Letter to the editor: Victim of money seizure due double what he lost

You offered a “laurel” to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency for returning $82,373 to an Allegheny County man that was unjustifiably confiscated from his daughter six months prior (“Laurels & lances: Seizing, teaching, tasting and hoarding,” March 12, TribLIVE).

The Bible instructs on matters of theft with the basic guideline being that restitution is to be made with double the amount stolen. If churches are not just extensions of government, should they not have been publicly advocating that $164,746 is due the victim, plus double the expenditures involved in the recovery, along with recompense for inconvenience and suffering?

Would it not be more appropriate that a “lance” had been awarded the DEA for failure to make a timely, full compensation with apology, and the churches for pretending to be biblically based?

Theodore Keys

Hempfield