NORQUIST: Justice Requires The Feds Stop Seizing Civil Assets

[Peter1469]

New Mexico passed a law a couple of years ago that made civil asset forfeiture illegal unless there was an actual criminal conviction.

As it should be.

[donttread]

NORQUIST: Justice Requires The Feds Stop Seizing Civil Assets
Grover Norquist

The government took away a woman’s car in Detroit after she dropped off her friend at a bank, where her friend made eye contact with other drivers in the parking lot. She had no criminal record. The justification used for confiscating the car? Police mistook her friend for a prostitute.
It turned into a living nightmare. She fought for her car and eventually got it back after paying over $1,000 in fines and fees, even though she didn’t break any laws.
Billions of dollars in assets are seized every year by the government with little to no justification whatsoever. Many people never see their stuff again.
The government can do this through civil asset forfeiture and the scary part is that you could be targeted next, even if you’ve never committed a crime.

In forfeiture cases, convicted criminals receive more promises of legality and fair proceedings with due process than those who aren’t even charged with a crime.
In criminal asset forfeiture cases, an individual is convicted of a crime, the property is directly related to the crime and the property is confiscated after the conviction. But under civil asset forfeiture, the government can still take your property even if there isn’t a criminal conviction, or charge. As a result, victims of civil asset forfeiture are held to a complicated process where they are forced to prove the innocence and legality of their property.
Civil asset forfeiture cases outpace criminal forfeiture. From 1997 to 2013, 87 percent of the DOJ’s forfeitures were civil asset forfeitures. The combined forfeiture funds of the DOJ and Treasury Department raked in $29 billion from 2001 to 2014, a 1000 percent increase in annual revenue. The problem is so pervasive that in 2014, the government reportedly stole more than burglars. It is clear that the government leeches off of lower burdens of proof to confiscate assets.
Police should be able to collect evidence and confiscate property and wealth that was generated illegally. But seizures also should be limited to convicted criminals so innocent individuals do not lose their entire livelihoods with little evidence of wrongdoing under civil asset forfeiture.
Some states like North Carolina, New Mexico and Nebraska did the right thing and abolished the practice altogether. Numerous other states have passed other reforms to limit civil asset forfeiture. Nevertheless, the federal government still works around state laws through what is called an “Equitable Sharing Program” which allows state and local law enforcement to keep up to 80 percent of assets if they give the rest to the federal government.
The federal government briefly imposed some limits on civil asset forfeiture under Attorney General Eric Holder. At the time, the Justice Department set a policy that prohibited federal government from accepting civil assets seized by state and local governments unless the property was connected to a convicted crime.
But, the federal government quickly shifted course under Attorney General Jeff Sessions by reviving the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program that allows state and local agencies to seize assets and transfer them to federal control, even if states have laws that prevent civil asset forfeiture. The controversial program is still on the books.
With the First Step Act passed in January, the U.S. is moving in the right direction on criminal justice reform. But we must keep up the momentum by eliminating civil asset forfeiture. Confiscation of property without due process of law directly contradicts our founding principles of life, liberty and property.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/02/19/n...-civil-assets/

about damned time.
One sheriffs office in the FL panhandle bragged that roadside seizures financed his new jail without a dime from the taxpayers. But that's not absolutely true, now is it? What the county wouldn't give him, he took from his residents as well as unwary travelers. The taxpayers really paid for it, I mean r-e-a-l-l-y paid for it

Free country?? LOL This sounds like the horror stories my parents told me of Russia in the 60's. Let's call this what it is, theft. and then charge the agencies and officers and brass responsible.
Prostitution shouldn't even be illegal, much less should giving one a ride ( even if she was) cost you your car.
Ever notice drug dealer's and average citizen's lose their assets but high level white collar types charged with crimes don't., very often?
This whole stinking program needs to stop and I have no idea how it EVER passed the test of Constitutionality. Simply put this cannot exist in a truly free country.

[stjames1_53]

Free country?? LOL This sounds like the horror stories my parents told me of Russia in the 60's. Let's call this what it is, theft. and then charge the agencies and officers and brass responsible.
Prostitution shouldn't even be illegal, much less should giving one a ride ( even if she was) cost you your car.
Ever notice drug dealer's and average citizen's lose their assets but high level white collar types charged with crimes don't., very often?
This whole stinking program needs to stop and I have no idea how it EVER passed the test of Constitutionality. Simply put this cannot exist in a truly free country.

I'd like to see an officer's cash pass the smell test of a drug dog. If he fails, seize his assets?

[MisterVeritis]

Tyranny anyone?

[donttread]

Tyranny anyone?

Yes. And all good tyranny requires differential enforcement. Asset forfeiture is a great vehicle to use against the poor, drug dealers etc without conviction but to allow corrupt politicians to but great legal defense with their ill gotten gains.

[Chris]

Supreme Court curbs power of government to impose heavy fines and seize property

...Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who returned to the court for the first time in almost two months after undergoing surgery for lung cancer, wrote the majority opinion in the case involving an Indiana man who had his Land Rover seized after he was arrested for selling $385 of heroin.

“Protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history for good reason: Such fines undermine other liberties," Ginsburg wrote. “They can be used, e.g., to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies. They can also be employed, not in service of penal purposes, but as a source of revenue.”

[Chris]

Basically, the court incorporated the 8th amendment:

[Chris]

Now we know what Ruth Bader Ginsburg was doing

Now we know what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was doing while recuperating from cancer surgery and fielding calls about the Oscar-nominated documentary based on her life story.

She was delving deeply into the history of the excessive fines clause of the Constitution.

On Wednesday, her second day back on the bench, she read -- in her usual steady voice -- an opinion holding that the Eighth Amendment's ban on excessive fines applies to states and local governments, as well as to the federal government.

In her opinion, she traipsed through history: the Magna Carta, the 17th-century Stuart kings, the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the 14th Amendment.

"For good reason, the protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history: Exorbitant tolls undermine other constitutional liberties," she wrote.

...

[donttread]

The practice is flat out unamerican. If memory serves it was usually enforced against hated drug dealers in the beginning. But that's how unconstitutional intrusions start. Only to be used for "good causes" But then they become routine, like provisions of the unpatriot act aimed at terrorist being used against non-terrorist Americans.
I must say that the people are easily duped!