Law, court ruling push parenting back a step

This editorial appears in the Yakima Herald-Republic on Sept. 10, 2009.

The less parents know about what their children are doing, the better off they may be.

That convoluted reasoning is one of the conclusions to be drawn from a recent decision by the state Supreme Court. It's a head-scratcher of a case about parents who argued they didn't really know their son was dealing drugs despite several drug-related arrests and twice being found by police passed out in their cars with drugs and cash strewn about. How oblivious can you get?

In a 5-4 ruling by the court, the justices concluded the fact that the son of Alan and Stephne Roos, of Bothell, borrowed his parents' two cars and used them to buy and sell drugs was not enough proof to allow the government to seize the two cars. The son, then 24, was arrested several times in the summer of 2005 in Snohomish County after police discovered him with a wide variety of drugs -- cocaine, OxyContin and methamphetamine.

The parents argued when they loaned their son the cars, they had no knowledge of his drug dealing. A hearing examiner reached a different conclusion, saying that the parents should have taken steps to refrain from loaning out their cars to their son especially after he had been charged with a drug crime in the early summer of 2005. The parents still allowed him to use their cars. By the time he was found unconscious later in September inside one of the cars, police had nabbed the son two more times for illegal drugs.

What more proof do parents need? Dissenters on the court said the ruling is tantamount to letting the parents get away with "burying their heads in the sand." Amen to that conclusion.

The problem here has to do with current law and the language dealing with the forfeiture of property for a drug crime. It's foggy at best. The forfeiture law only says "knowledge." What the law should have said is "knows or has reason to know."

That's what justices in the majority noted in their ruling. Right now, the law is too narrow in defining who is an innocent owner. If the parents from Bothell provide the litmus test, just about anyone could qualify as an innocent owner.

What needs to be done is for the Legislature to step in and rewrite the forfeiture law to expand the definition to include "knows or has reason to know."

Whether it's a 2004 Nissan Sentry and a 1970 Chevy, as in the case of the Bothell parents, or an expensive mansion parlayed through illegal drug sales, forfeiting property serves as both a deterrent to would-be criminals and a source of funds to help fight crime.

It's clear the current state law does neither very well. And, as the most recent court case shows, it also does little to improve parenting skills.

* Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Michael Shepard, Bob Crider, Spencer Hatton and Karen Troianello.