaintiffs to bring a suit in federal court.

The justices reinstated a lawsuit by a Washington, D.C., prisoner who contends that an official deliberately lost his luggage during a transfer to punish him for speaking out about prison conditions.

A U.S. appeals court here had erected a higher barrier to such suits and ruled the prisoner must have “clear and convincing evidence” that the official acted out of malice.

Disagreeing, the high court said that a plaintiff needs some evidence of a bad motive but not clear proof when the suit is filed (Crawford-El vs. Briton, 96-827).