Keaton Ross, Oklahoma Watch

Jimmy and Jabrion Hardin were cruising down Interstate 44 just south of Vinita, Oklahoma, when flashing blue and red lights appeared behind them.

The brothers, en route from Texas to their native Illinois, didn’t think they would be a target of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol vehicle camped out on the shoulder. They weren’t speeding. Their brand-new pickup truck couldn’t possibly have a broken taillight or brake light.

Trooper Seth Hudson cited an improper lane change from the highway to the toll booth as the reason for the stop, but he didn’t write a citation or issue a warning. He wanted to search the vehicle because he smelled marijuana.

“It felt hostile,” Jimmy Hardin said of the Sept. 20 encounter. “Forget why I stopped you, I’m getting in your truck.”

Hudson found a pipe with marijuana residue, a trace amount punishable by no jail time and a maximum fine of $400. The more notable discovery was a bag containing $62,650 in cash and three firearms.

Jabrion Hardin said he tried to address the officer’s suspicions by providing documentation that the money came from a $90,233 settlement with Juul Labs. The officer was unconvinced, prompting an ongoing battle to retrieve the money, guns and three cell phones confiscated under Oklahoma’s seizure and forfeiture statute.

The Department of Public Safety agreed to return the cell phones in March after the brothers retained Tulsa attorney Aaron Grubb. Negotiations to have the cash and guns returned were unsuccessful. A civil application for the return of the property, with a copy of the settlement check included, is pending.

The Department of Public Safety has yet to file an official notice of forfeiture, which is required within one year of obtaining property. The Craig County District Attorney’s office has not filed criminal charges, either.

Jimmy Hardin called the decision to return the cell phones, but not the money or guns, confusing. He said officers informed them their investigation would hinge on information gathered from the devices.

“You can’t get evidence off of money,” he said. “At this point, it’s just a waiting game that I feel is unfair to anybody, no matter what color you are, what you do or what your background is. It’s just unjust.”

Craig County District Attorney Matt Ballard refused an interview request, citing an internal policy against commenting on pending cases. In a prepared statement, he wrote that civil asset forfeiture is necessary to stop the flow of drug money and weapons and that the use of the money is restricted.

Department of Public Safety spokesperson Sarah Stewart did not respond to several voicemails and emails requesting comment.

Christa Alderman, an attorney for the Department of Public Safety, is representing the state in the Hardin brothers’ civil lawsuit. In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit submitted on May 27, she argued that documentation of the cash source was unsatisfactory and the presence of marijuana odor sufficiently established probable cause to search the vehicle and connect the money to illegal activity. She also wrote that the brothers lied about having firearms.

“Where probable cause exists to believe property is the product of unlawful drug activity, peace officers must detain that property,” Alderman wrote.

Oklahoma law enforcement is not required to report information on civil asset forfeiture. But an Oklahoma Watch review of Craig County court records found that prosecutors often cannot connect the cash to a particular crime. Two-thirds of civil asset forfeiture cases filed in Craig County in 2023 and 2024 did not coincide with criminal charges.

Law enforcement in Craig County seized at least $1.5 million of cash during the two-year span, most of it along the same stretch of highway where the Hardin brothers were pulled over. Most of the traffic stops were initiated because the driver did not signal from the highway to the toll booth.

According to data collected by the Institute for Justice, Oklahoma police agencies seized $9.5 million in cash and property in 2018, the last year for which statewide data was available.

Reform Efforts Stall

Almost every state allows police to take cash and property it believes was illicitly obtained, but regulations and the burden of proof required for seizure vary widely.

Law enforcement groups argue the laws are necessary to quell the flow of drugs, illicit cash and guns. In Oklahoma, the money is typically split between the agency that seizes the property and the local district attorney’s office.

Critics, including advocacy groups, state lawmakers and Gov. Kevin Stitt, have long bemoaned the state’s forfeiture statute as overly broad and ripe for abuse. Oklahoma’s forfeiture statute requires only a preponderance of evidence, with no conviction, criminal charges or arrest required, to seize money and property.

"We need to address civil asset forfeiture," Stitt said during his 2024 State of the State address. "It's crazy to me that somebody can be pulled over and have their cash and truck taken for an alleged crime, get acquitted of that crime, but they still never get their property back. That isn't fair, and we need to make sure it isn't happening anywhere in Oklahoma.”

"It's crazy to me that somebody can be pulled over and have their cash and truck taken for an alleged crime, get acquitted of that crime, but they still never get their property back. That isn't fair, and we need to make sure it isn't happening anywhere in Oklahoma.”
Gov. Kevin Stitt

More than three dozen states have changed their civil asset forfeiture laws since 2014, said Alasdair Whitney, the legislative counsel for the Institute for Justice. Some of the reforms include mandating reports on forfeiture activity, requiring seized money to be deposited into a general revenue fund and necessitating a criminal conviction before money and property may be seized.

Whitney said that states that have passed the most comprehensive changes, including New Mexico, Nebraska and Maine, did not see surges in criminal activity after the law took effect.

“There are these concerns that law enforcement are using these low-level stops or pretextual stops to say, ‘Hey, can I take a look in the car?’” Whitney said. “The person says yes, and they find some cash. Of course, it’s not a crime to have cash in your car. But once a law enforcement officer sees that, their imagination may run wild with, ‘this must be connected to drugs or must be illicit proceeds from the sale of narcotics.’ It’s very difficult in many circumstances to actually establish that, and we know that because oftentimes people aren’t even arrested.”

Republican state lawmakers have introduced more than a dozen bills over the past decade to mandate forfeiture reports or require a criminal conviction to seize funds. Most did not receive a committee hearing, the first step in the process for a bill to become law.

Senate Bill 596 by Shane Jett, R-Shawnee, passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously in February but was not heard on the Senate floor. The measure proposed requiring law enforcement agencies to submit an annual asset forfeiture report to legislative leaders, the governor and the general public.

Kyle Loveless, a former state Senator who sponsored several unsuccessful measures in the mid-2010s, said he became interested in civil asset forfeiture after meeting with a New Mexico lawmaker at a legislative conference. New Mexico’s asset forfeiture law, passed in 2015, is among the most stringent in the nation, requiring regular reporting, revenue sharing and a criminal conviction to seize money and property.

He said the District Attorney’s Council and Attorney General’s office assured him that Oklahoma’s law was not being abused, but media reports and anecdotal accounts contradict that.

“It just kept coming up,” he said. “It’s like when you buy a red Chevy truck, you notice how many are on the road. I started noticing in the news people getting their stuff taken, whether it be cash, a boat, a house, and the law enforcement was keeping it. So I did some more digging into it, and come to find out, Oklahoma has some of the worst asset forfeiture laws in the United States.”

An ideologically diverse coalition of policy and advocacy groups, including the Oklahoma Policy Institute, ACLU of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs, supported a comprehensive reform package Loveless introduced during the 2016 legislative session. But it was difficult to overcome law enforcement opposition.

“Just about every sheriff in the state had a press conference saying that I was evil and I was a tool of the drug cartel,” he said.

Loveless and Whitney said they’re hopeful the U.S. Supreme Court or Congress will weigh in on the issue and side with property owners. The high court’s 2024 ruling in Culley v. Marshall established that property owners are not entitled to a preliminary hearing in civil asset cases, but several justices questioned why the practice continues to exist in its current form.

The Wait Continues

Whether it comes from the Craig County Courthouse, the Oklahoma Capitol or U.S. Supreme Court, Jabrion Hardin said he hopes relief comes soon.

He said the Juul settlement money was supposed to help him pay for an expensive prescription medication that lowers the likelihood and severity of seizures that developed after he started vaping. If the cash is permanently seized, he fears he might not be able to keep up with the payments.

“It’s $500 for medicine to keep me alive, and then road pirates take my money,” he said. “What spot is that to put a human being in? Anybody who needs insulin, anybody who has asthma. That could have been anybody.”

A trial date in the civil lawsuit is tentatively set for October, more than a year after the traffic stop.

This article originally appeared in Oklahoma Watch, a nonprofit news organization that produces in-depth and investigative journalism as a public service.

Seven state prisoners who were locked in three-by-three foot shower stalls at the Great Plains Correctional Facility in Hinton last August are suing the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, alleging their prolonged confinement in cramped and unsanitary conditions amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

Attorneys Richard Labarthe and Alexey Tarasov filed the lawsuit in Oklahoma County District Court on April 9. A hearing date on the matter is pending.

Great Plains administrative staff and Corrections Department Director Steven Harpe are named as defendants in the litigation that seeks a declaratory judgment that the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights were violated and an injunction to prevent future violations. The prisoners are also asking for a monetary judgment against Harpe and the Great Plains officials in their personal capacity.

The prisoners allege staff were willfully negligent of their well-being as they forced them into shower stalls covered with human feces. Daniel Salazar claims he was confined to one of the shower stalls for four days and removed only after attempting to hang himself with a t-shirt. Robert D. Johnson stated he was denied access to restrooms and relied on other inmates for necessities like drinking cups.

The conditions caused prisoners severe emotional distress, mental anguish and physical discomfort, the lawsuit states.

“The comprehensive documentation and investigation into these practices at GPCC reveal a pattern of neglect and abuse, indicative of a broader institutional failure to uphold basic human rights standards in inmate treatment,” the lawsuit reads.

Labarthe did not return a phone message left Wednesday seeking comment. Corrections department spokesperson Kay Thompson declined to comment, saying the agency would not discuss pending litigation. She said the attorney general’s office will represent corrections department personnel in the matter.

In September and early October, several prisoners told Oklahoma Watch they were locked inside the shower stalls after refusing housing assignments in eight-man cells. The inmates did not want to be housed in the eight-man cells because they feared gang violence would erupt in the cramped quarters, the prisoners said during brief phone interviews.

Inmate James Shelton said prisoners thought they would be in the shower stalls for 30 minutes to an hour as staff worked to find a solitary cell placement, but in some instances were left in the small space with limited access to basic necessities for more than 24 hours.

Two state correctional officers assigned to alleviate staffing shortages at the facility claim Great Plains officials intentionally placed prisoners in the shower stalls as a punitive measure and publicly chastised staff members who attempted to improve conditions. An internal agency investigation confirmed that prisoners were held in the shower stalls for several hours but was unable to confirm some of the officers’ claims conclusively.

“We were informed that the inmates in the shower cells get nothing,” one of the officers wrote in an incident report obtained by Oklahoma Watch. “No cups, no blankets, no extra clothes and no bathroom breaks. He stated that they are in the shower stalls for disciplinary reasons and can be there for weeks and it is to make them not want to be there anymore.”

Thompson told Oklahoma Watch in November that staff were disciplined following the agency’s investigation but declined to elaborate. She said the facility no longer confines prisoners to the shower stalls in any circumstance.

Emily Barnes, founder of the Oklahoma prisoner advocacy group Hooked on Justice, said she’s optimistic the lawsuit will spur better conditions in state prisons.

“I’m glad something is finally being done for these men and women whose rights are being violated,” Barnes said. “DOC needs to be held accountable for letting this stuff go on inside their prisons.”