The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider arguments in a case involving two professional gamblers who had their winnings confiscated by a Drug Enforcement Administration officer at an airport.
In August 2006, Gina Fiore and Keith Gipson were switching planes in Atlanta on their way to Nevada, following a gambling trip in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They were carrying $97,000 in cash.
DEA agents - including Anthony Walden, the only one identified by name and the only one involved in the Supreme Court case - seized the cash based on the suspicion that it may have been connected to drug transactions.
The gamblers sued Walden and the other, unidentified agents in federal court in Nevada, claiming their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures had been violated.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides in relevant part: “No State
shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the gamblers, and they eventually recovered their winnings.
Walden is asking the Supreme Court to review the judgment of the Court of Appeals and consider whether the Nevada court had jurisdiction to hear a case that solely concerned conduct that took place in Georgia.
Section 1391(b)(2) of Title 28 of the United States Code, governing venue, provides that a civil action may be brought in “a judicial district in which a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred, or a substantial part of property that is the subject of the action is situated.”
A decision in the case Walden v. Fiore is expected in the court's next term, which begins in October and runs until June 2014.
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