§ 9-16-15.Stay of civil forfeiture proceedings during pendency of criminal proceedings; effect of criminal conviction

A civil forfeiture case and a related criminal prosecution often run on separate tracks, and this section addresses how the two interact. A stay of the civil case isn’t automatic — the court may grant one for good cause shown by either the state or the property owner or interest holder, and the stay lasts until the criminal case ends in a guilty plea, a conviction after trial, an acquittal after trial, or some other conclusion at the trial court level.

Losing the criminal case doesn’t end the civil one. An acquittal or a dismissal in the criminal proceeding doesn’t preclude the state from pursuing civil forfeiture over the same property, since the two proceedings serve different purposes and, as Code Section 9-16-17 makes clear, run on a lower burden of proof than a criminal case.

Winning the criminal case cuts the other way, though. A defendant who’s convicted — whether by verdict after trial or by a guilty or nolo contendere plea — can’t later deny the essential allegations of that offense in a related civil forfeiture case, even while an appeal of the conviction is pending. The pendency of that appeal is still relevant, though: the statute allows evidence of it to come in, giving the civil court some context for how final the conviction is at that point.