This is a very professorial opinion by Judge Bress. It's got a lot of detailed introductory material regarding the discovery process in federal civil forfeiture cases, and that material is both relevant and very helpful in assessing the opinion. Very well done and well written.
The en banc court concludes that the claimant's special interrogatory responses here sufficiently evasive and unclear to justify the dismissal of his claim. That seems right to me. Dismissal is a harsh remedy. The claimant submitted multiple responses and amendments. Were those responses lacking in a lot of detail? Sure. But they were sufficient to move the case forward. Their deficiencies, and detail, could be obtained in subsequent discovery proceedings; e.g., document requests and depositions. There was no reason or justification for dismissing his claim in its entirety. Especially, as Judge Sanchez notes, while the claimant had a somewhat powerful motion to suppress pending that, if successful, might have gutted the claims of the United States to the money.
All that's well and good, and I appreciated reading the cogent opinions.
On remand, I think that the claimant here -- Oak Porcelli -- had better go all-in on his motion to suppress. Mr. Porcelli was caught on I-80 near Reno with $1,106,775 in cash in his vehicle contained in vacuum-sealed plastic bags. Mr. Porcelli, who says he's a movie producer, claims that the cash was his, and came not from drugs, but essentially from "cash [that] never went into a bank or financial institution account" as payment for his "work[] in the movie industry for 15 years, from ~1995–2010."
Uh, yeah. There are probably lots of small-time players in the movie industry who've accumulated $1.1 million in cash over the course of their career and drive it around in vacuum-sealed bags in their vehicle. Personally, I've got around $1.3 million in my Subaru right now, all neatly packed away in smell-proof bags. Just in case I need around that much in an unexpected emergency.
Unless the motion to suppress is granted, I think that the claimant here is going to have a difficult time convincing a jury that he ended up with the cash the way he said he did.
And might even face a subsequent perjury charge.
So word to the wise:
Be careful. And, if you can, win that motion to suppress. Because I think there's a lot riding on it.
