6 ms·

Civil Forfeiture and the Supreme Court (2014)

67 points by martincmartin 11y ago

pm24601 11y ago
This is why I don't respect the Supreme Court. This is why I don't think Obama is a great president. This is why as a liberal I agree much more than I want to with the conservatives who argue about big government. Why does the conservative court members always take the side of government when going against people like me and you? Why does the conservative court members always take the side of corporations when going against people like me and you? Why respect the Supreme Court when its decisions mostly are against the middle class?
- Kinnard 11y ago
  Maybe you're a 'libertarian'?
  - Frondo 11y ago
    He lamented that the government always sides with the corporations. Libertarianism doesn't fix that; libertarian policy would be far, far worse for the middle class than what we have now.
    - gortok 11y ago
      Yes, it does. Our current system is based on corporatism (labor unions are not exempt from this behavior); where those with power and connections help make the laws that keep them in power and from competition. In a libertarian society (or even in a Constitutional Republic sought out by the founders), laws are made as close to the people as possible, with the Federal government having 14 explicit powers (the power grab by interpeting the 'necessary and proper' clause broadly would not exist, and the 10th Amendment wouldn't be ignored), so you'd see Local ordinances, county ordinaces, and state laws most; and very few federal laws (again, they'd only need to cover their 14 expressly granted powers). Corporations (and labor unions, and any other 'special interest') wouldn't have to just lobby the Federal government, they'd have to lobby all 50 states, plus any localities; in short, it'd be a monumental proposition (even if we assume they were capable). Also, since the Federal Government would be necessarily weaker, there wouldn't be an incentive to try to lobby them -- no one lobbies the person that has no power. Currently, you can lobby 51-60 senators and 271 Congressmen and effectively rule the country (Remember, the ACA was written in part by the insurance industry), and in a libertarian society, there'd be no basis for that to ever happen. Also, sustained monopolies are a by-product of Government intervention (either through regulation, or explicitly by making rules against competition, much like the Railroads). In our lifetime, anyone who has 'had a monopoly' has sustained it with government help (think of Ma Bell; where utility providers are considered to have a 'natural monopoly' and as such competition is purposefully limited or non-existent). In Microsoft's case, nothing happened and their 'monopoly' was very short lived (1995-2005, Maybe?) because everyone innovated around them. There were no laws restricting who could get into the browser business, and Microsoft found themselves out-foxed. They're still trying to make up lost ground. Before saying "Libertarian policy would be far, far worse for the middle class right now", you have to ask yourself if you really understand what a Constitutional Republic actually calls for.
      - Frondo 11y ago
        I'm sorry, but what you're replying with is kind of the standard libertarian fantasy. Shrink the reach of the federal government, and we'd be looking at rule by corporations, i.e. that don't answer to us not only in practice, but by design. How we know this? Weeelll, just look back a hundred years, when we had a significantly smaller federal government. Big businesses had far, far more power than they do now. Libertarianism surely sounds good. That's part of its enduring appeal. But for real-life workings? Nah. For anyone interested, this is a pretty good place to start unraveling the usual libertarian fare: http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html
        bmelton 11y ago
        And you're replying with the standard statist fantasy. Growing the federal government to protect us from all the evils of corporations is at least as naive an ideal as the libertarian one you are railing against, and moreover, presents a false dichotomy. American government is likely more an oligarchy now than it ever has been. So long as the policies are there that give the federal government influence, that influence will be exploited. If we can accept that neither unrestrained corporate power or oligarchical control of government is good, then we should be able to accept that the solution is in some middle ground, and ideological appeals to either end of the spectrum is likely ill founded.
        Frondo 11y ago
        We might be using "fantasy" to mean different things. I'm describing the libertarian fantasy such because it doesn't reflect any history, and it doesn't work out the way it's supposed to wherever it's been tried. As best we have it, evidence simply doesn't support that libertarian policy ideas work the way they're supposed to. As for "statist fantasy," well, here we are: through a long, slow process of democratic engagement, we have agencies that protect our environment, improve road safety, keep workplace hazards minimal, and work to minimize discrimination in the workplace. None of them, of course, are perfect, but they all came about in response to something, some perceived imperfection in the world. People voted in politicians who reflected their values, and that eventually filtered into what we have now. But, you know, nothing's ever perfect, and it's always a process of refinement. The difference between my "statist fantasy" and the libertarian one is that I see that, by means of government, we're slowly getting the world we want. Giving free reign back to big business, to turn the environment and workplace back into a free-for-all, how much sense does that make?
  - pm24601 11y ago
    No.
- curun1r 11y ago
  The problem with using the liberal and conservative labels and assuming a continuum between the two is that conservative isn't a fixed ideology anymore and many people conflate what conservatism used to mean with what it currently means. Neo-conservatism changed all that. Today's conservatives don't believe in small government or reduced spending, they just want the government to be bigger and spend more in different ways than the liberals do. Note: that this isn't unique to conservatives...modern-day liberals have sold out their core constituency to an equal degree, but I focused on conservatives because I believe the conservatives that you find yourself agreeing with are the kind that don't really play a part in the Republican party anymore. They've been marginalized by Fox News and talk radio (Rush et al).
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Today's conservatives don't believe in small government or reduced spending Conservatism never meant small government and reduced spending, it has been(since both classical conservatism and classical liberalism were defined), protection of the interest of the status quo elites, typically by appeals to tradition, religion, and national identity. Modern American political conservatism includes a lot of small government rhetoric because the status quo elites it protects are outside of government, and because it has sought to harness support for libertarian ideals and work it in favor of conservative politics. But there's nothing essentially small government about conservatism, and the idea that the two are related is a fairly recent phenomenon. > Neo-conservatism changed all that. Neo-conservatism is a bit weird, in its history (largely being founded by disillusioned ex-Trotskyites, and centering on global revolution vary similar to that supported by Stalinists, but with neoliberal economic systems and the US taking the role of Communist economic systems and the USSR) and other ways, but only had a brief moment (roughly corresponding with the George W. Bush presidency) as a dominant force in the broader scope of US conservatism; religious/social conservatives supporting big government enforcing their particular social views have been a dominant force in American conservatism as long as there has been American conservatism, contrary to your idea of small government orientation as an essential feature of conservatism that has recently been lost in America due to "neo-conservatives".
    - 11y ago
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  Roberts (a conservative court member) was in dissent as was one of two of Obama's nominees (Sotomayor). Plenty of liberals oppose civil forfeiture. There was no corporations side in this lawsuit. There was no middle class people in this lawsuit. This reads as a non sequitur.
- dang 11y ago
  Comments that take a discussion onto a generic ideological tangent tend to produce low-quality threads. Comments that engage with the specific content of an article lead to better-quality threads. Since on HN we're trying to optimize for signal/noise ratio, please prefer the latter.
  - pm24601 11y ago
    I rather like the discussion that branched off my response. I got a bunch of down votes. But HN downvotes (and upvotes) behavior never have any correlation to the comment itself. My most throw away comments get a bunch of upvotes. My more thoughtful, respectful comments get downvoted. I will be willing to bet that this particular comment gets downvoted a lot just... because. So I ignore random number after my login id.
otterley 11y ago
Submitter or mods, can you please add the date to this post? This was published in Feb 2014.
- martincmartin 11y ago
  Done, thanks for pointing that out.
eevilspock 11y ago
If we want to have a reasonable discussion about this we need to first dis-conflate two things: 1. Is pre-emptive asset seizure justifiable to prevent allegedly ill-gotten gains from being hidden away prior to judgement? 2. Do such seizures unfairly prevent the accused from hiring the counsel of their choice? My thoughts on #2: If you argue that this will result in an unfair trial and increased likelihood of a false guilty verdict, then what about people who couldn't afford to hire their counsel of choice in the first place? Any argument or system where judgements are biased by wealth is fundamentally not justice. In other words, my answer to #2 is no. The ability to hire good counsel should not be dependent upon one's assets. The outcomes of trials should not be dependent upon which side has more money. Some alternative systems that would be fairer, in my opinion: A. All counsel is provided by the state and each side gets assigned counsel randomly. B. Each side contributes as much as they want to a pool of funds. Each side gets to spend half of the pool on the counsel of their choice. B is the better solution for a free market-based society.
- rnovak 11y ago
  Except that if you had read the article, only $140,000 of the defendants money was "allegedly ill-gotten", meaning the government seized ALL of their money, not just the allegedly illegal money. Your #2 is a non-starter because #1 is flawed.
  - eevilspock 11y ago
    > meaning the government seized ALL of their money, not just the allegedly illegal money. Red Herring. I made general statements, not opinions about the specific case in the article. Please judge the statements on their own. I was pretty careful in my choice of words, e.g. "to prevent allegedly ill-gotten gains". > Your #2 is a non-starter because #1 is flawed. You failed to de-conflate.
    - rnovak 11y ago
      Your original comment was a top level comment on the article, and is verbatim: > If we want to have a reasonable discussion about this The "this" in that sentence (to any reasonable human) would mean that you were talking about the subject of the article, the people that got their money seized, not "in general asset forfeiture". So no....not a red herring. If you wanted to be careful, your first statement should read: "if we want to have a discussion about asset forfeiture...".
TerryADavis 11y ago
God says... implement wagon pinochle semiweeklies Bonaparte audacity's stepdaughters kickstands paste Shelby ineptly violinist's crawlspaces bullied hefty standing swishing dark Emmy Conrad racketeered wintergreen magnifying endorsed illicitly intimate's clairvoyant elaborated ostriches table moccasins palpation's Ludwig official grilling tonnages chocolates barbell Voltaire Iowas aggravation's combatant's dacha battlement's bossiest Adelaide crabbiest cockscomb's sangfroid's trudge's Evert trillion's sanded butter's counterweights gaged lecterns Tamara's Ilyushin trappable antlered atelier's Joaquin's outfoxed Levi Dresden's Maghreb's Orlando fraction's zenith regularly offings have's providence's reheating Scruggs's Lhotse's forefinger's Okla crisped Cochran trimester's rheostat's filberts pickets Zanzibar's auctioneer honorariums tranquil nowise explosive's Hung jockeying Assyrian's blowtorches shove bodega phonologist's infirmary's conservatives
swehner 11y ago
I don't think the "Supreme Court" is held in high esteem. And it shouldn't be either. Keyword #laughingstock
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
bmelton 11y ago
I don't know if it's telling that as of this moment, all of the top-level comments to this thread are currently gray (except for otterly's assertion that it should be dated). I think it's worth noting that civil asset forfeiture, while controversial, isn't necessarily evil in itself, if done with a high bar to seizure. I think it's fair to say that someone who makes a fortune using illegal means should have to surrender that fortune. Where asset forfeiture falls down on this is that FAR too often, no illegal acts are proven before forfeiture is initiated, and substantive due process should need to be the hurdle before that happens. This will of course lead to the unfortunate likelihood that "bad people" will use some of those fortunes in their legal defenses, but if "innocent until proven guilty" is to be our standard, and it's a mighty good one IMHO, then so be it. The alternative is much worse (again, IMHO), which is that those without fortunes, and hence, without the means of adequate legal representation, are simply unable to defend themselves at all except through court-appointed lawyers of potentially questionable effectiveness. The trick, of course, is that the state has a hurdle before stealing goods, and they have no incentive to impose such hurdles upon themselves. I don't know what the fix for that is, short of being really loud and riotous, but someone else's off-the-cuff remark the other day struck a chord to me (though not without its own potential pitfalls) -- limit attorneys general and other positions of that sort to only defense and criminal attorneys with a history of having defended the rights of citizens. If we accept that the job (or at least a job) of the government is to defend the rights of the citizenry, then such an exclusion makes a certain amount of sense. As it stands, the state, and its agents, have a disproportionally stacked playing field.
- wfo 11y ago
  I don't think it would be unreasonable to require that every prosecutor have worked for 2+ years as a public defender. Helps with the shortage of public defenders as well.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > I don't think it would be unreasonable to require that every prosecutor have worked for 2+ years as a public defender. There may be a serious problem with quality of representation if a substantial portion of the people working as public defenders are doing it to meet a checkbox on the way to their planned career as public prosecutors.
Quanticles 11y ago
In articles about "innocent until proven guilty" it is popular to say that it is better to let 100 guilty go free than one innocent be erroneously convicted. Yet, many are willing to seize assets before that person is proven guilty in case they try to hide the assets or spend them when the assets are possibly not theirs. I would rather let 100 criminals hide ill-gotten gains than let one innocent person have their assets seized before they can mount a proper defense. Prosecutors: Freedom means that your job is harder, but fairness and the rule of law is part of what makes this a great country to live in. We will appreciate your sacrifice if/when this issue is ever remedied
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >it is popular to say that it is better to let 100 guilty go free than one innocent be erroneously convicted It is popular to say, but so often I think people don't actually believe it once they are taken to task on it. For example, given evidence that there is a 98% chance someone significantly harmed a child, most people would vote guilty, even though this equates to jailing 2 innocent people to make sure that 98 guilty do get punished.
btilly 11y ago
How on Earth is this possible? If you read https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forfeiture https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forfeiture closely, you'll find an explanation. Although the conviction requires the government to prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt," the forfeiture is subject to a lower burden--preponderance of the evidence. This case demonstrates the real-life consequence of this difference in standards. In this case the government could not establish "beyond a reasonable doubt" but the accused could not demonstrate "preponderance of the evidence" for innocence either. So the accused don't go to jail but still lose their house. And here we get to the real problem with how civil forfeiture is actually used today. How do you establish a "preponderance of the evidence" when no specific crime was ever alleged? It is effectively impossible! The TSA can always allege "a smell of marijuana" and claim probable cause for the seizure. They have a direct financial incentive to do so, and you have no way afterwards to prove that they were lying.

67 points by martincmartin 11y ago

This is why I don't respect the Supreme Court. This is why I don't think Obama is a great president. This is why as a liberal I agree much more than I want to with the conservatives who argue about big government. Why does the conservative court members always take the side of government when going against people like me and you? Why does the conservative court members always take the side of corporations when going against people like me and you? Why respect the Supreme Court when its decisions mostly are against the middle class?

Kinnard 11y ago
Maybe you're a 'libertarian'?
- Frondo 11y ago
  He lamented that the government always sides with the corporations. Libertarianism doesn't fix that; libertarian policy would be far, far worse for the middle class than what we have now.
  - gortok 11y ago
    Yes, it does. Our current system is based on corporatism (labor unions are not exempt from this behavior); where those with power and connections help make the laws that keep them in power and from competition. In a libertarian society (or even in a Constitutional Republic sought out by the founders), laws are made as close to the people as possible, with the Federal government having 14 explicit powers (the power grab by interpeting the 'necessary and proper' clause broadly would not exist, and the 10th Amendment wouldn't be ignored), so you'd see Local ordinances, county ordinaces, and state laws most; and very few federal laws (again, they'd only need to cover their 14 expressly granted powers). Corporations (and labor unions, and any other 'special interest') wouldn't have to just lobby the Federal government, they'd have to lobby all 50 states, plus any localities; in short, it'd be a monumental proposition (even if we assume they were capable). Also, since the Federal Government would be necessarily weaker, there wouldn't be an incentive to try to lobby them -- no one lobbies the person that has no power. Currently, you can lobby 51-60 senators and 271 Congressmen and effectively rule the country (Remember, the ACA was written in part by the insurance industry), and in a libertarian society, there'd be no basis for that to ever happen. Also, sustained monopolies are a by-product of Government intervention (either through regulation, or explicitly by making rules against competition, much like the Railroads). In our lifetime, anyone who has 'had a monopoly' has sustained it with government help (think of Ma Bell; where utility providers are considered to have a 'natural monopoly' and as such competition is purposefully limited or non-existent). In Microsoft's case, nothing happened and their 'monopoly' was very short lived (1995-2005, Maybe?) because everyone innovated around them. There were no laws restricting who could get into the browser business, and Microsoft found themselves out-foxed. They're still trying to make up lost ground. Before saying "Libertarian policy would be far, far worse for the middle class right now", you have to ask yourself if you really understand what a Constitutional Republic actually calls for.
    - Frondo 11y ago
      I'm sorry, but what you're replying with is kind of the standard libertarian fantasy. Shrink the reach of the federal government, and we'd be looking at rule by corporations, i.e. that don't answer to us not only in practice, but by design. How we know this? Weeelll, just look back a hundred years, when we had a significantly smaller federal government. Big businesses had far, far more power than they do now. Libertarianism surely sounds good. That's part of its enduring appeal. But for real-life workings? Nah. For anyone interested, this is a pretty good place to start unraveling the usual libertarian fare: http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html
      - bmelton 11y ago
        And you're replying with the standard statist fantasy. Growing the federal government to protect us from all the evils of corporations is at least as naive an ideal as the libertarian one you are railing against, and moreover, presents a false dichotomy. American government is likely more an oligarchy now than it ever has been. So long as the policies are there that give the federal government influence, that influence will be exploited. If we can accept that neither unrestrained corporate power or oligarchical control of government is good, then we should be able to accept that the solution is in some middle ground, and ideological appeals to either end of the spectrum is likely ill founded.
        Frondo 11y ago
        We might be using "fantasy" to mean different things. I'm describing the libertarian fantasy such because it doesn't reflect any history, and it doesn't work out the way it's supposed to wherever it's been tried. As best we have it, evidence simply doesn't support that libertarian policy ideas work the way they're supposed to. As for "statist fantasy," well, here we are: through a long, slow process of democratic engagement, we have agencies that protect our environment, improve road safety, keep workplace hazards minimal, and work to minimize discrimination in the workplace. None of them, of course, are perfect, but they all came about in response to something, some perceived imperfection in the world. People voted in politicians who reflected their values, and that eventually filtered into what we have now. But, you know, nothing's ever perfect, and it's always a process of refinement. The difference between my "statist fantasy" and the libertarian one is that I see that, by means of government, we're slowly getting the world we want. Giving free reign back to big business, to turn the environment and workplace back into a free-for-all, how much sense does that make?
- pm24601 11y ago
  No.
curun1r 11y ago
The problem with using the liberal and conservative labels and assuming a continuum between the two is that conservative isn't a fixed ideology anymore and many people conflate what conservatism used to mean with what it currently means. Neo-conservatism changed all that. Today's conservatives don't believe in small government or reduced spending, they just want the government to be bigger and spend more in different ways than the liberals do. Note: that this isn't unique to conservatives...modern-day liberals have sold out their core constituency to an equal degree, but I focused on conservatives because I believe the conservatives that you find yourself agreeing with are the kind that don't really play a part in the Republican party anymore. They've been marginalized by Fox News and talk radio (Rush et al).
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Today's conservatives don't believe in small government or reduced spending Conservatism never meant small government and reduced spending, it has been(since both classical conservatism and classical liberalism were defined), protection of the interest of the status quo elites, typically by appeals to tradition, religion, and national identity. Modern American political conservatism includes a lot of small government rhetoric because the status quo elites it protects are outside of government, and because it has sought to harness support for libertarian ideals and work it in favor of conservative politics. But there's nothing essentially small government about conservatism, and the idea that the two are related is a fairly recent phenomenon. > Neo-conservatism changed all that. Neo-conservatism is a bit weird, in its history (largely being founded by disillusioned ex-Trotskyites, and centering on global revolution vary similar to that supported by Stalinists, but with neoliberal economic systems and the US taking the role of Communist economic systems and the USSR) and other ways, but only had a brief moment (roughly corresponding with the George W. Bush presidency) as a dominant force in the broader scope of US conservatism; religious/social conservatives supporting big government enforcing their particular social views have been a dominant force in American conservatism as long as there has been American conservatism, contrary to your idea of small government orientation as an essential feature of conservatism that has recently been lost in America due to "neo-conservatives".
  - 11y ago
bradleyjg 11y ago
Roberts (a conservative court member) was in dissent as was one of two of Obama's nominees (Sotomayor). Plenty of liberals oppose civil forfeiture. There was no corporations side in this lawsuit. There was no middle class people in this lawsuit. This reads as a non sequitur.
dang 11y ago
Comments that take a discussion onto a generic ideological tangent tend to produce low-quality threads. Comments that engage with the specific content of an article lead to better-quality threads. Since on HN we're trying to optimize for signal/noise ratio, please prefer the latter.
- pm24601 11y ago
  I rather like the discussion that branched off my response. I got a bunch of down votes. But HN downvotes (and upvotes) behavior never have any correlation to the comment itself. My most throw away comments get a bunch of upvotes. My more thoughtful, respectful comments get downvoted. I will be willing to bet that this particular comment gets downvoted a lot just... because. So I ignore random number after my login id.

otterley 11y ago

Submitter or mods, can you please add the date to this post? This was published in Feb 2014.

martincmartin 11y ago
Done, thanks for pointing that out.

eevilspock 11y ago

If we want to have a reasonable discussion about this we need to first dis-conflate two things: 1. Is pre-emptive asset seizure justifiable to prevent allegedly ill-gotten gains from being hidden away prior to judgement? 2. Do such seizures unfairly prevent the accused from hiring the counsel of their choice? My thoughts on #2: If you argue that this will result in an unfair trial and increased likelihood of a false guilty verdict, then what about people who couldn't afford to hire their counsel of choice in the first place? Any argument or system where judgements are biased by wealth is fundamentally not justice. In other words, my answer to #2 is no. The ability to hire good counsel should not be dependent upon one's assets. The outcomes of trials should not be dependent upon which side has more money. Some alternative systems that would be fairer, in my opinion: A. All counsel is provided by the state and each side gets assigned counsel randomly. B. Each side contributes as much as they want to a pool of funds. Each side gets to spend half of the pool on the counsel of their choice. B is the better solution for a free market-based society.

rnovak 11y ago
Except that if you had read the article, only $140,000 of the defendants money was "allegedly ill-gotten", meaning the government seized ALL of their money, not just the allegedly illegal money. Your #2 is a non-starter because #1 is flawed.
- eevilspock 11y ago
  > meaning the government seized ALL of their money, not just the allegedly illegal money. Red Herring. I made general statements, not opinions about the specific case in the article. Please judge the statements on their own. I was pretty careful in my choice of words, e.g. "to prevent allegedly ill-gotten gains". > Your #2 is a non-starter because #1 is flawed. You failed to de-conflate.
  - rnovak 11y ago
    Your original comment was a top level comment on the article, and is verbatim: > If we want to have a reasonable discussion about this The "this" in that sentence (to any reasonable human) would mean that you were talking about the subject of the article, the people that got their money seized, not "in general asset forfeiture". So no....not a red herring. If you wanted to be careful, your first statement should read: "if we want to have a discussion about asset forfeiture...".

TerryADavis 11y ago

God says... implement wagon pinochle semiweeklies Bonaparte audacity's stepdaughters kickstands paste Shelby ineptly violinist's crawlspaces bullied hefty standing swishing dark Emmy Conrad racketeered wintergreen magnifying endorsed illicitly intimate's clairvoyant elaborated ostriches table moccasins palpation's Ludwig official grilling tonnages chocolates barbell Voltaire Iowas aggravation's combatant's dacha battlement's bossiest Adelaide crabbiest cockscomb's sangfroid's trudge's Evert trillion's sanded butter's counterweights gaged lecterns Tamara's Ilyushin trappable antlered atelier's Joaquin's outfoxed Levi Dresden's Maghreb's Orlando fraction's zenith regularly offings have's providence's reheating Scruggs's Lhotse's forefinger's Okla crisped Cochran trimester's rheostat's filberts pickets Zanzibar's auctioneer honorariums tranquil nowise explosive's Hung jockeying Assyrian's blowtorches shove bodega phonologist's infirmary's conservatives

swehner 11y ago

I don't think the "Supreme Court" is held in high esteem. And it shouldn't be either. Keyword #laughingstock

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

bmelton 11y ago

I don't know if it's telling that as of this moment, all of the top-level comments to this thread are currently gray (except for otterly's assertion that it should be dated). I think it's worth noting that civil asset forfeiture, while controversial, isn't necessarily evil in itself, if done with a high bar to seizure. I think it's fair to say that someone who makes a fortune using illegal means should have to surrender that fortune. Where asset forfeiture falls down on this is that FAR too often, no illegal acts are proven before forfeiture is initiated, and substantive due process should need to be the hurdle before that happens. This will of course lead to the unfortunate likelihood that "bad people" will use some of those fortunes in their legal defenses, but if "innocent until proven guilty" is to be our standard, and it's a mighty good one IMHO, then so be it. The alternative is much worse (again, IMHO), which is that those without fortunes, and hence, without the means of adequate legal representation, are simply unable to defend themselves at all except through court-appointed lawyers of potentially questionable effectiveness. The trick, of course, is that the state has a hurdle before stealing goods, and they have no incentive to impose such hurdles upon themselves. I don't know what the fix for that is, short of being really loud and riotous, but someone else's off-the-cuff remark the other day struck a chord to me (though not without its own potential pitfalls) -- limit attorneys general and other positions of that sort to only defense and criminal attorneys with a history of having defended the rights of citizens. If we accept that the job (or at least a job) of the government is to defend the rights of the citizenry, then such an exclusion makes a certain amount of sense. As it stands, the state, and its agents, have a disproportionally stacked playing field.

wfo 11y ago
I don't think it would be unreasonable to require that every prosecutor have worked for 2+ years as a public defender. Helps with the shortage of public defenders as well.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > I don't think it would be unreasonable to require that every prosecutor have worked for 2+ years as a public defender. There may be a serious problem with quality of representation if a substantial portion of the people working as public defenders are doing it to meet a checkbox on the way to their planned career as public prosecutors.

Quanticles 11y ago

In articles about "innocent until proven guilty" it is popular to say that it is better to let 100 guilty go free than one innocent be erroneously convicted. Yet, many are willing to seize assets before that person is proven guilty in case they try to hide the assets or spend them when the assets are possibly not theirs. I would rather let 100 criminals hide ill-gotten gains than let one innocent person have their assets seized before they can mount a proper defense. Prosecutors: Freedom means that your job is harder, but fairness and the rule of law is part of what makes this a great country to live in. We will appreciate your sacrifice if/when this issue is ever remedied

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>it is popular to say that it is better to let 100 guilty go free than one innocent be erroneously convicted It is popular to say, but so often I think people don't actually believe it once they are taken to task on it. For example, given evidence that there is a 98% chance someone significantly harmed a child, most people would vote guilty, even though this equates to jailing 2 innocent people to make sure that 98 guilty do get punished.

btilly 11y ago

How on Earth is this possible? If you read https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forfeiture https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forfeiture closely, you'll find an explanation. Although the conviction requires the government to prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt," the forfeiture is subject to a lower burden--preponderance of the evidence. This case demonstrates the real-life consequence of this difference in standards. In this case the government could not establish "beyond a reasonable doubt" but the accused could not demonstrate "preponderance of the evidence" for innocence either. So the accused don't go to jail but still lose their house. And here we get to the real problem with how civil forfeiture is actually used today. How do you establish a "preponderance of the evidence" when no specific crime was ever alleged? It is effectively impossible! The TSA can always allege "a smell of marijuana" and claim probable cause for the seizure. They have a direct financial incentive to do so, and you have no way afterwards to prove that they were lying.