What level of notice is required when providing a prisoner with notice that his property will be forfeited?

QUESTION PRESENTED In Dusenbery v. United States, 534 U.S. 61 (2002) this Court held that due process does not require “actual notice” of a forfeiture action before an incarcerated stakeholder’s rights can be extinguished. Since Dusenbery, the Courts of Appeals are divided over what constitutes adequate notice to a prisoner. The First, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Tenth Circuits have held that a nearly irrebuttable presumption exists where a notice is sent by certified mail to the proper prison facility. By contrast, the Third and Fourth Circuits, joined now by the Second Circuit, refuse to apply any such presumption. Instead, these courts place the onus on the Government to show that the correctional facility's internal procedures for delivering mail are reasonably calculated to notify the prisoner. Finally, the Eighth Circuit places the burden on the prisoner to demonstrate the inadequacy of the prison’s procedures. Here, the record demonstrates that a notice with the wrong seizure date was sent to petitioner by certified mail to the prison where he was housed, and the prison had a procedure in place to deliver such notices to inmates, although nothing in the record indicated that the sender at the time notice was mailed was aware what if any procedures the prison had, raising the following three issues for review: 1. What level of notice is required when providing a prisoner with notice that his property will be forfeited? 2. Must an agency have knowledge of the prison’s mail delivery system ex ante (see Jones v. Flowers, 547 U.S. 220, 231 (2006)), or is post hoc knowledge sufficient as the Court of Appeals held? 3. Is strict adherence to the statutory and regulatory notice provisions required before a petitioner can be deemed to have defaulted? 1