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I don't see how though - this ruling is explicitly about a conviction which has been overturned. If there's never a conviction related to the forfeiture in the

I don't see how though - this ruling is explicitly about a conviction which has been overturned. If there's never a conviction related to the forfeiture in the first place, what bearing would it have? Makes me wonder, could this ruling create a perverse situation where someone is arrested with a large sum of money, but the criminal case against the individual is flimsy, so the prosecution might be tempted to drop charges to ensure that the forfeiture can be kept rather than risk losing it if a conviction is overturned?

CalChris 9y ago
It is about a conviction which has been overturned but the parallel is there. Civil forfeiture is when officers take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime. not guilty != convicted suspected != convicted If the bar is convicted (and it should be) then the argument will be the same.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Civil forfeiture is when officers take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime. Generally, not, as a matter of law. Civil forfeiture is usually premised on the item being gained through or used in illegal (though not necessarily criminal) activity, not necessarily by the owner (innocent parties with an interest in the property have some rights in forfeiture proceedings, separate from the right to assert that the basic premise of the forfeiture is false.) This often overlaps with the owner of the property being suspected of a crime, but being owned by someone who committed a crime is not generally the essence of the legal premise. That's quite distinct from what happened here, where the actual conviction is the legal premise, and thus the conviction being overturned voids the legal premise.
  - CalChris 9y ago
    I know that these are different but the argument should be the same. The legal standard of conviction is not being met. In civil forfeiture, that standard is not being met a priori. In this case where the defendants are ultimately acquitted, that standard is not being met a posteriori. But the argument (IMO) is the same, the legal standard is not being met.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > The legal standard of conviction is not being met. But it's clear, even outside of forfeiture, that that isn't a requirement for losing property to the state for wrongful conduct; civil process (with the government having a cause of action) does exist even outside of forfeiture, even for conduct which also has criminal punishment. There has never been a principal accepted in this country that all government legal remedies against individuals require criminal conviction, which is what you seem to be asserting ad the principal with forfeiture. It's clear that certain types of penalties require criminal conviction, and it's clear (now at least, though that should have been obvious before) that penalties expressly premised on criminal conviction require criminal conviction. But forfeiture doesn't really fall into either of those categories.
      - kreneskyp 9y ago
        Can you expand on why civil forfeiture based on suspected criminality shouldn't require criminal conviction? Forcibily taking money from someone for a civil reason (e.g. child support) is obviously different from taking money because you suspect a criminal offense.
  - joshuak 9y ago
    That's reasonable in this case, but I agree with CalChris that the more general case must also fallow. The conviction of a human being must be the bar. At some point in time someone arguing for the state was able to successfully introduce property as a "defendant" of a legal action, and average people go along with that. This is, on the face of it, absurd. All of law exists only to a single purpose, the regulation of actions between humans, not trees, not dogs, not bits of paper with numbers printed on them, human beings. Even someone's example of confiscating counterfeit money is not an action against the wrong doing of the money. It's an action against a human being who believed they were in possession of the money. They are the ones who suffer harm. It is only reasonable for the state to confiscate the "money" from the subject, in this case because it is not money, and as such the harm to the subject was done not by the state's action of confiscation, but by the counterfeiter's action of tricking the subject into accepting it. It follows that it is not reasonable for the state to replace the fake money with real money because that would cause harm to a third party (the state). However, the subject would have a reasonable clam of restitution against the counterfeiter should they be convicted, and the state should support that claim. Labeling an action as forfeiture, as in the case of civil forfeiture, implies a default due to some failure to perform, but that should be proven to the same degree as any question of law. The property does not act, or fail to act, only people can do that. Therefore the state must be obligated to prove that it has reasonable clam to the property, and that the party injured by confiscation are themselves guilty to the degree that such injury is warranted. AND as is the typical structure of law the state suffers the burden of proof to offset the potential for abuse of power.
deleted 9y ago
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Pxtl 9y ago
But if we're assuming the accused is guilty of some crime with which the booty can be charged, can't you also assume that a man who has been declared not-guilty is guilty of some tangentially-related crime that still allows the civil asset forfeiture? IE "John Smith is found not guilty of trafficking for the drugs we thought he had on him, but he still could have got the $5000 from some other incidence of trafficking we failed to discover and therefore we're still charging his assets with trafficking".
- MaxfordAndSons 9y ago
  Not entirely sure I understand what you're saying, but I don't believe that's the how it works. Civil forfeiture is currently allowed because the property is "charged" with a "crime", and because it's not a person it doesn't have the same protections as people (i.e. innocent until proven guilty). So the "innocence" of the property can't be proven, and thus it is forfeited. So rather than "He still could have gotten the $5000 from a crime", they're saying "The $5000 could still have been transacted in a crime", and the guilt or innocence of the person it was taken from is considered irrelevant.
  - derefr 9y ago
    One interesting contrast for this is in the legal requirements for dealing with counterfeit currency once it's discovered. That really does seem like a case where the person holding the money did nothing wrong, but the money must still be forfeited because the money itself is "doing something wrong" by being counterfeit.

CalChris 9y ago

It is about a conviction which has been overturned but the parallel is there. Civil forfeiture is when officers take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime. not guilty != convicted suspected != convicted If the bar is convicted (and it should be) then the argument will be the same.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Civil forfeiture is when officers take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime. Generally, not, as a matter of law. Civil forfeiture is usually premised on the item being gained through or used in illegal (though not necessarily criminal) activity, not necessarily by the owner (innocent parties with an interest in the property have some rights in forfeiture proceedings, separate from the right to assert that the basic premise of the forfeiture is false.) This often overlaps with the owner of the property being suspected of a crime, but being owned by someone who committed a crime is not generally the essence of the legal premise. That's quite distinct from what happened here, where the actual conviction is the legal premise, and thus the conviction being overturned voids the legal premise.
- CalChris 9y ago
  I know that these are different but the argument should be the same. The legal standard of conviction is not being met. In civil forfeiture, that standard is not being met a priori. In this case where the defendants are ultimately acquitted, that standard is not being met a posteriori. But the argument (IMO) is the same, the legal standard is not being met.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > The legal standard of conviction is not being met. But it's clear, even outside of forfeiture, that that isn't a requirement for losing property to the state for wrongful conduct; civil process (with the government having a cause of action) does exist even outside of forfeiture, even for conduct which also has criminal punishment. There has never been a principal accepted in this country that all government legal remedies against individuals require criminal conviction, which is what you seem to be asserting ad the principal with forfeiture. It's clear that certain types of penalties require criminal conviction, and it's clear (now at least, though that should have been obvious before) that penalties expressly premised on criminal conviction require criminal conviction. But forfeiture doesn't really fall into either of those categories.
    - kreneskyp 9y ago
      Can you expand on why civil forfeiture based on suspected criminality shouldn't require criminal conviction? Forcibily taking money from someone for a civil reason (e.g. child support) is obviously different from taking money because you suspect a criminal offense.
- joshuak 9y ago
  That's reasonable in this case, but I agree with CalChris that the more general case must also fallow. The conviction of a human being must be the bar. At some point in time someone arguing for the state was able to successfully introduce property as a "defendant" of a legal action, and average people go along with that. This is, on the face of it, absurd. All of law exists only to a single purpose, the regulation of actions between humans, not trees, not dogs, not bits of paper with numbers printed on them, human beings. Even someone's example of confiscating counterfeit money is not an action against the wrong doing of the money. It's an action against a human being who believed they were in possession of the money. They are the ones who suffer harm. It is only reasonable for the state to confiscate the "money" from the subject, in this case because it is not money, and as such the harm to the subject was done not by the state's action of confiscation, but by the counterfeiter's action of tricking the subject into accepting it. It follows that it is not reasonable for the state to replace the fake money with real money because that would cause harm to a third party (the state). However, the subject would have a reasonable clam of restitution against the counterfeiter should they be convicted, and the state should support that claim. Labeling an action as forfeiture, as in the case of civil forfeiture, implies a default due to some failure to perform, but that should be proven to the same degree as any question of law. The property does not act, or fail to act, only people can do that. Therefore the state must be obligated to prove that it has reasonable clam to the property, and that the party injured by confiscation are themselves guilty to the degree that such injury is warranted. AND as is the typical structure of law the state suffers the burden of proof to offset the potential for abuse of power.

deleted 9y ago

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Pxtl 9y ago

But if we're assuming the accused is guilty of some crime with which the booty can be charged, can't you also assume that a man who has been declared not-guilty is guilty of some tangentially-related crime that still allows the civil asset forfeiture? IE "John Smith is found not guilty of trafficking for the drugs we thought he had on him, but he still could have got the $5000 from some other incidence of trafficking we failed to discover and therefore we're still charging his assets with trafficking".

MaxfordAndSons 9y ago
Not entirely sure I understand what you're saying, but I don't believe that's the how it works. Civil forfeiture is currently allowed because the property is "charged" with a "crime", and because it's not a person it doesn't have the same protections as people (i.e. innocent until proven guilty). So the "innocence" of the property can't be proven, and thus it is forfeited. So rather than "He still could have gotten the $5000 from a crime", they're saying "The $5000 could still have been transacted in a crime", and the guilt or innocence of the person it was taken from is considered irrelevant.
- derefr 9y ago
  One interesting contrast for this is in the legal requirements for dealing with counterfeit currency once it's discovered. That really does seem like a case where the person holding the money did nothing wrong, but the money must still be forfeited because the money itself is "doing something wrong" by being counterfeit.