Say someone is sentenced to life in prison, no possibility of parole. What happens, if anything, to his bank accounts, retirement accounts, etc. Do they remain unchanged until death?
Certainly inmates don’t have access to these account (online) or anything. Or do they/could they?
Heh.
When my ex was facing criminal trial and imprisonment, his attorney strongly advised him to grant me power of attorney so I could conduct business in his name. We got the POA, and when he was convicted, I put the joint accounts in my name only.
That said, I can’t see any reason why the accounts of a convict would go away, unless they were considered ill-gotten gains by the court and confiscated or frozen. Many banks will still transact business by mail, including deposits, withdrawals and transfers. Based on my rather limited knowledge of prison life, though, I can’t see any convict wanting to keep bank accounts on the outside, at least not in their own name.
Robin
Well, many states have passed forfeiture laws requiring a prisoner pauper himself if imprisoned. Further, ill-gotten gains can be seized, and the courts have been very, very aggressive with seizures. (Hey Look! Free money!)
All that being said, a prisoner is generally allowed to run his life from prison. The example always given in the textbooks is life insurance for some reason. On the other hand, he need not be permitted to run an ongoing criminal conspiracy. Of course, some do.
My ex is in prison in Virginia, but our accounts were in Texas. ISTR that the reason I was advised to put our accounts in my name only was so that Virginia couldn’t touch them for any reason. As soon as I was eligible to join the local credit union, I did so and closed out the old accounts altogether.
Robin
You mean the state can seize legally acquired assets that had nothing to do with the crime, and leave the family destitute?
As for why a prisoner might need a bank account, they do benefit by having some money while incarcerated. They may get their “three hots and a cot”, but anything beyond that requires an outlay of money at the commissary.
Some prisons have prisoners work for wages. The hourly wage isn’t all that great (IIRC, it’s less than minimum wage), but that money goes for whatever restitution the prisoner might need to pay, as well as for commissary purchases. Family members may also send money that goes into the prisoner’s commissary account, but as far as I know, the prisoner can’t just write a check from his personal “outside” bank account.
Robin
Not knowing the answer to this myself, I would assume the person could put all the money in a different account (like say, the spouse’s account or a family member’s) as long as they couldn’t get to the money themselves.
If I’m wrong though, anyone can feel free to call bullhockey on me.
Not a bank account, but property. There was a man in my neighborhood (a teacher) who had a relationship with one of his students. They claimed it was consensual (he was in his late 20s, she was 16), but he ended up being convicted of child molestation.
After he went to prison, his house sat empty for months, and then the bank foreclosed on it and the house and its contents were sold at auction. I’m guessing no family members felt like stepping in and making payments or even clearing out his belongings.
Over here in the UK,Lifers in secure /psychiactric units can access their bank accounts albeit through the warden,to spend on catalogues for clothing(they are already furnished with t.v’s,DVD players etc) phone cards and the like.
There has been considerable uproar in the media about this regarding certain notorious murderers
Well, that’s a bit different than what I was envisioning. It’s understandable, though unfortunate for the family, that when the house payments stop, then the house would have to be sold out from under them if they couldn’t manage to replace the convict’s income.
From the way Paul in Saudi phrased his remark, it sounded like the property could be seized by the state even if it was owned free and clear, and not in any way connected with the crime.
This guy was single and lived alone, so it’s not like a wife and kids were thrown out onto the street. IIRC, when he went to prison, obviously he wasn’t making his mortgage payments anymore. I don’t know what the process was for the bank, but once they knew this guy was going to be incarcerated for a while, and they hadn’t gotten their payments, they were legally alllowed to sell the house and whatever was in it. Of course, they probably had to wait a certain amout of time, and maybe even tried to contact him - I don’t know the details.
Anyway, they brought in an auctioneer and had all the furniture and whatnot spread out all over the backyard, and sold it off piece by piece. Then they did the house last, which ended up going for about half of what houses in our neighborhood usually go for.
With regard to property seizures, many of these are IRS. People found with a million dollars in ill gotten gains usually have not paid taxes on that income. In comes the IRS to tax it and this often involves seizure of property since the convicted individual has no traceable income or wages to attach. In which case yes they do seize property unrelated to the crime.
Paul,
Do you mean that many states have passed laws requiring, not a prisoner, but a defendant to prove he’s a pauper before the state will fund the prisoner’s defense?
Don’t some states charge prisoners rent, for uniforms, food, medical care, etc if they can afford it? That would jusitify them seizing property that had nothing to do with the crime.
I feel I am a bit out of my element here. It has been a long time since the Military Police Basic Course. Since then, I have heard various politicos pontificating on the few cases of millionaire prisoners who were being fed and watered by the state. Laws were passed in at least some states to make them pay rent.
Further, the forfeiture laws in the US have reached a really, really scary level. If the police find your son’s pot seed in the ashtray, they can take your car. Even if you are found not guilty of a crime. You have to go to court to prove the car was not used in a crime, this of course turns the justice system on its head and give the government a perverse incentive.*
But I hope some smart people can come to my aid here.
*band name!
Yes, there are forfeiture laws, and it’s up to the accused to show he didn’t earn it illegally, which doesn’t seem right. IIR, he doesn’t even have to be convicted, and I second the wish to have smart people help us out.
Any other money gained by his crime would be confiscated, that’s pretty clear.
If the convicted guy has legitimate money, legally earned or inherited or whatever, that money might go to some major pay-outs:
-his defense lawyers,
-any fine,
-restitution,
-civil damages (? do people ever sue a convicted criminal for damages ie from bullet wound, win, and collect? or is this covered by restitution?),
-rent for prison cell(!),
-debts,
-child support.
What about anything left over? Does he have property rights?
He’s working in prison for Wackenhut at a dollar an hour or something, that’s his legitimate money, but I think that’s not part of the OP.
So back to the OP a bit — perhaps this guy had inherited a couple of million from a grandfather or uncle. He has more than one liquid account upon being sentenced to life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Say, multiple accounts open in different cities/different banks. Instead of waiting, hoping, and praying for the “truth” to ever come out, couldn’t he, via mail, hire defense attorney’s, private investigators, cold-case detectives, etc., to help continue research/investigate the crime for which he was committed (once the system has closed the file on it)?
It seems like every day I’m reading about people getting their convictions overturned via DNA, etc and I’m wondering if this possibility, amongst the layers of beaurocracy of the system, could help convicted felons while they’re locked up…
Well, if he banks with my bank, he’d probably get his statement in the mail and see a new $1,000,000 monthly fee for “Excessive Felony Convictions”.
Seriously though, I imagine that most felony convicts likely have smaller assets, and will eventually get monthly inactivity fees that whittle their assets down to nothing.
That’s an understatement; in Pennsylvania as of 2 yrs ago I know the starting wage for many jobs to be 29 cents/hr. The maximum wages were still under $1/hr.
The state allowed prisoners to have accounts within the prison which their families culd deposit money in, but no one was allowed to have more than a few hundred dollars at a time.