Feds Want to Seize Suspects' Grillz
This story ran on nwitimes.com on Friday,
April 7, 2006 10:47 AM CDT
TACOMA,
Wash. - Talk about taking a bite out of crime _ government lawyers
tried to remove and confiscate the gold dental work known as grillz
from the mouths of two men facing drug charges.
"I've been doing
this for over 30 years and I have never heard of anything like this,"
said Richard J. Troberman, a forfeiture specialist and past president
of the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "It sounds
like Nazi Germany when they were removing the gold teeth from the
bodies, but at least then they waited until they were dead."
According
to documents and lawyers involved in the case in U.S. District Court,
Flenard T. Neal Jr. and Donald Jamar Lewis, charged with several drug
and weapon violations, were taken on Tuesday from the Federal Detention
Center to the U.S. marshal's office, where they were told the
government had a warrant to seize the grills.
Before being put
into a vehicle to be taken to a dentist in Seattle, they called their
lawyers, who were able to halt the seizure, said Miriam Schwartz,
Neal's public defender. A permanent stay of the seizure order was
signed Tuesday by U.S. Magistrate J. Kelley Arnold, court documents
show.
Grills, popularized by rappers such as Nelly, are
customized tooth caps made of precious metals and jewels which can cost
thousands of dollars for a full set. Some can be snapped onto the teeth
like an orthodontic retainer, and others are permanently bonded to the
teeth.
Neal and Lewis have permanently bonded grills, their lawyers said,
declining to provide more description.
Government
lawyers who asked a federal judge on March 29 to order confiscation of
the grills said they did not know the caps had been bonded to the drug
defendants' teeth.
"Asset forfeiture is a fairly routine
procedure, and our attorneys were under the impression that these
snapped out like a retainer," said Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the
U.S. attorney's office in Seattle.
Once the government
understood that removal of the grills could damage the defendants'
teeth, they abandoned the seizure attempt, she said.
Schwartz and Zenon Peter Olbertz, Lewis' lawyer, criticized what they
said was a clandestine attempt to have the grills removed.
"It's
shocking that this kind of action by the federal government could be
sought and accomplished in secret, without anyone being notified," said
Schwartz. "It reminds me of the secret detentions" in terrorist cases.
Seizure
warrants are typically sealed to prevent defendants from trying to move
or hide valuables and evidence, Langlie and court clerks said. They
become public with the filing of a return that shows what has been
seized.
Information from: The Seattle Times, http://www.seattletimes.com
A service of the Associated Press(AP)
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