In some law enforcement offices, civil forfeitures accounted for 20% or more of their budgets.
He faces a maximum sentence of 350 years in prison and more than $10m in forfeitures and fines.And he handled the news with typical poise.
Criminal cases will continue to be hard to build, but other options include civil cases known as non-conviction forfeitures.
In 2011, he reports, fifty-eight local, county, and statewide police forces in Georgia brought in $2.76 million in forfeitures; more than half the items taken were worth less than six hundred and fifty dollars.
It established a special fund that turned over proceeds from forfeitures to the law-enforcement agencies responsible for them.
"For real-estate forfeitures, it's overwhelmingly African-Americans and Hispanics," Rulli told me.
The "war on drugs" had no more outspoken champion than the liberal Massachusetts Democrat and House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr. Reacting to the death from a crack overdose of Len Bias, a promising Boston Celtics recruit, O'Neill helped push through the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which imposed mandatory sentences, asset forfeitures, and the severe sanctions on crack.
In an effort to prevent time-related forfeitures, special clocks have been designed to add up to 30 seconds of time to a player's total after each move.
He reported to prison last year but is awaiting a new sentence after an appeals court ruling that his sentence of six years in prison and $71 million in fines and forfeitures was improperly calculated.
But when shown lists of unpaid forfeitures provided by the district attorneys' offices, officials with the department said they had never seen the lists and did not know that such lists existed.
Mexico's unsuccessful attempts to enforce statutes on money laundering and asset forfeitures also demonstrate the weaknesses of the state.
