The Indianapolis Star has an excellent story today on what happens with assets that are seized from criminal investigations. What is supposed to happen is, after recovering costs of the investigation and prosecution, law enforcement is supposed to send a check to the state of Indiana for the Common School Fund. The story quotes fellow lawyer and blogger Paul Ogden and details that only five counties in all of Indiana are even sending money in. Not surprinsgly, county prosecutors seemed to be reluctant to talk, and officials who might be in charge of enforcing this rule were playing the blame game, saying it's some other department's responsibility.
Marci Oddi of the Indiana Law Blog has an excellent write up of what the story doesn't mention, and links to previous entries Oddi has written as well to other resources
While I was reading the story, I thought this issue sounded familiar. Paul Ogden covered this topic in a blog post in July, and the Common School Fund is mentioned twice in the Indiana Constitution (Article 2, Section 3; Article 8, Section 2).
Kudos to Oddi and Ogden for doing the job that our "paper of record" isn't willing to do. But I can't blame the employees of the paper. If what Ruth Holladay says is true of the paper firing staff left and right and outsourcing much of the work, I'd be hard pressed to find enough time and resources to do a thorough job as well.
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