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Moon Rock Winds Up In Court
Lothar+0 writes "In United States v. Lucite ball containing lunar material (an actual case, I'm not making this up, folks), the feds are suing to get back a moon rock from an American who brought it back from Honduras. They're alleging that this rock from the Apollo 17 mission is stolen property; ironic considering that NASA took something that wasn't under U.S. jurisdiction."
"Awww, Ricky! I brought this souvenir back from Honduras and accidentally swallowed it! And now the whole country is suing me! Aaaaaahhhhhhwwwwww! Aaaaahhhhwwww! I should have known there was something suspicious when the souvenir seller in the black suit called me Mrs. Ricardo before I introduced myself! Hoow ddoooo I gett iinn theeese thiinngs! Aaaaaahhhwww!"
Furthermore, the rock, if stolen, should be returned. The United States can do a lot more with it (scientific research, etc) than some Honduras collector.
Actually, the US wants it returned to Honduras. The US government presented it as "a goodwill gift", but the moon rock was somehow misappropriated. Even if the then reigning dictator gave it to the "colonel" who sold it to Alan Rosen, that initial transfer was illicit-- since it belongs to the "Honduran people".
The fact that it was used as a diplomatic gift might be an indication of samples's lack of diplomatic value. Or it might be an indication of NASA's subordination of science to politics...
Federal and many state forfeiture laws empower overnments to take people's private property without ever charging a crime. Legally, the property is accused of a crime, not the owner. Lawyers call that in rem -- Latin for "against the thing.
This is why forfeiture cases often have peculiar titles such as "U.S. v. 1960 bags of coffee," U.S. vs. $2,452, "U.S. vs. 9.6 acres of land and lake," or "U.S. vs. 667 bottles of wine." And since the Bill of Rights recognizes the rights only of citizens and state governments, not the rights of chunks of land or bottles of wine, there are almost no due process restrictions on government's attacks on property.
Between 1985 and 1995, the federal government through the Departments of Justice and Treasury, has seized over $4,000,000,000.00 (4 billion) from U.S. citizens, many of whom have never even been charged with a crime. In a single year, fiscal year 1994, the DEA alone made 13,631 seizures with a total value of $646,786,850.00.
This summer I'm working at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and some of the people near where I work have gotten a few grams of lunar material (Apollo 15, IIRC) from NASA for an experiment aiming to figure out the material's age of formation. Now they only need to look at a particular tiny part of the sample and NASA expects to get the rest back.
Now none of that is unreasonable, but what is unreasonable is the insurance policy they have to take out on the material against theft, accidental lost or destruction. Now insurers naturally want to know the value of what they are insuring. NASA's official and much repeated line is that all lunar material is priceless. This poses a serious problem for insurers, so the next question was what is the cost to replace the sample. No joke, they figured the cost of the policy, and hence the premiums, based on the cost of building a rocket, flying to the moon, collecting a new sample, and bringing it back. Not only that, but two members of the Berkeley physics department are officially down on paper as having volunteered to make the trip should it become neccesary.
I don't know what they are paying exactly, and being in a secured area of a restricted access research lab probably helps keep down the cost, but still it's not cheap holding on to lunar material that NASA expects to get back.
1.NASA retrieves rock from moon. US government now owns moon rock
2.US government encases rock in lucite ball and gives ball to Honduran government. Honduran government now presumably owns moon rock (unless there was some condition attatched to rock that specifies that US government retains title in which case things are different).
Honduran dictatorship then appears and rewrites the law giving them rights to all property of the old government, including the rock. Honduran dictatorship now owns rock (presumably).
Now somehow the rock gets into the possession of the colnel. If the transfer to the colnel was illegal under honduran law (i.e. the colnel stole the rock) then the colnel should be charged with theft and the person who bought the rock from him should, at best, be charged with possession of stolen property (but if you buy stolen propery then you cant be found guilty of possession unless it can be proved that you knew it was stolen when you bought it). If the transfer happened legally under honduran law(because the dictatorship gave it to him) then presumable the colnel now owns the rock and therefore he can legally transfer that which he owns to someone else in exchange for money.
"IN almost all cases, owning lunar material is illegal unless you can show a clear paper trail back to nasa" is kind of scary.
What they are implying is not that posession of moon rocks is restricted, but that, unless you can show clearly how you got it, it was probably stolen (because if it wasn't, you'd be able to prove how you got it).
This scares me a bit, though. How long until we are required to show chain of custody documetns & receipts for every single object we own, lest the government sieze them as stolen?
And whatever happened to posession being 9/10ths of the law?
How long until we are required to show chain of custody documetns & receipts for every single object we own, lest the government sieze them as stolen?
Happens that way with real property all the time. Why do you think so much is involved in buying a house, including buying insurance to protect the deed's validity?
I don't need large brains to have a good time.