The civic action of forfeiture: Return to corpus delicti

Abstract

The civic action of forfeiture features four elements for its configuration: a) the existence of an illicit act (corresponding to those stated in the Mexican Constitution), b) the existence of good(s) produced by or used in committing those illicit acts, c) the causal link between the first two required elements, and d) that the owner of the good(s) is aware of said unlawful activities. That said, the first element (labeled as the connection point) will be demonstrated independently from the original criminal case; that is, regardless of personal elements such as agent culpability. This reminds of the (criminal) theory of causality, which describes the corpus delicti as "the elements of a typical description that constitute the materiality of a fact". This theory, along with the Finalist and Functionalist approaches, has been present in Mexican criminal regulations. Today, in the criminal realm there is no express reference to any of these; however, the element "illicit act" in the forfeiture action is exactly compatible with that of "corpus delicti."