Prosecutor’s Seizure of Cash Challenged : Courts: A deputy D.A. is cited with contempt for withholding records of an ex-drug suspect’s financial forfeiture.

The Ventura County public defender’s office is challenging the right of prosecutors to keep the cash they seized from an Oxnard woman who was arrested but not prosecuted on drug charges.

“It’s very disturbing when people aren’t prosecuted and may not have committed a crime, but you still keep their money,” Public Defender Kenneth I. Clayman said.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen J. McLaughlin said he was following the law when he decided that Guadalupe Gomez’s $924 would be forfeited. There was probable cause to seize the money at the time, he said, and the fact that Gomez was never tried or convicted does not entitle her to get it back.

McLaughlin said the criminal case and the civil forfeiture actions are different proceedings in different courts, and what happens in one has no bearing on the other. The law does not require prosecutors to get a conviction before they seize assets that are suspected to have come from drug sales, he said.

On Friday, McLaughlin was cited for contempt of court when he refused to give Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath records of the forfeiture. McLaughlin said that McGrath, who presided over the criminal case, has no right to interfere in the civil seizure action.

Gomez, 28, and her husband, Francisco J. Gonzales, 37, were arrested in May, 1990, and charged with possession of cocaine for sale. About 12 grams of cocaine was found in their house, along with $924 taken from Gomez’s purse, police said.

In August, Gonzales pleaded guilty and the charge against Gomez was dropped. “I don’t think there was any evidence of her involvement at all,” Deputy Public Defender Christina Briles said. “She had nothing to do with the sale.”

Most of the cash in the purse, Briles said, came from the refund of a deposit Gomez had paid on a rental property.

After the charges were dropped, McGrath signed an order directing that Gomez’s money be returned. But when she went to the Oxnard police to retrieve it, she learned that the district attorney’s office had declared it forfeited.

McLaughlin said that when the money was seized, Gomez was given a notice in Spanish, her native language, explaining that she had 10 days to contest the seizure. The action also was announced in legal advertisements in a local newspaper on three different dates.

If Gomez, or anybody else, had objected within 10 days of the seizure, McLaughlin said, the district attorney’s office would have been required to return the money or prove in court why it was entitled to keep it.

When nobody claimed the money, the law allowed McLaughlin to make an “administrative decision that the money was forfeited,” he said.

As with other assets seized under a state law aimed at deterring drug sales, the state got 10%, the arresting agency--in this case, Oxnard police--got 76.5% and the district attorney’s office got the rest. In the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, the district attorney’s office has earned more than $386,000 through seizures of suspected drug money, a budget official said Friday.

McLaughlin said he believes that Gomez and others whose money is seized get sufficient notice of their rights. “Did she get a fair shake? Yes,” he said. “She had the same opportunity as others. I can’t take the responsibility for her. She has to take the responsibility.”

He said prosecutors take pains to make sure assets are not seized without probable cause. “We don’t just run around grabbing stuff.”

McLaughlin’s contempt citation came after he refused McGrath’s order to provide Briles and Deputy Public Defender Neil B. Quinn with his files on the case so they could verify that Gomez received proper notice. The prosecutor said the judge and defense attorneys had no legal standing to question the seizure.

“Just because Mr. Quinn wants to tilt at windmills doesn’t mean that I have to saddle up and ride along,” McLaughlin said.

McGrath was not amused. “Maybe you’d better get counsel, because I really think you’re in deep doo-doo,” the judge said.

At a later hearing, McLaughlin and his boss, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ronald C. Janes, offered to let McGrath see the file privately so he could assure himself that everything was in order. “We have nothing to hide and mean no disrespect to the court,” Janes said.

McGrath refused, saying the public defender needed to be involved in any examination of the file. In a slap at McLaughlin’s “administrative decision” that allowed the forfeiture, the judge said: “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to decide this myself in another Star Chamber proceeding.” The Star Chamber was a notorious English court, abolished in 1641, that made decisions secretly.

McGrath stayed the contempt citation from taking effect until another hearing Aug. 16.

Janes said he fears that if the public defenders prevail, the judges who handle criminal cases will increasingly meddle in civil forfeiture cases. He also questions whether the public defender’s office, which normally handles only criminal actions, can legally represent poor people in civil actions.

Public Defender Clayman said the law is clear on that point. “It says we can represent people who are unjustly harassed, and that’s what this is.”