You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Freedom Alert! Your help is desperately needed to save due process.
The government can take your property even when you have not committed a crime or done anything wrong. They just have to follow legal procedures. I would love to see some cases where no one was allegedly using or selling drugs and property was still seized and not returned. All the cases people seem to get hyped about are when someone's granny's house gets seized because her grandson gang banger is selling drugs out of there.
Any law can be abused, when they are using siezures as a their sole revenue stream or taking property from truly innocent people then that just means it is being abused, I am sure there some jurisdictions out there where they are corrupt, those corrupt jurisdictions need to be held to account.
"Legal" includes following Constitutional law and the 4th Amendment.
The problem is that the laws are often written such that there is nothing to prevent abuse. Some law enforcement officer merely has to say he is suspicious of some crime. Often just having a bunch of cash is a good enough reason for them to be "suspicious" even if you have a legitimate reason for carrying a large quantity of cash (and you shouldn't need a reason at all). Not only do you not have be convicted of a crime, you don't even have to be charged with one. If your property is being seized without being convicted of or even charged with a crime then your Constitutional rights are being violated. The government does not have a right to arbitrarily seize your property. If your property is seized then guilt is presumed. Any law that violates the presumption of innocence violates due process. Here's just a few examples of abuses. There are many, many more.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/30/the-7-most-egregious-examples-of-civil-asset-forfeiture/
http://listverse.com/2015/06/29/10-egregious-abuses-of-civil-asset-forfeiture/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/tim-walberg-an-end-to-the-abuse-of-civil-forfeiture/2014/09/04/e7b9d07a-3395-11e4-9e92-0899b306bbea_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.cfd001a6311f
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/06/civil-asset-forfeiture-police-abuse-clarence-thomas/
http://garydhalbert.com/2017/12/14/civil-asset-forfeiture-abuse-power/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken
http://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/
https://www.dailysignal.com/2015/09/29/4-startling-forfeiture-abuse-stories/
https://www.aclunc.org/article/read-stories-civil-asset-forfeiture-victims
The civil asset forfeiture laws themselves are not being abused (though Constitutional law certainly is), this is what such laws allow. Why would you defend laws that allow this behavior?
Nope, its a civil matter.
There is only a presumption of innocence in criminal cases, that does not apply to civil cases.
The abuse only occurs because drugs are banned. If they were not then having sums of cash would not suggest criminal drug trafficking. In all those cases the cops claimed they thought the money was drug money.
Do you think "the 7 most egregious examples" represent the normal procedures?
2 of the 7 were the same cop! and the guy got his money back.
in case #3 they got their cars back
how is #4 egregious? note how they didn't actually even say how that case turned out.
they don't say how #5 turned out either, sounds like the Jersey cop was overzealous, do they not tell us because he got all his money back?
If you click the link we find out that in case #6 " got the money back after days of frantic phone calls. "
and #7 Son selling drugs out of the house, boo hoo.
So the 7 worst examples don't include any cases where someone's property was actually kept by the state without them being charged with a crime. They all got due process and as a result their property was returned, justice was served.
The point is they are seizing people's money and other property without convicting them of a crime or in many cases even charging them with one! The fact they made it a "civil" case is irrelevant. By your logic they can make anything a "civil" violation and due away with due process and property rights altogether and that would be fine. Seizing your property without due process violates the 4th amendment period. Even in the cases where property was returned it often involved expensive legal fees. It's not a "civil" matter when its the government doing the seizing even though they cases may be prosecuted through civil courts. They are getting around accusing you of a crime by accusing your property of the crime. It's absurd and a perversion of justice and a violation of the 4th amendment. In a normal civil case a plaintiff must accuse you of something and you must be found guilty before a penalty or payment is involved. In civil asset forfeiture cases the government steals your property and makes you prove your innocence to get it back.
Also, you keep blaming drug laws and while with very many of these cases accusation of drug law violations are involved, there are others that involve accusations of structuring or other lawbreaking that never actually happened. So even if drugs are all legalized tomorrow the problem with asset forfeiture laws remain.
Don't just stop after reading the first link. There's 8 more and that's just from the first page of a google search.