§ 9-16-6.Seizure of property

Seizure is the first concrete step in most forfeiture cases, and this section gives law enforcement two paths to it. The first runs through a court: any officer with power to arrest or execute process may seize property under a warrant issued by a court with jurisdiction over it, and that warrant can issue on an affidavit showing either probable cause for forfeiture or that the property was already the subject of a final federal forfeiture judgment.

The second path skips the warrant. Property may be seized without process if probable cause exists to believe it’s forfeitable, or if the seizure happens incident to an arrest, a search under a search warrant, or an inspection under an inspection warrant — situations where officers are already lawfully on the scene for another reason.

Subsection (c) addresses what happens if a seizure later turns out to have been unconstitutional. It doesn’t excuse the violation, but it does preserve the court’s jurisdiction to proceed with the civil forfeiture case, provided the seizure was made with process or in a good-faith belief that probable cause existed. That’s a narrow, jurisdictional protection — it doesn’t resolve whether a claimant can raise the constitutional problem as a defense to forfeiture itself.