Commonwealth v. Marshall

In Commonwealth v. Marshall, 548 Pa. 495, 698 A.2d 576 (1997), a car was stopped for speeding and all occupants, including Marshall, were ordered out of the car. The officer observed cash stuffed between the seats and recovered a total of $ 3,400 divided into $ 100 packets. At the subsequent forfeiture hearing, the Commonwealth presented evidence that Marshall had been unemployed for the previous year and a half; that Marshall and the driver gave inconsistent statements about the ownership of the cash; that the cash was bundled in a manner consistent with drug dealing; and that a drug sniffing dog had alerted on the cash. However, neither drug paraphernalia nor drugs were found in the car, and Marshall had no history of drug charges or convictions. Our Supreme Court held that the evidence was insufficient to support a forfeiture because it proved only the "possibility" or "suspicion" of a nexus between the money and illegal drug activity. Specifically, the Court stated: Although the $ 3,400.00 was bundled in a way drug dealers have been known to arrange their money, such an arrangement is equally consistent with an innocent person's attempt to simplify and promote precision in the counting of lawfully obtained funds. The fact that the drug-sniffing dog alerted on the cash is also not dispositive of the issue. A completely innocent citizen of this Commonwealth could have in his or her possession, at any time, currency that happened to be involved in a drug transaction at some unknown time in the past. The fact that on August 10, 1993 Marshall found himself in the possession of one, or several, such bills of currency is insufficient to sustain the Commonwealth's clearly established burden to prove at the outset that the money seized has a nexus to some unlawful activity on the part of Marshall. Even when considered in conjunction with all the other facts relied upon by the trial court in this case, the residual presence of drugs on some part of the $ 3,400.00 in question establishes only the possibility or the suspicion of a nexus between the money and some type of drug activity. Marshall, 548 Pa. at 500-501, 698 A.2d at 579.