Six years in the past, Greg and Teresa Almond have been left destitute and residing in a utility shed after sheriff’s deputies in Randolph County, Alabama, illegally raided their home and seized their financial savings over a misdemeanor drug crime.
Now the Almonds can be made partly complete, no less than financially. Final month, a jury of their federal civil rights lawsuit awarded the couple $1 million in punitive and compensatory damages after trial testimony confirmed the deputies by no means obtained a warrant to look the Almonds’ property.
The Randolph County Sheriff’s Division’s 2018 raid on the Almonds’ home, first reported by the Alabama Appleseed Middle for Regulation and Justice, exemplified the worst features of the conflict on medication and civil asset forfeiture—a follow that enables police to grab property when it is suspected of being related to prison exercise.
On January 31, 2018, a Randolph County sheriff’s deputy confirmed up at Greg and Teresa Almond’s home in Woodland, Alabama, to serve Greg court docket papers in a civil matter. The deputy reported that he smelled marijuana.
A county drug activity power returned two hours later, busted down the Almonds’ entrance door, threw a flash-bang grenade at Greg Almond’s ft, detained the couple at gunpoint, and ransacked their home. The search solely turned up $50 or much less of marijuana, which the Almonds’ grownup son tried in useless to assert as his, and a single sleeping capsule exterior of a prescription bottle with Greg’s identify on it.
Utilizing the paltry quantity of narcotics as justification, deputies seized roughly $8,000 in money, together with dozens of firearms and different valuables, underneath Alabama’s civil asset forfeiture legal guidelines. The deputies took the cash proper out of his pockets, Greg Almond informed Cause in 2019.
Greater than a yr after the preliminary raid, the Almonds have been indicted on two misdemeanor prices: illegal possession of marijuana for private use and illegal possession of drug paraphernalia, thus violating “the peace and dignity of Alabama.” Nevertheless, prosecutors dropped the fees, and a decide ordered their property to be returned.
The Almonds filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2019 alleging that the Randolph County Sheriff’s Division used extreme power; stole, misplaced, or did not stock their lacking property; and violated their constitutional protections towards unreasonable searches and seizures, in addition to their proper to due course of.
That was along with the opposite accidents they suffered. Because of the raid and arrest, the Almonds’ missed a vital deadline to refinance loans on their farm and misplaced their home. Their status was tarnished, and their capability to earn a residing was virtually destroyed.
What’s extra, depositions and trial testimony confirmed that the deputies by no means obtained an official search warrant from a decide for the raid.
U.S. District Decide R. Austin Huffaker, a Trump appointee, wrote that due to the undisputed testimony, there was no query whether or not the Almonds’ Fourth Modification rights have been violated. That they had been, and no affordable jury might discover in any other case. Nor did the deputies’ assertions that they’d acted in good religion maintain any weight.
“There was no warrant, telephonic or written, and thus there was nothing upon which Walker could rely in good faith,” Huffaker wrote. “In other words, because Defendant Walker knew that he did not have a warrant at the time of the incident, the good faith exception does not apply.”
“And secondly, as a matter of law,” Huffaker continued, “given the undisputed facts concerning the non-existence of a warrant, it was objectively unreasonable for an experienced law enforcement officer to believe that he could search an occupied home when no warrant existed, when no judge told him that he had a warrant, when he was merely told that he had enough for a warrant, and when none of the formalities or requirements associated with a telephonic or written warrant were followed.”
A 2018 report by the Southern Poverty Regulation Middle and the Alabama Appleseed Middle for Regulation and Justice discovered that Alabama regulation enforcement raked in roughly $2.2 million via civil asset forfeiture in 2015. In 1 / 4 of these circumstances, no prison prices have been filed. In half of all asset forfeiture circumstances that yr, the amount of money was $1,372 or much less—too little for most individuals to hassle hiring a lawyer to get better.
Circumstances like these led Alabama lawmakers to add transparency necessities in 2019 to the state’s asset forfeiture legal guidelines, which ranked among the many most aggressive and unchecked within the U.S.
However the Almonds won’t ever take a look at regulation enforcement the identical means.
“It’s made me distrust law enforcement on every level,” Greg Almond informed Cause in 2019. “Going down the road I can see a police or state trooper, not that I’m doing anything wrong, and it’s kind of like my adrenaline goes up. My heart just pounds seeing them.”
The Randolph County Sheriff’s Workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
