Ninth Circuit says pension can be seized to pay restitution

The federal government can seize a convicted criminal's pension to repay victims of the crime for their losses, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.  The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the first appellate court in the nation to address the issue, ruled 10-5 that a 1996 law entitling victims of federal crimes to restitution overrides an earlier federal law protecting retirement funds from being confiscated to pay debts.  The court said the government does not have unlimited power to take money from a pension and can collect restitution only from funds that the criminal defendant is entitled to receive immediately, as post-retirement benefits or advance lump-sum payments. But the court said Congress intended to make a wide range of funds available to crime victims.  The clearest evidence, said Judge Marsha Berzon, is the language of the 1996 restitution law, which said criminal fines and restitution may be collected from all property of the defendant, "notwithstanding any other federal law.''  But dissenting Judge William Fletcher said the Supreme Court has ruled that pension funds are off-limits, unless Congress explicitly authorizes their seizure, as it did in a law allowing the Internal Revenue Service to collect back taxes from retirement accounts.  Lawmakers considered and rejected such legislation in 1996 as a companion measure to the restitution law, Fletcher said. He quoted a 1997 Supreme Court ruling, in a nonrestitution case, that pronounced "a pension law protective policy of special intensity: Retirement funds shall remain inviolate until retirement.''

Source:  San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/02/23/BAGGFO9TU41.DTL

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