3 ms·
Not necessarily. They may have no knowledge of the smuggled cargo on their vessel. Without knowledge or intent it's hard to argue they are guilty of smuggling
by jdsully 7y ago
Not necessarily. They may have no knowledge of the smuggled cargo on their vessel. Without knowledge or intent it's hard to argue they are guilty of smuggling by mere ownership.
- rtkwe 7y agoBut someone is breaking the law and could be charged with the crime, in this case the people operating the ship. The ship question is also more complicated than 99% of the asset forfeiture cases because it involves owners and operators where sooo many of these cases just involve the cops confiscating cash because they decide it's large enough to try to steal under the pretext of it being maybe connected to a crime. [0] The case of cash in particular is galling because if it's connected to a crime then the owner must also be connected to that crime so charge them with something and don't go through this weird sideways process where the owner suddenly has to prove the negative case that their property isn't connected to a crime. [0] Because that's the heart of what's happening, it used to be that CAF didn't happen that much because only the Feds can really do it and none of the money got kicked back to local departments. Years back that got changed and suddenly local cops were much more interested in confiscating and filing these kinds of cases.