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Supreme Court Won't Hear Kim Dotcom's Civil Forfeiture Case (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Kim Dotcom's civil forfeiture case will not be heard before the Supreme Court this term, America's highest court ruled on Monday. The civil forfeiture case was brought 18 months after 2012 American criminal charges related to alleged copyright infringement against Dotcom and his now-shuttered company, Megaupload. In the forfeiture case, prosecutors specifically outlined why the New Zealand seizure of Dotcom's assets on behalf of the American government was valid. Seized items include millions of dollars in various seized bank accounts in Hong Kong and New Zealand, the Dotcom mansion, several luxury cars, four jet skis, two 108-inch TVs, three 82-inch TVs, a $10,000 watch, and a photograph by Olaf Mueller worth over $100,000.
"We are disappointed in the denial of the cert petition -- it is a bad day for due process and international treaties," Ira Rothken, Dotcom's chief global counsel, told Ars. "Kim Dotcom has never been to the United States, is presumed innocent, and is lawfully opposing extradition under the United States-New Zealand Treaty -- yet the United States by merely labeling him as a fugitive gets a judgement to take all of his assets with no due process," Rothken said. "The New Zealand and Hong Kong courts, who have authority over the assets, will now need to weigh in on this issue and we are cautiously optimistic that they will take a dim view of the Fugitive Disentitlement Doctrine and oppose US efforts to seize such assets."
"We are disappointed in the denial of the cert petition -- it is a bad day for due process and international treaties," Ira Rothken, Dotcom's chief global counsel, told Ars. "Kim Dotcom has never been to the United States, is presumed innocent, and is lawfully opposing extradition under the United States-New Zealand Treaty -- yet the United States by merely labeling him as a fugitive gets a judgement to take all of his assets with no due process," Rothken said. "The New Zealand and Hong Kong courts, who have authority over the assets, will now need to weigh in on this issue and we are cautiously optimistic that they will take a dim view of the Fugitive Disentitlement Doctrine and oppose US efforts to seize such assets."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/forfeiture-without-due-process/2011/12/22/gIQAckn3WP_story.html?utm_term=.2bb81d9378c5
https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-still-seizure-without-proper-due-process-1453321983
I've never once heard it mentioned on a major campaign. Nobody likes it, but when it comes time to vote the 'tough on crime' voters always seem to outnumber the civil rights voters.
Until folks start showing up at the polls and voting the Tough on Crime crowd out this is all just pissing in the wind...
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..Civil Forfeiture is an immoral and most likely Unconstitutional act.
You can't have governments just taking your shit because they THINK you have been a bad dude. If they have proof, then prosecute and confiscate.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
And according to the 4th Circuit court, he'll get his due process as soon as he makes an appearance before a US court. Until then, he considered a fugitive.
I quite agree, and as horrible as civil forfeiture is that's not even the worst of it: the drone war (conducted across US administrations from US Presidents G.W. Bush, through Obama, and now Trump) kills people extrajudicially including Americans and children. Put another way: civil forfeiture typically takes people's property (including their money), the drone war typically takes people's lives. So far nobody has used the drone war as much as Pres. Obama, but there's more continuity of policy showing how (like civil forfeiture) there's an agreement across both corporate parties. The reasoning justifying the killings is almost always absent, and when pressed revealed to be horrific.
Under Obama's administration on September 30, 2011 the US killed an American named Anwar al-Awlaki said to be involved in al-Qaeda operations. There were no charges filed, no evidence offered, no trial held. Two weeks later in a separate drone strike his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was also killed. Again no charges filed, no evidence offered, no trial held. When reporters asked what Abdulrahman's crime was that justified killing him extrajudicially Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary, replied in a way that made it clear: the US government kills whomever it wants whenever it wants on any or no evidence while he also blamed the son for the alleged sins of his father. Lots of passers-by die in each drone strike as well; completely untargetted people who happen to live or pass within the killing zone of a missile. This is how wedding and dinner parties full of people (we don't even know their names) have died.
Obama famously made a joke of drone war at one of his press dinners where he joked about killing a boy band his daughters liked. What made that 'joke' so unfunny is precisely that when he said it he was one of the few people who could have ordered such a strike and gotten away with killing them too. I think it important in this age of replaying Pres. Trump gaffes to indicate how little he cares about the disaffected people to show how little people knew of what was going on in these drone strikes, who was being killed, and why.
Continuing the policy of unlimited extrajudicial killing Obama once feinted to be concerned about: On January 29, 2017, the Trump administration killed Anwar Al-Awlaki's 8-year-old daughter, Nawar Al-Awlaki in a drone-led Navy SEAL raid.
As other countries get killer drones, what future has the US committed its citizens to? One can only hope that other countries continue to show a restraint that the US has not shown with nuclear weapons. There's still far too much danger with nuclear weapons too, but the above are some of the reasons the world fears the US most. You won't hear many people criticizing Trump mention civil forfeiture or drone strikes because bringing this up at all runs the risk of not being uniquely anti-Trump, of pointing out the continuity of American policy that in some way hurts us all (none so much as those assassinated, of course).
Digital Citizen
The court did not rule on the case, they explicitly chose not to even hear the case. With civil forfeiture is involved, the outcome is the same as saying "You are guilty and have no right to defend yourself. We will be keeping your stuff."
Wrong.
The court said that he forfeited his due process rights by fleeing prosecution, so appearing before a US court (even voluntarily and without being arrested) won't give him back.
The district court entered a default judgement and approved the forfeiture, because the justice dept argued successfully that as a fugitive who was willfully evading US jurisdiciton he voluntarily abandoned any right to contest the forfeiture. Even though I agree with dotcom that he was not a fugitive in the first place, since he was legally fighting extradition instead of fleeing even from NZ authorities.
The appellate court basically took the side of the prosecution, possibly figuring that SCOTUS could fix it if they screwed up.
SCOTUS said "we got bigger fish to fry, piss off" and denied cert. As it is they're picky about cases even if they know the appelate court screwed up. For example, the "rule of 4" they use to filter out cases includes, among other things, circuit splits.
There is no further due process for kim with regard to the forfeitures. The only due process remaining is his criminal case for copyright infringement. The civil stuff is over and the US gets to keep everything.
As it is I think that the US legal system may well have been deliberately designed to be flaky enough to keep the proverbial buck passing until someone fumbles.
It doesn't matter if he's a horrible manipulative guy. The fact that any government can assume that somebody is guilty and take ownership of their assets so they can't afford to defend themselves properly is a horrific concept.