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Eric Holder Severely Limits Civil Forfeiture
gurps_npc writes: As most people know, the US has for quite some time let police seize pretty much anything they wanted to, forcing you to go to court to get back your stuff (at significant expense). Most of the problems came about because the Federal government let the local cops keep most of what they took.
Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General, has changed the rules of that program, making it more difficult for the police to do it under the federal program. They can still use local state programs, but that accounts for only about 57% of the cash taken. Holder did not end the program entirely — he left in some exceptions for things like explosives, weapons, and items related to child pornography, which all together amount to about 1% of the current federal program. Still, with this action he will have struck a serious blow to a despicable practice that serious newspapers and comedy TV shows decried as nothing more than legalized theft.
Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General, has changed the rules of that program, making it more difficult for the police to do it under the federal program. They can still use local state programs, but that accounts for only about 57% of the cash taken. Holder did not end the program entirely — he left in some exceptions for things like explosives, weapons, and items related to child pornography, which all together amount to about 1% of the current federal program. Still, with this action he will have struck a serious blow to a despicable practice that serious newspapers and comedy TV shows decried as nothing more than legalized theft.
You know someone is going to come in and say this is awful because reasons, because it was done under the Obama administration by Eric Holder.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Normally the antics of Mr. Holder really piss me off. But this? This is awesome!
I'll bet this totally will stop the government from doing this stuff.
And thus be seen for the closet corporate fascists that they are. Holder didn't go far enough, and neither did Obama (He never so much as mentioned it). The practice needs to end nationally, via federal law.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The problem wasn't that they weren't following the laws. The problem was what they were doing wasn't illegal in the first place.
It can be difficult to get the cops to follow the law. But it's often impossible to get them to "do the right thing".
So this is definitely a good step in the right direction. Don't complain just because we've gone from "impossible" to merely "difficult". Sometimes these things take awhile to straighten out. Be thankful we made some significant progress today.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
That someone will be the GOP. I can see them trying to spin this as Obama's "war on cops". They're very predictable in opposing anything Democrats do no matter how rational it is.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
But he's correct. Even when "Obummer"'s administration does something demonstrably good that sharply aligns with the folks who hate him, they will minimize it rather than provide the accolades he deserves.
The GOP maybe, but this has been a hot-button issue for conservatives for a while, and the current sentiment is "wait, who did this wonderful thing, I must have heard you wrong". The difference between conservatives and the GOP is left as an exercise for the reader.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Depends which part of the GOP you are talking about though (As the Republican party is not some giant monolithic lock step party). The Republicans that are concerned about civil liberties (ie, those who didn't think about civil liberties when the patriot act was first signed, but have regretted it) will support this move. They have seen how this program has been abused by law enforcement agencies and needs to be curtailed.
(BTW, the democrats are very predictable in opposing anything republicans do, no matter how rational it is).
Local and state police used to be able to federalize their seizures to keep it beyond the reach of laws governing civil forfeiture. That protection is gone now.
The justice department is part of the executive branch, not Congress. This is the US Marshals, FBI, Secret Service, and so on. Holder is saying those Federal law enforcement agencies will no longer use civil forfeiture. Holder is in the correct position to make this happen. It could also have happened if Congress passed a law making it illegal, but enforcement is up to the executive, and law enforcement is up to the justice dept, specifically Eric Holder.
Holder has decided to go out on a high note. It almost makes up for all of his jack assery for the last 6 years.
RTFA next time -
"Last Friday, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), along with Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), signed a letter calling on Holder to end Equitable Sharing."
Republicans called for this to happen.
RTFA - Republicans called for this to happen.
"Last Friday, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), along with Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), signed a letter calling on Holder to end Equitable Sharing."
The Republicans that are concerned about civil liberties (ie, those who didn't think about civil liberties when the patriot act was first signed
Hint: Those people don't care about civil liberties. They saw an opportunity to seize power and did so at a time where many people were foolishly emotional and therefore gullible. It happens every time there's a significant disaster. These people only pretend that they're sorry later, and that goes for all of them, not just republicans.
At least with child pornography, they have to have some sort of evidence that you might be involved in child pornography. Even flimsy evidence. With drugs, all they needed was to find you carrying a lot of cash or a nice car and say that they were suspicious of you. The "drug dog alerted on his car outside the view of the dash cam" or the, "only drug dealers carry large amounts of cash" lines are totally irrefutable wildcards that the cops could use to steal your stuff if they saw you on the street with something valuable. It's a lot harder to steal your car or your cash on suspicion of child porn during a routine traffic stop. At least they need to pull some Internet records and search your house to see if you have any in your possession.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Heck, even when he does something they've been stumping for in the first place, they'll turn around and lambaste him for it!
Hold them until until the owner/driver of the car has been successfully prosecuted and then sieze them.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
There are laws on the books in California already that you can not discriminate when hiring an illegal alien over an american citizen
[citation needed]
I do not think anybody particularly cares about cash found next to the evidence of an overtly prosecutable crime. The problem is when the cash itself seems to be the target, in the absence of any apparent crime. The examples the made the news were things like driving 64 mph in a 55 mph zone with $5000 cash on hand -- here is your speeding ticket and the police keep the $5000 cash.
It can be difficult to get the cops to follow the law.
It can often be difficult to get the cops to even know the law.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
The driver would be arrested due to the drugs and possibly the weapons. They would be held as evidence. This hasn't changed.
Here's what has: Up until now, the driver could just be driving around with the money... no drugs, no weapons, no probable cause or reasonable suspicion, and the cops could seize it based on the extremely flimsy suspicion that the driver was a drug dealer. This money would wind up in the coffers of that local police department, to be used at their discretion.
The driver would theoretically have the chance to legally reclaim the money. However, the driver could easily wind up spending more money in legal costs than the original sum that was seized. And in some jurisdictions, the authority making the final decision in such a legal case is the same organization that seized the money in the first place.
See the issues here?
RTFA next time -
"Last Friday, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), along with Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), signed a letter calling on Holder to end Equitable Sharing."
Republicans called for this to happen.
I'm confused as to what point you are trying to make. Are you suggesting that just because this is a policy they supported, and indeed requested, they won't use it to lambast their opponents in future elections? If so, there is no historical evidence supporting this.
There is no good reason, under any circumstances, for pretrial forfeiture. If you have probable cause (the Constitutional standard for police procedure in the field) to suspect a person of the crimes you describe, arrest and charge him. If he is subsequently found guilty, THEN taking his stuff can be a part of the punishment.
The reason police love civil forfeiture is that is is used only in situations where a suspect is not arrested. An arrest triggers a series of Constitutional protections, while civil forfeiture takes place outside of this legal firewall.
I'm not an Obama fan, and I'm certainly not a Holder fan. However, if Holder's actions result in eliminating most of the bogus seizures that have been going on, I'll be more than happy to give him due credit for it.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Sure, except that's not the damn choice! The actual choice is between due process (i.e., outlawing civil forfeiture) and lack of due process (i.e, shitting all over the Fourth Amendment), and that should be an easy choice for anyone who isn't a totalitarian sociopath.
Choosing between fines and prison as a punishment after trial and conviction is a wholly separate issue.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
this time he got it right.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
You can't discriminate against someone on the basis of their nationality, but you also can't legally hire someone without the right to work. And then the argument devolves to what California is or isn't doing in that area, and what they might or might not do in the future. You have been warned.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For those across different ponds, John Oliver's takedown of this horrid practice in the United States shows why this was needed. I'm wondering if this piece had something to do with the response.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
It can be difficult to get the cops to follow the law.
It can often be difficult to get the cops to even know the law.
It's going to get a lot harder since SCOTUS has declared that cops don't have to know the law. http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/12/opinion-analysis-reasonable-mistakes-of-law-by-police-do-not-violate-the-fourth-amendment/
Here are some people that might disagree:
http://gawker.com/unarmed-peop...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm glad you were modded up, because 'civil asset forfeiture' has been a sticking point of mine for quite some time, and you basically said my piece in it.
A number of states limited it using state rules, only to have police departments continue to do it under the federal rules.
The abuses I've read about...
For example: Grandma owns her house. One of her many grandsons, fleeing the police with drugs on him, temporarily escapes into her house until she gets home and promptly turns him over to police. Despite this for some unknown reason the cops decide to seize her house because 'it was used to store drugs'. The only known time there were drugs in there was when the grandson was running! Took the governor telling them to back off.
I don't read AC A human right
Actually your response proves the whole system is broken. The Presidential position is really meant to be nothing more than administering the applicable laws provided by the congress and senate. There should be a whole lot less focus on the President and far more focus on the places where laws are actually considered, written and brought into force. What really needs to happen is the congress and senate should work hard on stripping all powers away from the President beyond administrative roles, no more memo laws, no more made up letters pretending they are laws, a President tied down by the laws written by the congress and the senate. In fact all senior roles within the administration should really go to congressmen and senators as selected by the congress and the senate, those senior administrative roles should be directly answerable to the public. Having a US president with all those powers has proven to be very socially and economically destructive not only upon a US basis but upon a global basis. It seems high time for a change, for a President with far, far fewer powers. The autocrats might thing they are electing 'Leaders' but as far as progressives are concerned they are only ever representatives and the electorate remains the 'Commander in Chief' not only during elections but between them as well. You can not have a government of the people, by the people and for the people unless the people can maintain their voice throughout the electoral cycle and not just one day every four years, that is just plain nucking futs. Do you not realise countries like Australia would toss out a political leader that started to call themselves the 'Commander In Chief', that electorate does not ever accept the idea of surrendering power to someone who is just meant to be representing them. I don't get it, it seems America is no longer electing a President they are electing a King, WTF?
The people's opinions should always be sought when legislative decisions are made, not just a minority of corporate campaign donors and offshore tax haven holiday funders but the people. American seem to have forgotten who the boss is, in a democracy, they are not called representatives, basically employees for no reason, don't let them ever get away with the delusion that your politicians are you bosses, deciding for you, that is just plain wrong.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I'm in Queensland Australia. We have the VLAD laws
Vicious_Lawless_Association_Disestablishment_Act
A biker used to live around the corner from us.
His home and everything has been taken as proceeds of crime, it is now a construction zone ? fenced off, no entry.
He's probably in gaol.
And that's just for being a biker.
All so the conservative state government can be seen to be hard on crime.
Go well
Good. That's something that you can at least respond to in front of a judge. "Are there bad pictures on my phone? No? Then give me my car back." On the drug side it was, "Nice cash. You're probably going to use it to buy drugs, so it's ours now." How can you even theoretically respond to that? If it's your word against theirs and there's no evidence to break the tie either way, you're screwed.
My primary worry is that the child porn hole will result in more people having to track down the source of every movie in their porn collection to show that everybody was 18 years old and if they can't, they lose their property. That could be a huge mess. We'll see if "child pornography" arrests based on somebody having a lot of videos suddenly skyrocket to make up the lost income from drug seizures.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
And they have a database of plates of business owners that are likely to be carrying cash! (operation black asphalt) The whole thing is a scam, and massively changed my opinion of the police.
The "drug dog alerted on his car outside the view of the dash cam"
The drug dogs will simply be re-branded as kiddy porn dogs, and your cash will have trace amounts of 10 year old on them.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Good point. And reaction to this could be a good indication of what members of the GOP should be de-elected by conservatives.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It goes in the evidence locker until the driver finishes their trial for possession.
It goes in the evidence locker until the driver finishes their trial for possession.
It goes in the evidence locker until the driver finishes their trial for possession.
It goes in the evidence locker until the driver finishes their trial for possession.
It goes into impound until the driver finishes their trial for possession.
What's that? You can't be bothered with a court case to prove that anything illegal happened? Well, fuck you.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
And yet when the Democrats came to power, the motto was "Never let a crisis go to waste".
No. You don't get to pretend he's blameless; he *continued these practices*, which makes him an evil scumbag. The mass violation of our fundamental liberties is not a joke.
In addition, under Federal Law, the proceeds of the forfeiture go directly to the agency that seized them, the goods are charged with a crime, and the owner must go to trial against the Federal FSKING Governent to prove the goods innocent in order to get them back.
For extra credit, can anyone spot the perverse incentive here?
"The problems in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking which created them" --Albert Einstein
And he IS the younger and more vital one.
It's probably all that vegetarian food.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
There is a school of thought in comparative politics called "American Exceptionalism" -- in this case, meaning that the U.S. Constitution is exceptional in that it only works in the US -- other places that have tried using the American model, with the strong executive; end up devolving into dictatorships. See Dahl, Robert Polyarchy .
Believe it or not, is it actually the 5th Republic French Constitution (the DeGaulle constitution) that has proven the most successful in bringing democracy to democratizing nations.
Reforms like proportional representation, abolishment of the electoral college, and institutions to do away with the two-party system have been long in coming to the American political system to keep it in line with the modern conception of democracy. Instead, it keeps slipping into this vaguely democratic polyarchy.
It seems to me a super simple, effective, and more complete solution would just be to make the police pay court costs plus penalties when they are sued for recovery of seized assets and lose. This would create an incentive for lawyers to take cases on a deferred compensation basis and rectify the current situation where only people who already have significant economic means can afford to fight back against improper and unjust seizure. Human behavior is driven by incentives; setup the correct incentive structure and this problem goes away overnight!
If you don't change the law to block this theft then it will keep coming back. What happens if (when) the man who replaces Holder changes the rules back? The burden of proof in civil forfiture should be on the police, just as in criminal law.
One thing it does do, is to take the wind out of the GOP's sails if they want to themselves pursue a change the asset forfeiture laws. If this has been contentious in the Republican Party (the law-and-order types against stopping it, the small-government times for stopping it) then not only does it deny the small-government side from being able to claim a victory over the incumbent position, but it opens a window to possibly see ugly GOP infighting. In such infighting, the law-and-order types will look bad because the excesses in asset forfeiture will be front and center, and the small-government types will be smeared for agreeing with the President.
This was a masterful move, politically.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Precisely. If they send you on your way without charges, they have the power to grab any money or other valuable asset they see on you before you go. There have been cases where someone walks up to an airline counter and buys a ticket with cash, the ticket agent reports them to the airport police for suspicious possession of cash (not for potential terrorist status, because then you would be arrested), and your cash is seized. The town of Tenaha, TX, was notorious for funding its entire city budget by grabbing cash from motorists who passed by on the highway.
( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... )
One of the down sides to being an early adopter. We were one of the first kids on the block to install this shiny new "representative democracy" thing on a large scale, but the bugs really hadn't been worked out yet, and political parasites immediately began to exploit it's weaknesses to insulate themselves from the will of the people. A couple centuries of digging in and they make ticks look positively benevolent. And of course since they're the ones making the rules, good luck dislodging them. Especially with the various black-op "security" branches showing a distinct bias towards interpreting their job as "protecting the status quo"
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I think this sounds like a great thing, however I do have to question why it took so long for him to do this. How long have Obama and Holder been in office? Now, finally, when we're in Obama's last two lame-duck years, Holder decides to finally do something useful?
So yeah, it's great that he's finally fixed this horrible problem, but he sure could have done it earlier.
Sorry, but it IS illegal and protected by the Constitution under the 4th amendment (emphasis mine below). Do you see that word "seizures"? Look it up, it protects people from civil forfeiture.
Amendment 4
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures , shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
People are not losing their money and/or property after a court decision found them guilty of some crime, people are losing their money and/or property without a trial at all.
That is what people have been complaining about, and for Holder not to stop it completely is yet another failure of the Obama administration.
I agree with your statement about the police not following the law, but that is an easy fix. Start jailing cops that break the law, jail cops that cover for their buddies, and jail judges who dismiss cases simply because the defendant is a cop. Since we have not been doing that, we recently had cops killed by vigilantes.. go figure.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Years ago a private towing company in the city where I lived stole my car from my own contract parking spot and held it for ransom. The police outright refused to get involved, and the city towing inspector wouldn't touch it. The court system utterly failed me on it as well as the civil courts insisted it was a criminal matter so they would refuse to pass judgment even when I laid out all the information in front of them. Those assholes had a decades-long reputation for stealing cars at will and raping their owners in the same way and nothing ever changed.
Sure, a lot of money is lost through the civil forfeiture that this story is discussing, but it doesn't impact that many people. Legalized car theft hits a much larger number of individuals.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
From TFA
"Last Friday, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), along with Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), signed a letter calling on Holder to end Equitable Sharing."
Where "calling on" means telling him "you can set reasonable rules of your choosing, or we can set them for you".
IMO any property seized without merit is a crime in and of itself. It shouldn't just stop at banning the practice, but permitting anybody whose property was seized to go back and reclaim it unless the police department or government office in question can get a jury to say that the person who lost their property was guilty of an actual crime DIRECTLY RELATED to it. Make that apply to ANY amount, even if it was only a dollar.
Civil forfeiture shouldn't even exist. All property seizure should be PART of the criminal trial as either proceeds of the crime or restitution or fines for the crime.
Under absolutely no circumstance should the government be able to go into a civil court and take your money outside a debt owed. These forfeitures are supposed to be criminal forfeiture and they should be handled in the criminal side where the defendant has rights and assumption of innocence. I'm horrified you would suggest that the government should be able to prevail in anything on the standard of most believable instead of without a reasonable doubt.
Looking from Australia we admire the focus of the US constitution on civil rights etc. None of that is in the Australian constitution, and the UK does not even have one.
Yet the US has these crazy laws. Civil forfeiture, way out of control plea bargaining, no legal representation for the poor, and, until relatively recently, slavery. I do not think that any other country in the western world has abuses to anything like that level.
Does the US constitution actually remove people's rights? Or would the situation be even worse without it?
Republicans are in favor of Civil Asset forfeiture laws. It fits in well with their tough anti-crime stance. So it's not much of stretch to see them opposing this. Even Rand Paul pretty quickly dropped his bill banning civil asset forfeiture (or at least quietly let it die, which is the same thing). This is the first real step taken towards ending the practice since it began.
The real question is: after 40 years of non-stop tax cuts (especially for top earners) how are we going to fill the gaping hole in local law enforcement budgets this'll leave?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The US Constitution was written by a bunch of wealthy land owners. Our representative gov't was specifically designed to ensure they'd keep that land and that the rabble wouldn't get too uppity. They weren't shy about it either. You can read plenty of documents from the time where they talk about it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The French got to start over a few times after failed experiments.
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You know, you could simply cut the costs - tell the police to focus on thieves and murderers and leave pot smokers and prostitutes alone. Maybe stop sending SWAT teams to storm people's houses over anonymous phone calls, cease harassing black people for walking on the streets, take it easy with surplus military gear...
If anything, forcing people to actually pay for police activity might cause some much-needed reconsideration of what, exactly speaking, is necessary police activity and what is someone play-acting action movies on other people's expense.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
We were/are a republic for the rich and powerful, a government of insiders and buerocrats. "Representative Democracy" is little more than propaganda from mid 20th century. When we where founded, we were little more "representative" than England who's had "representative democracy" in some form since the magna carta, and especially since the era of the long parllament.
The government works damn close to how the so called "founding fathers", a term which is late 19th century propaganda, wanted it. The government exists to protect the wealthy and powerful. What reforms that did happen, happened slowly, over the course of 150 years, and where done at gunpoint, only after major unrest.
It took Shay's rebellion before they dropped the property ownership requirement on voting, it took the civil war to end slavery, it took ~50 years of riots, civil unrest, flat out military conflicts against the poor and working class before the 17th amendment passed giving dirrect vote on the Senate that only happened as late as the 20th century.
No sir, we don't have a democracy, never had a democracy.
You sound like we live in a country where fascists run around robbing and killing jews.
No, we live in a country where oligarchs steal our money and then send it to israel where it can be used by jews to kill palestinians
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just note that seizure laws are as old as the constitution and the Supreme Court has never interpreted the 4th amendment that way. Example cases are "The Palmyra, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat) 1 (1827)." where they seized a pirate ship originally owned by Spain but was operating on its own. Or "Dobbins's Distillery v. United States, 96 U.S. 395, 24 L.Ed. 637 (1878)" where they ceased property of the man who'd leased out his property for a distillery. In "254 U.S. 505, 41 S.Ct. 189, 65 L.Ed. 376 (1921)" a taxicab used to transport illegal liquor was seized. In "Calero Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U.S. 663 (1974)" they cease a yacht because the people leasing it had one marijuana cigarette. There's 200 years of precedent saying they can cease property even though the owner is innocent.
What seems to be fundamentally different is that most the recent cases seem to involve seizures where there's no real evidence of a primary crime in which the property was an "accessory". "Preponderance of evidence" has basically been replaced by speculation and accusation with no basis in fact. A conviction has never been a formal requirement, say they try to stop a car at a border crossing, the driver makes a getaway, abandons the car and is never found or convicted. In this case they would seize the car as objectively used for drug smuggling even though no person could be convicted for the crime. But when there's not the slightest hint of link to a crime, that's just wrong.
It also gets better, there's no need for the seized property to be instrumental in the crime.
The dissent argues that our cases treat contraband differently from instrumentalities used to convey contraband, like cars: Objects in the former class are forfeitable "however blameless or unknowing their owners may be," post, at 2, but with respect to an instrumentality in the latter class, an owner's innocence is no defense only to the "principal use being made of that property," id., at 4. However, this Court's precedent has never made the due process inquiry depend on whether the use for which the instrumentality was forfeited was the principal use. If it had, perhaps cases like Calero Toledo, in which Justice Douglas noted in dissent that there was no showing that the "yacht had been notoriously used in smuggling drugs . . . and so far as we know only one marihuana cigarette was found on the yacht,"
Basically if you got a friend riding your car and you get stopped for any reason and they find a joint on your friend your car can be ceased under drug laws, there's no requirement that it be instrumental in transporting drugs. Same if you got a friend or family member visiting, your house is now a de facto drug stash even though it was on their person the whole time.
In any event, for the reasons pointed out in Calero Toledo and Van Oster, forfeiture also serves a deterrent purpose distinct from any punitive purpose. Forfeiture of property prevents illegal uses "both by preventing further illicit use of the [property] and by imposing an economic penalty, thereby rendering illegal behavior unprofitable." Calero Toledo, supra, at 687. (...) "The law thus builds a secondary defense against a forbidden use and precludes evasions by dispensing with the necessity of judicial inquiry as to collusion between the wrongdoer and the alleged innocent owner."
Basically it's the "nuke it from orbit" theory, anything found in the vicinity of a crime gets caught in the blast wave. It doesn't matter if it was your property and you're innocent, if bank robbers steal your car and use it in a bank robbery clearly you should lose your car right? Your fault for letting it get stolen and be used to rob a bank, you pay the price.
The dissent also suggests that The Palmyra line of cases "would justify the confiscation of an ocean liner just because one of its passengers sinned while on board." Post, at 5. None of our cases have held that an ocean liner may be confiscated because of the activities of one passenger. We said in Goldsmith Grant, and we repeat here, that "[w]hen such application shall be made it will be time enough to pronounce upon it."
Is it time yet?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
True enough, and in this case he probably will have earned it.
On the face of it, it sounds like a good move. If applied evenly, and without ulterior motives, I am unabashedly for this one and will give credit where it is due. The administration isn't calling for a change in the law here (and neither are any Republicans) which might indicate they wanted a restoration of our rights. That means they simply want to use this law to further their agenda. I suspect the status quo would be better than what they plan.
The current administration is choosing not to enforce some existing laws, notably immigration, and wants to preclude other entities from enforcing those same laws - I don't believe any reasonable person would dispute that statement. There is little they can do currently about Joe Arapaio enforcing Federal Laws, except choose not to prosecute the cases.
I expect at least two abuses to be in the works:
It will be used as a tool to increase Federal presence/control/"cooperation" in local law enforcement through funding controls/incentives/inducements. We all know how well that has worked out in Education. It will mean more shared data about us being available to the Federal Government.
Currently the Federal Government cannot directly compel states to enforce federal regulations because of the10th Amendment. This will be used as an end run around that, since the Commerce Clause has never worked very well in compelling the states in law enforcement (drinking age being a notable exception). Laws such as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act which had enforcement provisions that were ruled unconstitutional will get their enforcement at the state level because of this type of financial leveraging. It will be used selectively to punish those localities that are not compliant with the wishes of the Federal Government in some regard, and reward those that are aligned with the administration's agendas. Expect Chicago, DC and NYC to be rewarded for their gun controls and Maricopa County, AZ to be punished for its enforcement of immigration laws. Expect the reverse under the next Republican President.
This is a bad law that we need to have repealed, and not made worse by politically selective application.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Wrong. Politicians are mostly sociopaths and psychopaths. They are the ones who pass these evil laws. What people don't seem to realize is that emotions are no reason to pass freedom-violating laws. It's not when everything is fine and dandy that our commitment to freedom is tested; it's when bad things happen that our commitment to freedom is tested. And those worthless scumbag politicians took advantage of a disaster to increase their control over the populace.