[esquire]

Took a quick look at the link you sent. Here is my legal assessment. (Disclaimer: This is an opinion. I'm not acting as your attorney. You need to retain your own counsel to double check my very preliminary assessment here).

1) Unless you were drag racing for MONEY (and therefore gambling), or unless Drag Racing in and of itself is a Felony where you live, you don't appear to fall within any of the categories. With regards to money, if they found more than 1000 dollars on you at the time of the incident, then there is rebuttable presumption that the money was connected to your improper use of the property (gambling). You would rebut this presumption through some sort of testimony under penalty of perjury that you had obtained this money for other reasons (i.e. withdrew money from the bank that day, just got paid, was on your way to make a substantial purchase somewhere, or event that you just had the money on you but did not obtain it through drag racing).

2) your 5th amendment constitutional argument probably won't take you too far. it appears this statute has been on the books for quite some time (since 1992) and has probably withstood numerous constitutional challenges to this effect. have your lawyer do more research on the topic.

3) Burden of proof is on the state to prove that your property was used unlawfully (i.e it fell into a class 1 nuisance category.)

4) Based on the link you provided its ambiguous whether or not the state gets to KEEP your property even if you are not convicted. I can't imagine this would be the case, because that would amount to a "TAKING" - (read, eminent domain)... and that would require compensation by the state.

Your lawyer needs to pull the ACTUAL statute (not this legislative history document). Read up on the statute. Read cases which interpret the statute, and find cases which deal with drag racing in particular. then try to compare your case to those cases.

If i were you, I'd get a lawyer who SPECIALIZES in this. Maybe do some research on cases and find WHICH lawyers represented the Defendant in THOSE cases, and retain THAT lawyer.

hope that helps.
- esquire