13 ms·

Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be viola

Amendment IV 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. I don't get it, which is why I'm asking here: Why is this "stop-and-seize" not considered unconstitutional? Has it just not been challenged that far yet, or is there a legal rationale that I have not heard yet?

cauterized 11y ago
It's usually used against people who don't have the means to mount a legal challenge, in amounts that are too small to be worthwhile for a lawyer to pursue yet that can put the victim in such dire financial straits that they're struggling to stay off the streets let alone hire a lawyer.
MagicWishMonkey 11y ago
They get around it by claiming your house or car (or whatever) is guilty of a crime. Unfortunately, inanimate objects can't represent themselves in court.
- fenomas 11y ago
  AKA Civil Forfeiture. John Oliver did an episode on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks
  - chad_strategic 11y ago
    Shucks you beat me to it. This was about a year go... It's only now that main stream media is picking up on this scam by the police. This type of aggressive policing (excessive jaywalking tickets) was also happening in Ferguson. We know how that turned out...
    - icebraining 11y ago
      As much as I like to beat on the MSM, they did pick it up; plenty of major publications (the Economist, the New Yorker, USA Today, Forbes, the WSJ, PBS, NPR, and many more) had articles on it before John Oliver's episode. Sarah Stillman's article for the New Yorker, Taken, is particularly good, as well as depressing: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken
hyperpape 11y ago
The 4th amendment has consistently understood to allow police to search in exigent circumstances[1], and that's the right decision. If the police have good reason to believe you just robbed a store or attacked someone, they shouldn't need to get a warrant to search you. And if they find a gun on you[2] when they stop you for real cause, they shouldn't need a warrant to seize that gun. The problem is that the courts have allowed cops to twist that "good reason" to the point where it is a blanket right to search anyone, any time, and steal their property. That's the abuse of what ought to be a relatively narrow exception. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/exigent_circumstances https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/exigent_circumstances [2] Note that this point isn't about gun control (whether you like or hate gun control). It's about someone who carried or used a gun while committing a crime, which is an entirely different beast!
- adekok 11y ago
  > ... they shouldn't need a warrant to seize that gun. Temporarily. If they're not going to charge you, they should return the gun. The alternative is to declare "gun free" zones near the location of all gun crimes. Not sure who did it? No problem! Take everyones guns.
  - hyperpape 11y ago
    That's a fair addition. The logic I was outlining only applies to evidence in an investigation.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  > And if they find a gun on you[2] when they stop you for real cause, they shouldn't need a warrant to seize that gun. Yes they should. Either they are arresting you and the gun gets processed like everything else, or they aren't arresting you and thus need a warrant to seize anything from you. If they don't have enough evidence to arrest you for the crime then they don't have enough evidence to seize the gun without a warrant.
  - drumdance 11y ago
Jtsummers 11y ago
I'm not sure of all the cases, but one of the major common factors seems to be possession of large amounts of cash. They're essentially saying that no one has a legitimate cause to hold thousands of dollars in cash, so they must be doing something illicit, so we have cause to take it. It shouldn't be legal, but thanks to the drug war and post-9/11 anti-terrorism politics, it's been enabled by federal legislation and rules. It needs to get challenged more in the courts on constitutional grounds, but this takes money and time, which the usual victims don't have. Also, they (the police) further complicate things by making it a civil asset forfeiture case against the property and not a civil or criminal case against the rightful owner. http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2014/09/12/time-for-civil-asset-forfeiture-laws-to-meet-the-same-fate-as-jim-crow/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2014/09/12/time-for-c...
- rayiner 11y ago
  > They're essentially saying that no one has a legitimate cause to hold thousands of dollars in cash, so they must be doing something illicit, so we have cause to take it. Think about it statistically. The standard is "more likely than not" the money is obtained illegally. If you pull over 100 people with large amounts of cash, what percentage obtained it illegally? If it's greater than 50%, then you can always seize the cash under that standard. You don't need to make the judgment that no one has a legitimate reason to carry that cash, just the weaker judgment that it's statistically unlikely that the cash is legitimate.
  - runako 11y ago
    Arguments like this are why it's a good thing we don't base our criminal justice system on statistics. "Innocent until proven guilty" is very different from "Guilty because most people in similar situations are guilty, so let's not bother to prove it in this case." The cops would have a field day, for instance by arresting college students at random on the weekend because statistically most will test positive for controlled substances.
    - rayiner 11y ago
talmand 11y ago
I'm not aware of a case making it far enough, but I could be wrong. It's a tough one because in most cases, I believe, the seized property is not worth enough to warrant a case making it to the Supreme Court. I would be interested seeing if a class-action would be possible. But I've often wondered how this could stand up to constitutional muster. I believe one of the arguments is that the criminal case isn't against you, but the property that was seized from you. So if it wants to push the case, your seized $1000 can sue.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  It's a tough one because in most cases, I believe, the seized property is not worth enough to warrant a case making it to the Supreme Court. When they do run into someone with enough gumption and resources to appeal, they immediately drop the charges against the money and return it minus fees, just to prevent the creation of specific precedent against the practice.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    That assumes they are working in concert, and it's not a big set of affiliated but largely separate organizations working in their own best interests. I think it's far more likely that it's not cost effective to fight for the police if the person they seized from is motivated, unless really large amounts are at stake, in which case the possibility it was entirely legal is probably somewhat lessened, so the case isn't brought forth.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      The symphony plays without a conductor. We're talking about a system that presents a particular set of incentives to parties with particular motivations. They can work perfectly well in concert without resorting to secret cabal meetings. In law enforcement more than most other professions, those who do something different are punished for it. That's all it takes for LEO practice to be trapped in some truly sub-optimal local maxima, such as that under consideration here. Hanlon's Razor is bullshit, by the way.
joshfraser 11y ago
It is unconstitutional, but our government stopped following that document a while ago. Just look at civil forfeiture, the NSA dragnet, journalists being sued by the Whitehouse administration, NDAA authorization to kill Americans w/o trial or the existence of Gitmo.
- Loque 11y ago
  Unless it is to defend gun ownership? (clueless UK citizen here)
  - 15charlimit 11y ago
    The only real reason blatantly anti-constitutional law such as blanket seizure/confiscation hasn't happened on a large scale yet (because they've sure as hell tried) is that, if such laws were passed, the powers that be would suddenly find themselves in front of an enormous number of very angry gun owners who (hopefully) would be less than willing to cooperate peacefully.
    - drabiega 11y ago
      Most gun legislation dies pretty quickly in congress. I don't think the threat of violence from gun owners has particularly affected that process.
      - ska 11y ago
        To me it seems unclear that the threat of this sort violence from gun owners has actually been a significant consideration or relevance for many decades, despite the mythology surrounding it. As opposed to the demonstrably effective threat of organized political action by gun right advocates, say.
        spacemanmatt 11y ago
        Yeah, I'm still waiting for the first time gun owners raise their weapons in the interest of freedom. From all I can tell, the vocal pro-gun people are ale vocally pro status-quo.
joshuaheard 11y ago
No one would argue illegally obtained money cannot be confiscated. A bank robber cannot keep his stolen money, or someone selling stolen goods, or a drug dealer. The trouble with civil asset forfeiture, as its properly known, is that the burden of proof has been shifted to the accused. So, instead of the state having to prove your money is illegally obtained, or that any crime was committed, you have to prove there was not. For a small amount of money, it is not worth it to some people to invest the time and money to sue the state to get the money back. For those that can afford a lawyer and a lawsuit, there is (Constitutional) due process. The remedy lies with the legislatures to add a criminal element, to reverse the burden of proof, and to add an interest penalty to losing agencies. As for the article, it is a novel idea. I would think that the amount and type of official corruption would be a better indicator of a state in decline.
- merpnderp 11y ago
  But what set of idiot justices decided that the police can stop you, see you have $10k in your trunk, and then take it even though you tell them it is from your savings and you're on the way to buy a car?
  - pjc50 11y ago
    The US Supreme Court, on a number of occasions. The case law is just full of outrageous stupidity, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennis_v._Michigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennis_v._Michigan in the USSC ruled that a woman's car could be seized due to her husband's offence that was outside her control. The whole history of in rem actions is bonkers, as cases have titles like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Article_Consisting_of_50,000_Cardboard_Boxes_More_or_Less,_Each_Containing_One_Pair_of_Clacker_Balls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Article_Consi...
    - rayiner 11y ago
      You have to take decisions like that in context. That forfeiture arose under Michigan law. The Supreme Court wasn't saying that it's a good idea to allow the state to seize the car without accounting for the wife's interest. It was saying that Michigan's lack of an innocent owner defense to the seizure didn't rise to the level of a Constitutional violation. A lot of decisions that seem "outrageously stupid" make more sense if you think of the Supreme Court as an umpire. The democratically-elected legislatures are supposed to make good decisions. The unelected Supreme Court should only check them if they do something egregiously against the rules. The Court should let the "game play on" if there's not a very good reason to say that a 200+ year old document trumps a state legislature's contemporary decisions.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- Bouncingsoul1 11y ago
  Who are "they", where are those people with these hidden agenda? The companies? Where some of us works and just try to do theie job. The politicans? Who cannot agree about anything but somehow figured out an hidden agenda where they secretly betray us. The Illuminati? "I used to assume there were people in charge who knew what they were doing, who planned how things in society should work. As I got a little older I got more cynical, believing these people were trying to keep the rest of us dumb with shoddy schooling and mind-numbing entertainment, in the hopes they could get away with whatever it is powerful people are always trying to get away with. Then as I got even older I realized that the people in charge are as clueless as the rest of us. Like our software, our society just kind of happened over the years and it’s always on the verge of coming tumbling down. Nobody really knows what they’re doing or what they’re talking about. If you can get over the sheer terror of that thought, it’s actually quite liberating." Nick Bradbury
btilly 11y ago
The legal rationale is the one for civil forfeiture. Namely they sue the possession, not you. The possession has no rights. And you have no standing in said lawsuit unless you survive an uphill battle to prove that you actually owned the possession in question. Ever tried to prove that you really own the money in your wallet?
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  Federal Reserve Notes are bearer instruments. If my wallet has any indication of who owns it, the presumption is that the owner of the wallet is the bearer. If you really want to get hairy, put the cash in an unmarked envelope and put it on the front seat of a car owned by someone other than the driver. Now prove who owns it.
  - btilly 11y ago
    Many, many forfeiture cases demonstrate that the reasonable presumption is not actually made by our system. For example many look like, "Person tries to board a plane. TSA finds money on person, seizes it, sues the money with no case made against the person."
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Many, many forfeiture cases demonstrate that the reasonable presumption is not actually made by our system. For example many look like, "Person tries to board a plane. TSA finds money on person, seizes it, sues the money with no case made against the person." The structure of asset forfeiture laws requires that the action be formally against the property. They also require both specific notice of people with specified relations to the property which indicate probable ownership, and public notice, so that any persons with ownership interests in the property can intervene in the action and have the opportunity to contest the governments claims against the property.
      - btilly 11y ago
        Yes, yes. I know the legal fiction. You can find it well-described at https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forfeiture https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forfeiture. But my description of how it actually happens is still valid. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/30/why-the-tsa-posted-a-photo-of-cash-filled-luggage-on-twitter/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/30/why-t... for a recent case where exactly this happened. And it links to 3 other cases where money was seized from travelers, with no criminal charge ever being filed against anyone. In all 4 of these cases a person tried to board a plane, TSA finds money, seizes it, sues the money, and no case is made against the person. In none of the cases did the person get said money back. (The main conflict over where it goes in most cases is that a couple of dozen different government agencies argue about how to divide it up.) The most unusual trait connecting these cases is that there was publicity about it. It happens so often that reporters usually don't bother to write about them. The problem is that legal standard is that the government merely has to establish "reasonable suspicion that there was a crime", while the person has to establish "a preponderance of evidence that there was not". This reverses "innocent until proven guilty." How do you establish a preponderance of evidence that no crime happened when no specific crime was ever alleged? It is effectively impossible. This story from a year ago on the front page establishes the shift in standards quite well: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/02/civil-liberties-and-supreme-court?foo=bar http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/02/ci.... A quick summary is that a couple was indicted of a crime and successfully defended themselves. In the process the government seized a home through civil forfeiture, and the forfeiture stood because the couple was unable to prove that the crime did not happen. (Unlike the cases that I'm describing above, in this case a specific crime was alleged. Normally the TSA just claims something like, "there was a smell of marijuana" and you have no way to prove that there wasn't.)
geon 11y ago
As George Carlin said; your rights can be taken away whenever convenient. Thus, they are not really rights at all, but temporary privileges. http://youtube.com/watch?v=m9-R8T1SuG4 http://youtube.com/watch?v=m9-R8T1SuG4
- humanrebar 11y ago
  Some rights are inalienable, so they cannot be taken away, just violated. The right to justice is one of those. The right to life. The right to free expression. It's pretty obvious that they exist, otherwise nobody would really care about murder, rape, theft, fraud, lying, etc. So the burden of proof is on those that want to limit or deny inalienable rights. George Carlin is hilarious (at least in general), but ironically gives abusers a lot of ammunition with this argument.
  - soylentcola 11y ago
    I think his intention wasn't so much to say this is a positive thing but rather to cynically (and humorously) point out that "rights" are a human construct and susceptible to all of the associated weaknesses in practice. You can claim a right to something and if you can get enough people to agree with you, you can enforce someone's claim on the right to something. But it's not like there's a natural force that ensures, compels, or mandates these rights. I guess my point is that taken less cynically, rights (as we understand them) only exist in practice as long as you can demand them and have sufficient power (whether through numbers or threat of force) to keep them. The sad reality is that without the continual effort to maintain these rights, they can and will be taken away.
    - humanrebar 11y ago
      > But it's not like there's a natural force that ensures, compels, or mandates these rights. A lot of really well regarded philosophers throughout the ages have disagreed with that. > I guess my point is that taken less cynically, rights... only exist [with] sufficient power If I follow that line of thinking, justice is only an extension of power. I don't think people agree with that. I don't believe you think that. Perhaps it's just a matter of phrasing; surely we both agree that it's important to recognize that people should never murder people. We use the word "right" because it's important to be absolute in this rule. It's worth distinguishing between: * life is not a right * we don't have enough power to enforce murder laws ...the second case is preferable, even if it may be hard to distinguish between the two looking down the barrel of a gun. If you believe in a deity, the could be justice in the afterlife. If you don't, one can be justified in history, if nothing else. For example, we don't say it was OK for Thomas Jefferson to own slaves because the U.S. didn't have the votes to ban the practice altogether. We say the slaves had their rights violated, not that they didn't deserve freedom and dignity because nobody could guarantee it. tl;dr To say there are no absolute rights is to say there are no absolute wrongs.
threatofrain 11y ago
I think mechanism is a better lens to use than spirit of the law, especially since the US Constitution is framed with distrust toward the government, and a favoring for mechanism as a leash. What are the mechanisms or processes by which we expect to be protected? Since this is a civil case, one would have to hire a lawyer with their own money.
tn13 11y ago
I am looking for any SC verdicts justifying this horrendous Nazi styles practice. I am unable to find any, so I think this law is open to challenge. Here is a brilliant John Stossel episode about this law and how it is destroying so many innocent people. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ399EBlqBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ399EBlqBE 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiGRMD4NXVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiGRMD4NXVA

cauterized 11y ago

It's usually used against people who don't have the means to mount a legal challenge, in amounts that are too small to be worthwhile for a lawyer to pursue yet that can put the victim in such dire financial straits that they're struggling to stay off the streets let alone hire a lawyer.

MagicWishMonkey 11y ago

They get around it by claiming your house or car (or whatever) is guilty of a crime. Unfortunately, inanimate objects can't represent themselves in court.

fenomas 11y ago
AKA Civil Forfeiture. John Oliver did an episode on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks
- chad_strategic 11y ago
  Shucks you beat me to it. This was about a year go... It's only now that main stream media is picking up on this scam by the police. This type of aggressive policing (excessive jaywalking tickets) was also happening in Ferguson. We know how that turned out...
  - icebraining 11y ago
    As much as I like to beat on the MSM, they did pick it up; plenty of major publications (the Economist, the New Yorker, USA Today, Forbes, the WSJ, PBS, NPR, and many more) had articles on it before John Oliver's episode. Sarah Stillman's article for the New Yorker, Taken, is particularly good, as well as depressing: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken

hyperpape 11y ago

The 4th amendment has consistently understood to allow police to search in exigent circumstances[1], and that's the right decision. If the police have good reason to believe you just robbed a store or attacked someone, they shouldn't need to get a warrant to search you. And if they find a gun on you[2] when they stop you for real cause, they shouldn't need a warrant to seize that gun. The problem is that the courts have allowed cops to twist that "good reason" to the point where it is a blanket right to search anyone, any time, and steal their property. That's the abuse of what ought to be a relatively narrow exception. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/exigent_circumstances https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/exigent_circumstances [2] Note that this point isn't about gun control (whether you like or hate gun control). It's about someone who carried or used a gun while committing a crime, which is an entirely different beast!

adekok 11y ago
> ... they shouldn't need a warrant to seize that gun. Temporarily. If they're not going to charge you, they should return the gun. The alternative is to declare "gun free" zones near the location of all gun crimes. Not sure who did it? No problem! Take everyones guns.
- hyperpape 11y ago
  That's a fair addition. The logic I was outlining only applies to evidence in an investigation.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
> And if they find a gun on you[2] when they stop you for real cause, they shouldn't need a warrant to seize that gun. Yes they should. Either they are arresting you and the gun gets processed like everything else, or they aren't arresting you and thus need a warrant to seize anything from you. If they don't have enough evidence to arrest you for the crime then they don't have enough evidence to seize the gun without a warrant.
- drumdance 11y ago

Jtsummers 11y ago

I'm not sure of all the cases, but one of the major common factors seems to be possession of large amounts of cash. They're essentially saying that no one has a legitimate cause to hold thousands of dollars in cash, so they must be doing something illicit, so we have cause to take it. It shouldn't be legal, but thanks to the drug war and post-9/11 anti-terrorism politics, it's been enabled by federal legislation and rules. It needs to get challenged more in the courts on constitutional grounds, but this takes money and time, which the usual victims don't have. Also, they (the police) further complicate things by making it a civil asset forfeiture case against the property and not a civil or criminal case against the rightful owner. http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2014/09/12/time-for-civil-asset-forfeiture-laws-to-meet-the-same-fate-as-jim-crow/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2014/09/12/time-for-c...

rayiner 11y ago
> They're essentially saying that no one has a legitimate cause to hold thousands of dollars in cash, so they must be doing something illicit, so we have cause to take it. Think about it statistically. The standard is "more likely than not" the money is obtained illegally. If you pull over 100 people with large amounts of cash, what percentage obtained it illegally? If it's greater than 50%, then you can always seize the cash under that standard. You don't need to make the judgment that no one has a legitimate reason to carry that cash, just the weaker judgment that it's statistically unlikely that the cash is legitimate.
- runako 11y ago
  Arguments like this are why it's a good thing we don't base our criminal justice system on statistics. "Innocent until proven guilty" is very different from "Guilty because most people in similar situations are guilty, so let's not bother to prove it in this case." The cops would have a field day, for instance by arresting college students at random on the weekend because statistically most will test positive for controlled substances.
  - rayiner 11y ago

talmand 11y ago

I'm not aware of a case making it far enough, but I could be wrong. It's a tough one because in most cases, I believe, the seized property is not worth enough to warrant a case making it to the Supreme Court. I would be interested seeing if a class-action would be possible. But I've often wondered how this could stand up to constitutional muster. I believe one of the arguments is that the criminal case isn't against you, but the property that was seized from you. So if it wants to push the case, your seized $1000 can sue.

jessaustin 11y ago
It's a tough one because in most cases, I believe, the seized property is not worth enough to warrant a case making it to the Supreme Court. When they do run into someone with enough gumption and resources to appeal, they immediately drop the charges against the money and return it minus fees, just to prevent the creation of specific precedent against the practice.
- kbenson 11y ago
  That assumes they are working in concert, and it's not a big set of affiliated but largely separate organizations working in their own best interests. I think it's far more likely that it's not cost effective to fight for the police if the person they seized from is motivated, unless really large amounts are at stake, in which case the possibility it was entirely legal is probably somewhat lessened, so the case isn't brought forth.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    The symphony plays without a conductor. We're talking about a system that presents a particular set of incentives to parties with particular motivations. They can work perfectly well in concert without resorting to secret cabal meetings. In law enforcement more than most other professions, those who do something different are punished for it. That's all it takes for LEO practice to be trapped in some truly sub-optimal local maxima, such as that under consideration here. Hanlon's Razor is bullshit, by the way.

joshfraser 11y ago

It is unconstitutional, but our government stopped following that document a while ago. Just look at civil forfeiture, the NSA dragnet, journalists being sued by the Whitehouse administration, NDAA authorization to kill Americans w/o trial or the existence of Gitmo.

Loque 11y ago
Unless it is to defend gun ownership? (clueless UK citizen here)
- 15charlimit 11y ago
  The only real reason blatantly anti-constitutional law such as blanket seizure/confiscation hasn't happened on a large scale yet (because they've sure as hell tried) is that, if such laws were passed, the powers that be would suddenly find themselves in front of an enormous number of very angry gun owners who (hopefully) would be less than willing to cooperate peacefully.
  - drabiega 11y ago
    Most gun legislation dies pretty quickly in congress. I don't think the threat of violence from gun owners has particularly affected that process.
    - ska 11y ago
      To me it seems unclear that the threat of this sort violence from gun owners has actually been a significant consideration or relevance for many decades, despite the mythology surrounding it. As opposed to the demonstrably effective threat of organized political action by gun right advocates, say.
      - spacemanmatt 11y ago
        Yeah, I'm still waiting for the first time gun owners raise their weapons in the interest of freedom. From all I can tell, the vocal pro-gun people are ale vocally pro status-quo.

joshuaheard 11y ago

No one would argue illegally obtained money cannot be confiscated. A bank robber cannot keep his stolen money, or someone selling stolen goods, or a drug dealer. The trouble with civil asset forfeiture, as its properly known, is that the burden of proof has been shifted to the accused. So, instead of the state having to prove your money is illegally obtained, or that any crime was committed, you have to prove there was not. For a small amount of money, it is not worth it to some people to invest the time and money to sue the state to get the money back. For those that can afford a lawyer and a lawsuit, there is (Constitutional) due process. The remedy lies with the legislatures to add a criminal element, to reverse the burden of proof, and to add an interest penalty to losing agencies. As for the article, it is a novel idea. I would think that the amount and type of official corruption would be a better indicator of a state in decline.

merpnderp 11y ago
But what set of idiot justices decided that the police can stop you, see you have $10k in your trunk, and then take it even though you tell them it is from your savings and you're on the way to buy a car?
- pjc50 11y ago
  The US Supreme Court, on a number of occasions. The case law is just full of outrageous stupidity, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennis_v._Michigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennis_v._Michigan in the USSC ruled that a woman's car could be seized due to her husband's offence that was outside her control. The whole history of in rem actions is bonkers, as cases have titles like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Article_Consisting_of_50,000_Cardboard_Boxes_More_or_Less,_Each_Containing_One_Pair_of_Clacker_Balls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Article_Consi...
  - rayiner 11y ago
    You have to take decisions like that in context. That forfeiture arose under Michigan law. The Supreme Court wasn't saying that it's a good idea to allow the state to seize the car without accounting for the wife's interest. It was saying that Michigan's lack of an innocent owner defense to the seizure didn't rise to the level of a Constitutional violation. A lot of decisions that seem "outrageously stupid" make more sense if you think of the Supreme Court as an umpire. The democratically-elected legislatures are supposed to make good decisions. The unelected Supreme Court should only check them if they do something egregiously against the rules. The Court should let the "game play on" if there's not a very good reason to say that a 200+ year old document trumps a state legislature's contemporary decisions.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Bouncingsoul1 11y ago
Who are "they", where are those people with these hidden agenda? The companies? Where some of us works and just try to do theie job. The politicans? Who cannot agree about anything but somehow figured out an hidden agenda where they secretly betray us. The Illuminati? "I used to assume there were people in charge who knew what they were doing, who planned how things in society should work. As I got a little older I got more cynical, believing these people were trying to keep the rest of us dumb with shoddy schooling and mind-numbing entertainment, in the hopes they could get away with whatever it is powerful people are always trying to get away with. Then as I got even older I realized that the people in charge are as clueless as the rest of us. Like our software, our society just kind of happened over the years and it’s always on the verge of coming tumbling down. Nobody really knows what they’re doing or what they’re talking about. If you can get over the sheer terror of that thought, it’s actually quite liberating." Nick Bradbury

btilly 11y ago

The legal rationale is the one for civil forfeiture. Namely they sue the possession, not you. The possession has no rights. And you have no standing in said lawsuit unless you survive an uphill battle to prove that you actually owned the possession in question. Ever tried to prove that you really own the money in your wallet?

logfromblammo 11y ago
Federal Reserve Notes are bearer instruments. If my wallet has any indication of who owns it, the presumption is that the owner of the wallet is the bearer. If you really want to get hairy, put the cash in an unmarked envelope and put it on the front seat of a car owned by someone other than the driver. Now prove who owns it.
- btilly 11y ago
  Many, many forfeiture cases demonstrate that the reasonable presumption is not actually made by our system. For example many look like, "Person tries to board a plane. TSA finds money on person, seizes it, sues the money with no case made against the person."
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Many, many forfeiture cases demonstrate that the reasonable presumption is not actually made by our system. For example many look like, "Person tries to board a plane. TSA finds money on person, seizes it, sues the money with no case made against the person." The structure of asset forfeiture laws requires that the action be formally against the property. They also require both specific notice of people with specified relations to the property which indicate probable ownership, and public notice, so that any persons with ownership interests in the property can intervene in the action and have the opportunity to contest the governments claims against the property.
    - btilly 11y ago
      Yes, yes. I know the legal fiction. You can find it well-described at https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forfeiture https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forfeiture. But my description of how it actually happens is still valid. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/30/why-the-tsa-posted-a-photo-of-cash-filled-luggage-on-twitter/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/30/why-t... for a recent case where exactly this happened. And it links to 3 other cases where money was seized from travelers, with no criminal charge ever being filed against anyone. In all 4 of these cases a person tried to board a plane, TSA finds money, seizes it, sues the money, and no case is made against the person. In none of the cases did the person get said money back. (The main conflict over where it goes in most cases is that a couple of dozen different government agencies argue about how to divide it up.) The most unusual trait connecting these cases is that there was publicity about it. It happens so often that reporters usually don't bother to write about them. The problem is that legal standard is that the government merely has to establish "reasonable suspicion that there was a crime", while the person has to establish "a preponderance of evidence that there was not". This reverses "innocent until proven guilty." How do you establish a preponderance of evidence that no crime happened when no specific crime was ever alleged? It is effectively impossible. This story from a year ago on the front page establishes the shift in standards quite well: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/02/civil-liberties-and-supreme-court?foo=bar http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/02/ci.... A quick summary is that a couple was indicted of a crime and successfully defended themselves. In the process the government seized a home through civil forfeiture, and the forfeiture stood because the couple was unable to prove that the crime did not happen. (Unlike the cases that I'm describing above, in this case a specific crime was alleged. Normally the TSA just claims something like, "there was a smell of marijuana" and you have no way to prove that there wasn't.)

geon 11y ago

As George Carlin said; your rights can be taken away whenever convenient. Thus, they are not really rights at all, but temporary privileges. http://youtube.com/watch?v=m9-R8T1SuG4 http://youtube.com/watch?v=m9-R8T1SuG4

humanrebar 11y ago
Some rights are inalienable, so they cannot be taken away, just violated. The right to justice is one of those. The right to life. The right to free expression. It's pretty obvious that they exist, otherwise nobody would really care about murder, rape, theft, fraud, lying, etc. So the burden of proof is on those that want to limit or deny inalienable rights. George Carlin is hilarious (at least in general), but ironically gives abusers a lot of ammunition with this argument.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  I think his intention wasn't so much to say this is a positive thing but rather to cynically (and humorously) point out that "rights" are a human construct and susceptible to all of the associated weaknesses in practice. You can claim a right to something and if you can get enough people to agree with you, you can enforce someone's claim on the right to something. But it's not like there's a natural force that ensures, compels, or mandates these rights. I guess my point is that taken less cynically, rights (as we understand them) only exist in practice as long as you can demand them and have sufficient power (whether through numbers or threat of force) to keep them. The sad reality is that without the continual effort to maintain these rights, they can and will be taken away.
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    > But it's not like there's a natural force that ensures, compels, or mandates these rights. A lot of really well regarded philosophers throughout the ages have disagreed with that. > I guess my point is that taken less cynically, rights... only exist [with] sufficient power If I follow that line of thinking, justice is only an extension of power. I don't think people agree with that. I don't believe you think that. Perhaps it's just a matter of phrasing; surely we both agree that it's important to recognize that people should never murder people. We use the word "right" because it's important to be absolute in this rule. It's worth distinguishing between: * life is not a right * we don't have enough power to enforce murder laws ...the second case is preferable, even if it may be hard to distinguish between the two looking down the barrel of a gun. If you believe in a deity, the could be justice in the afterlife. If you don't, one can be justified in history, if nothing else. For example, we don't say it was OK for Thomas Jefferson to own slaves because the U.S. didn't have the votes to ban the practice altogether. We say the slaves had their rights violated, not that they didn't deserve freedom and dignity because nobody could guarantee it. tl;dr To say there are no absolute rights is to say there are no absolute wrongs.

threatofrain 11y ago

I think mechanism is a better lens to use than spirit of the law, especially since the US Constitution is framed with distrust toward the government, and a favoring for mechanism as a leash. What are the mechanisms or processes by which we expect to be protected? Since this is a civil case, one would have to hire a lawyer with their own money.

tn13 11y ago

I am looking for any SC verdicts justifying this horrendous Nazi styles practice. I am unable to find any, so I think this law is open to challenge. Here is a brilliant John Stossel episode about this law and how it is destroying so many innocent people. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ399EBlqBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ399EBlqBE 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiGRMD4NXVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiGRMD4NXVA