Last month, a federal judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) found that prosecutors have the right to seize a 36-story skyscraper on Fifth Avenue in New York in what prosecutors call the country’s “largest-ever terrorism-related forfeiture.”1 Recovery of this skyscraper is just one example of a slew of recent high-dollar forfeitures. Civil forfeiture—with its more lenient burden of proof—has become a critical tool for law enforcement in recent years. Indeed, between fiscal years 2008 and 2012, the civil forfeiture amount that U.S. attorneys sought nationwide ballooned from approximately $508 million to more than $8.7 billion.2 In the SDNY alone, the civil forfeiture amount sought skyrocketed from nearly $22 million in fiscal year 2008 to nearly $8.0 billion in fiscal year 2012.3
Coinciding with, and perhaps fueling, this increased focus on civil forfeiture has been a substantially high rate of success in litigating these cases. Of the civil forfeiture cases pursued by U.S. attorneys and terminated in federal court between fiscal years 2008 and 2012, only about 1.7 percent resulted in a judgment against the United States.4 The government won more than two-thirds of the cases, with slightly more than 10 percent resulting in a settlement.5
