Video: New Changes To Mississippi’s Search and Seizure Law

CHICKASAW COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – A new law that took effect July 1st, is changing the way law enforcement agencies handle property seizure in criminal cases.

When you’re accused of certain crimes in Mississippi, law enforcement agencies may seize property they think was involved in criminal activity, or bought with money from illegal activity.

Now, there are new policies in effect to regulate how law enforcement seize that property from suspects.

When a suspect is served a Notice of Intent, showing that law enforcement plans on seizing his or her property, investigators now have 72 hours to get a seizure warrant and affidavit signed by a circuit judge.

“Once we get that, we forward it to our District Attorney’s Office and then, they in turn start the seizure and then, they’re responsible to send that seizure notice and the warrant to the Bureau of Narcotics for it to be stored on a database,” says Chickasaw County Sheriff James Meyers.

The database is another new policy that requires the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics to keep record of all departments’ seizures.

“Once it comes online, anybody in the state of Mississippi can go on to that website and it will be a seizure website through the Bureau and they can see throughout the 82 counties, you know, what each counties have seized, whether it be property or money. It will name the suspect, so I think it will bring on more discussion down the road.”

Meyers says some of the new policies could impact many police seizures.

“Some departments, depending on what District Attorney they use, some of them are going to set minimums. So, if they set minimums, and let’s just say they set it at $5,000 dollars, what that would mean, is anything under $5,000 dollars, you would not be able to seize.”

Myers says it could also affect how they fund their department.

“We have a special budget that we use for stuff that we seize, fine money, but a lot of departments, they use a lot of seizure money to fund their narcotic unit, so I think it’s going to bring on a whole new ball game.”

The real impact could come in the way his department runs its investigations.

“If you can seize their vehicle, their house, money, when you get into their pocket, then you can really start hurting drug dealers and I think this is going to set it back.”

Defense Attorney Carrie Jourdan doesn’t think it will and believes the new changes are just setting out a very detailed system of how the seizure process works for everyone.

“It’s still allowing the forfeiture to occur. It’s simply asking that they be able to justify what they’ve done within 72 hours and if they can’t justify it within 72 hours, they shouldn’t have done it.”

Law enforcement still take custody of the property at the time of the arrest, but it doesn’t get turned over to them officially, until paperwork is done and thirty days go by.

If a circuit judge’s signature can’t be tracked down within 72 hours, then the seizure is null and void.