Perhaps you carry large amounts of cash for your church or small business. Hidden compartment laws contain scant protections for law-abiding folk, who may have perfectly legitimate reasons to conceal valuables in a secret compartment. But the process is a nightmare for property owners, who are considered guilty until proven innocent. Police and prosecutors naturally like this arrangement they usually get to keep seized vehicles or the profits from auctioning them off.

Once police take a vehicle, property owners generally must file a lawsuit to get it back. With civil forfeiture, police are under no obligation return a seized vehicle if prosecutors decide not to proceed with a criminal case or if the jury decides to acquit. (Two bills killed in the Virginia General Assembly this year would have as well.) In addition to fines and prison time, Illinois law and New Jersey's bill threaten another penalty: civil asset forfeiture. 'Without the hidden compartment law, we would not have had any charges on ,' a state trooper told the local news station.) (Though police eventually did find a misdemeanor amount of marijuana in the pocket of Gurley's passenger, the discovery took place after both of them had already been arrested, according to Reason's Ken Silva. 'Such proliferation of counts allows prosecutors to force people to plead guilty to avoid long potential sentences,' writes Turley, on his blog.Īs Gurley's case shows, however, motorists risk criminal charges independent of any other illicit activity. In drug cases, hidden compartment laws give prosecutors one more charge to pile onto the same offense-beyond traditional counts like possession and intent to distribute. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley calls the incident 'part of the expanding criminalization of America where virtually any act can be charged as a crime by police.' Gurley's arrest struck more than a few people as an abuse of power. Similar bills have been filed in Delaware, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia in recent years. Legislators in Iowa, Maryland, and New Jersey may add them this session.

California, Georgia, Illinois, and Oregon have similar prohibitions on the books. Lawmakers in Ohio are not alone in enacting or envisioning bans on unauthorized empty space. Gurley became the first person arrested under a new Ohio statute that makes it a crime to 'knowingly operate … a vehicle with a hidden compartment … used or intended to be used to facilitate the unlawful concealment … of a controlled substance.' Detecting an 'overwhelming smell of raw marijuana,' officers spent hours searching the vehicle and found no contraband.īut they did discover an empty secret compartment.įor that, police hauled Gurley, who has no criminal record, off to jail. Last fall, Ohio state troopers pulled 30-year-old Norman Gurley over for speeding.

Books with hidden compartments