VETOES

In accordance with Article II, Section 17 of the Maryland
Constitution, I have today vetoed Senate Bill 463.

This legislation would modify the provisions of Article 27, § 297
which pertain to the forfeiture of vehicles and other conveyances
used in drug trafficking activities. While this legislation
would appear to be designed to assist law enforcement efforts, in
practical effect this bill would hamper that effort by making the
forfeiture process substantially more difficult and cumbersome.
This is especially troublesome to me at a time when the State is
seeking methods to more aggressively combat the proliferation of
drugs in our society and the devastation it produces to the
health, safety and welfare of our citizens.

Existing Article 27, § 297(a)(4) provides that all conveyances
used or intended for use in violation of the controlled dangerous
substances laws are subject to seizure and forfeiture. The
procedures set out by § 297(f)(3) calls for the seizing officer
to refer the question of forfeiture to the chief law enforcement
officer who must personally review the case, and, using the
guidelines set forth in § 297(f)(1), decide whether to recommend
forfeiture to the State's Attorney. The State's Attorney must
then determine independently that forfeiture is justified before
a petition for forfeiture is filed with the Court.

The provisions of § 297(f)(1) are drafted as guidelines only and
refer to general factors such as the total circumstances of a
case, the possession of controlled dangerous substances, the
criminal record of the violator, previous related convictions of
the violator, the circumstances of the arrest, and the manner in
which the vehicle was being used. Clearly, such factors are to
imprecise and open-ended to be intended as standards for
compliance by the executive branch officials and subject to
judicial review. This has been the consistent construction of §
297 as interpreted by the intermediate appellate courts of
Maryland. See, State v. One 1985 Ford, 72 Md. App. 144 (1987).

The history of § 297 indicates numerous cases in which the trial
courts have refused to order forfeiture. The appellate courts as
a result have admonished the trial courts that § 297 was intended
to be applied literally and harshly and that the trial judges may
not second-guess the law enforcement community as to whether §
297(f)(1) does or does not justify forfeiture. It is clear from
these cases that but for the repeated insistence of the appellate
courts, the forfeiture statute would not be effective.

This legislation proposes to overrule this line of appellate
cases and to elevate the open-ended guidelines of § 297(f)(1) to
the status of standards, imposing new burdens of proof for
forfeiture. Allowing these guidelines to be so elevated without
more precisely defining the factors would, in essence, result in
the denial of many forfeitures and in the evisceration of the
forfeiture statute. This would be a significant and detrimental

- 5210 -