9 ms·

Civil asset forfeiture laws are just begging to be abused. While I understand the original intent, there needs to be greater consequences to those abusing it.

Civil asset forfeiture laws are just begging to be abused. While I understand the original intent, there needs to be greater consequences to those abusing it. edit I'm not sure of the best way to improve or change this, so would love to hear from others on the best way to make that change possible.

willcipriano 4y ago
It's a good thought exercise for the "trust the experts" crowd. Reading the text of the constitution, a document designed to be understood by the people it would apply to, makes this a clear and obvious violation yet our appointed legal experts apparently don't see anything wrong.
- thaway2839 4y ago
  The constitution is contradictory. It isn't a perfect document written on a stone tablet by god. And legal systems of any nation are more than just the constitution. So the idea that you can just read one clause in the constitution and therefore clearly know what is allowed and isn't (also, even the interpretation of that clause is not as easy as you are portraying here) is absolutely false.
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    > And legal systems of any nation are more than just the constitution. In any case when a legal system clashes with the wording of the constitution it is that legal system that is wrong. That's what "highest law in the land" means. That is the entire purpose of having a constitution. Experts love to hide behind "it's complicated!" but in this case they have nowhere to hide.
    - eightysixfour 4y ago
      What part of the constitution do you think it clashes with?
      - willcipriano 4y ago
        > 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. Pull over a guy, take the paper cash out of his wallet without charging him with a crime. No amount of wordplay can make that constitutional in a reasonable persons mind.
        pc86 4y ago
        I do think CAF as it's currently implemented is unconstitutional, but this clause doesn't make CAF as an idea unconstitutional. The entire point (originally) was to secure assets that you have probable cause to believe are funding or proceeds from crime. So you find someone with a trash bag full of pills and $300k in cash in their trunk after a legal search, you need a process to handle that money.
        willcipriano 4y ago
        That process has existed since before America has, find probable cause someone is committing a crime, detain the suspect (you can get a warrant first but this is more common), get a warrant (can be done over the phone in a couple of minutes), put the cash away somewhere safe until the trial is over. If they are guilty of that crime and that cash was involved, great! If not you have to return it. What we are talking about here is just taking the cash, sending you on your way and spending it, sidestepping your legal rights like access to a court provided attorney or a jury trial. It probably doesn't do much to prevent crime even, the fentanyl runners would much prefer you just take the cash they have on them and let them go.
        s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Take it as evidence until the owner goes to trial. If there is no speedy trial, return it to the owner.
        chrismcb 4y ago
  - pc86 4y ago
    In what context can a law disagree with the Constitution and still be legitimate?
    - rtkwe 4y ago
      When interpretations of the meaning of the Constitution differ the one last held by the Supreme Court has the (current) final say. The constitution is by necessity an interpretive document because we don't have a Constitutional Oracle to perfectly map concepts and words for centuries back onto the technological landscape of today. "Shall not be infringed" is a super common refrain among the 2A crowd but taken hyper literally you couldn't take guns away from criminals actively in prison. I think civil forfeiture is far outside the bounds of what could be condoned under the Bill of Rights but my interpretation only matters at a distance of influencing representatives to pass laws or the SC to rule differently.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Libel law disagrees with the Constitution by a literal reading. So does banning human sacrifice in religious services. We still treat them as legitimate.
      - kolanos 4y ago
        Libel is a civil matter. The government can't charge you with libel.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        The government provides a judge and courtroom, decides the result, and enforces the judgement. If you prefer a criminal matter, swap it out for fraud.
    - chrismcb 4y ago
      Until it gets overturned. The problem is they don't let things go to trial to get it overturned
  - sebzim4500 4y ago
    >The constitution is contradictory. Could you give an example of this?
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      The same document talks about the "Blessings of Liberty" while establishing slaves as 3/5 of a person for Congressional representation? It's a little hard to reconcile slavery with, say, the Fifth Amendment's prohibition on being "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".
      - willcipriano 4y ago
        > slaves as 3/5 of a person for Congressional representation You would've granted slave owners more votes? You feel they were under represented? If I lived in a state alone with a enough slaves I should have been able to dictate policy for the entire nation?
        cto_of_antifa 4y ago
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        > You would've granted slave owners more votes? I would have not had slaves.
        throwaway0a5e 4y ago
        That's really rich coming from a proponent of federal authority/power. The alternative here was the articles of confederation or nothing and the states go their own ways as countries, not some fantasy in which the southern states torpedoed their own economies out of some love of the nation. The constitution and the included 3/5ths compromise most certainly brought about the end of slavery much faster than taking a hard line circa 1790, or anything else that tipped the scales away from the united states forming a national identity would have.
Raed667 4y ago
A great video on the subject: Civil Forfeiture: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks
tux1968 4y ago
It just shouldn't exist. A judge can impose such penalties upon conviction, but there shouldn't be a way for police to seize assets like this themselves.
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  Civil asset forfeiture makes a little bit of sense where it was first used: dealing with the cargo of smuggler's ships. It was almost impossible to prosecute a ship owner who lived across the ocean in Europe, so simply seizing a ship and its smuggled goods was a viable alternative. Unfortunately it's expanded to all sorts of ridiculous and blatantly unconstitutional seizures in the last few decades.
  - gwd 4y ago
    > It was almost impossible to prosecute a ship owner who lived across the ocean in Europe, so simply seizing a ship and its smuggled goods was a viable alternative. Such seizures should have the same procedural limitations as arrest of an individual does. Individual procedural limitations: - Police can arrest you and throw you in jail if they have reason to suspect you committed a crime. - Within a certain number of days of being thrown in jail, they have to either produce concrete charges against you, or let you go - While the trial is going on, you can apply for bail to get your freedom. - You can't finally be thrown in prison until you've been convicted by a jury of peers. You could apply parallel standards in this situation: - Police / coast guard could seize a ship if they have reason to believe it's smuggled goods - Within a certain number of days, they have to either produce concrete charges against the owner, or let them have your stuff back. - While the trial is going on, the owner should be able to apply for "bail" to get their stuff back. A judge can determine if it's worth the risk or not, just as they do for prison cases - The stuff can't be finally taken away until the owner has been convicted by a jury of peers. Adding in something like, "All seized goods are distributed to the poor" or something rather than "All seized goods go to the department which seized them" would go a long way towards ending this sort of abuse.
    - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
leephillips 4y ago
The only legal way to stop abuse of authority is if those with a higher level of authority put the abusers in handcuffs. So in this case the state prosecutors need to go after the town officials. If the abuse is at the state level then the FBI needs to come in and start arresting people. Otherwise, why would they stop?
- code_duck 4y ago
  Local authorities work with Feds to do this, however. Civil asset forfeiture has been banned in various localities, but is still legal federally - so non-federal police arrange to have a Federal officer (DEA etc) on hand to take care of that part, and then a certain percentage is kept by the federal government and the rest given to the local authorities. So first it would need to be banned federally.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
belltaco 4y ago
The immediate first thing that should be done is that police departments should have no way of benefiting from the seized cash or assets because it creates a perverse incentive across the board for everyone in the police department to overlook transgressions. It should be held by the county/state and the interest accrued till a judge decides. If it's forfeited, it should go into the county or state public benefits program that only benefits the poorest of the poor, seniors and homeless people.
- lrem 4y ago
  The obvious thing to happen next cycle from instituting such rules: the benefits program's dedicated budget gets adjusted down by the expected value of forfeitures.
  - MarkSweep 4y ago
    Maybe instead any money collected civil asset forfeiture should be required to be sent to the Federal Reserve where it is destroyed. That should prevent any of these sorts of perverse incentives.
    - account42 4y ago
      For money that could work. For other assets (e.g. art, anything that has an environmental cost to create it) society may benefit from them being preserved. I guess you could still auction them off and burn the money.
      - lrem 4y ago
        And that's how you get auctions where all the bidders are personal friends of the judical officer.
- namelessoracle 4y ago
  There is actually proof that this works. Using Felony Probation and Parole in a particular state as an example, at one point it went to the department that ran Probation/Parole. So the Probation/Parole Officers were encouraged to aggressively pursue getting the fees for probation/parole. Then it was changed to go to the states general fund (so the department stopped getting it effectively). MAGICALLY the officers only got encouraged to care about restitution payments and started being very blaise about failure to pay fines and fees.
_uy6i 4y ago
Seems a simple way would be that people who have assets seized should get the greater of a) $20k OR b) 3x the value of items seized AND c) attorneys fees At least this allows 1) people to litigate smaller seizures 2) creates disincentives for the more abusive cases
- engineer_22 4y ago
  I appreciate that you're offering a solution. I think the proposal would put the burden on tax-payers.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    As it should be if the public wants the assets sized. Someone should have to pay for the collateral policy damage. It seems that the burden should to those who voted for the policy opposed the innocent victims.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
jackcviers3 4y ago
How do you understand the original intent? > Civil forfeiture allows police to seize — and then keep or sell — any property they allege is involved in a crime. Owners need not ever be arrested or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be taken away permanently by the government. --[1] They don't need to prove or even charge you to take property from you. It's robbery. The law needs to require a warrant issued by a judge to sieze the property. The property siezed needs to be stored as evidence, kept separate from other budget items in law enforcement organizations so that it cannot be used to cover expenditures (through auction or otherwise), be under the same sort of provisions as indefinitely holding individuals without charges, be returned in total when charges are not brought to trial or when a trial results in an acquittal, and the material should be subject to destruction after a guilty verdict and appeals are exhausted. Basically, the siezing organization shouldn't be able to use the material proceeds as part of the organizations' operating budgets at any time unless the material is voluntarily submitted by the convicted parties in lieu of levied fines after a conviction. It is evidence, not a funding source. I'm not saying that the government should not be able to take illegitimately gained property from convicted criminals; but that the incentive to do so for material gains by the government without conviction is rife with the potential for abuse as things currently stand. [1] https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-police/asset-forfeiture-abuse#:~:text=Civil%20forfeiture%20allows%20police%20to,away%20permanently%20by%20the%20government https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-po....
QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
Local governments simply cannot be trusted to dole out any punishment that they benefit from financially. We need to fund our courts from taxes, and require punitive fines to be payed by destroying the money instead of by the prosecutor pocketing it.
chrismcb 4y ago
The original intent was to stop drug dealers without having enough to convict. It is difficult for dealers to deal if they lose their car or boat or money. And apparently it is "obvious"the items came from ill gotten gains.

willcipriano 4y ago

It's a good thought exercise for the "trust the experts" crowd. Reading the text of the constitution, a document designed to be understood by the people it would apply to, makes this a clear and obvious violation yet our appointed legal experts apparently don't see anything wrong.

thaway2839 4y ago
The constitution is contradictory. It isn't a perfect document written on a stone tablet by god. And legal systems of any nation are more than just the constitution. So the idea that you can just read one clause in the constitution and therefore clearly know what is allowed and isn't (also, even the interpretation of that clause is not as easy as you are portraying here) is absolutely false.
- willcipriano 4y ago
  > And legal systems of any nation are more than just the constitution. In any case when a legal system clashes with the wording of the constitution it is that legal system that is wrong. That's what "highest law in the land" means. That is the entire purpose of having a constitution. Experts love to hide behind "it's complicated!" but in this case they have nowhere to hide.
  - eightysixfour 4y ago
    What part of the constitution do you think it clashes with?
    - willcipriano 4y ago
      > 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. Pull over a guy, take the paper cash out of his wallet without charging him with a crime. No amount of wordplay can make that constitutional in a reasonable persons mind.
      - pc86 4y ago
        I do think CAF as it's currently implemented is unconstitutional, but this clause doesn't make CAF as an idea unconstitutional. The entire point (originally) was to secure assets that you have probable cause to believe are funding or proceeds from crime. So you find someone with a trash bag full of pills and $300k in cash in their trunk after a legal search, you need a process to handle that money.
        willcipriano 4y ago
        That process has existed since before America has, find probable cause someone is committing a crime, detain the suspect (you can get a warrant first but this is more common), get a warrant (can be done over the phone in a couple of minutes), put the cash away somewhere safe until the trial is over. If they are guilty of that crime and that cash was involved, great! If not you have to return it. What we are talking about here is just taking the cash, sending you on your way and spending it, sidestepping your legal rights like access to a court provided attorney or a jury trial. It probably doesn't do much to prevent crime even, the fentanyl runners would much prefer you just take the cash they have on them and let them go.
        s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Take it as evidence until the owner goes to trial. If there is no speedy trial, return it to the owner.
        chrismcb 4y ago
- pc86 4y ago
  In what context can a law disagree with the Constitution and still be legitimate?
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    When interpretations of the meaning of the Constitution differ the one last held by the Supreme Court has the (current) final say. The constitution is by necessity an interpretive document because we don't have a Constitutional Oracle to perfectly map concepts and words for centuries back onto the technological landscape of today. "Shall not be infringed" is a super common refrain among the 2A crowd but taken hyper literally you couldn't take guns away from criminals actively in prison. I think civil forfeiture is far outside the bounds of what could be condoned under the Bill of Rights but my interpretation only matters at a distance of influencing representatives to pass laws or the SC to rule differently.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Libel law disagrees with the Constitution by a literal reading. So does banning human sacrifice in religious services. We still treat them as legitimate.
    - kolanos 4y ago
      Libel is a civil matter. The government can't charge you with libel.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        The government provides a judge and courtroom, decides the result, and enforces the judgement. If you prefer a criminal matter, swap it out for fraud.
  - chrismcb 4y ago
    Until it gets overturned. The problem is they don't let things go to trial to get it overturned
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  >The constitution is contradictory. Could you give an example of this?
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    The same document talks about the "Blessings of Liberty" while establishing slaves as 3/5 of a person for Congressional representation? It's a little hard to reconcile slavery with, say, the Fifth Amendment's prohibition on being "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".
    - willcipriano 4y ago
      > slaves as 3/5 of a person for Congressional representation You would've granted slave owners more votes? You feel they were under represented? If I lived in a state alone with a enough slaves I should have been able to dictate policy for the entire nation?
      - cto_of_antifa 4y ago
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        > You would've granted slave owners more votes? I would have not had slaves.
        throwaway0a5e 4y ago
        That's really rich coming from a proponent of federal authority/power. The alternative here was the articles of confederation or nothing and the states go their own ways as countries, not some fantasy in which the southern states torpedoed their own economies out of some love of the nation. The constitution and the included 3/5ths compromise most certainly brought about the end of slavery much faster than taking a hard line circa 1790, or anything else that tipped the scales away from the united states forming a national identity would have.

Raed667 4y ago

A great video on the subject: Civil Forfeiture: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks

tux1968 4y ago

It just shouldn't exist. A judge can impose such penalties upon conviction, but there shouldn't be a way for police to seize assets like this themselves.

HideousKojima 4y ago
Civil asset forfeiture makes a little bit of sense where it was first used: dealing with the cargo of smuggler's ships. It was almost impossible to prosecute a ship owner who lived across the ocean in Europe, so simply seizing a ship and its smuggled goods was a viable alternative. Unfortunately it's expanded to all sorts of ridiculous and blatantly unconstitutional seizures in the last few decades.
- gwd 4y ago
  > It was almost impossible to prosecute a ship owner who lived across the ocean in Europe, so simply seizing a ship and its smuggled goods was a viable alternative. Such seizures should have the same procedural limitations as arrest of an individual does. Individual procedural limitations: - Police can arrest you and throw you in jail if they have reason to suspect you committed a crime. - Within a certain number of days of being thrown in jail, they have to either produce concrete charges against you, or let you go - While the trial is going on, you can apply for bail to get your freedom. - You can't finally be thrown in prison until you've been convicted by a jury of peers. You could apply parallel standards in this situation: - Police / coast guard could seize a ship if they have reason to believe it's smuggled goods - Within a certain number of days, they have to either produce concrete charges against the owner, or let them have your stuff back. - While the trial is going on, the owner should be able to apply for "bail" to get their stuff back. A judge can determine if it's worth the risk or not, just as they do for prison cases - The stuff can't be finally taken away until the owner has been convicted by a jury of peers. Adding in something like, "All seized goods are distributed to the poor" or something rather than "All seized goods go to the department which seized them" would go a long way towards ending this sort of abuse.
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago

leephillips 4y ago

The only legal way to stop abuse of authority is if those with a higher level of authority put the abusers in handcuffs. So in this case the state prosecutors need to go after the town officials. If the abuse is at the state level then the FBI needs to come in and start arresting people. Otherwise, why would they stop?

code_duck 4y ago
Local authorities work with Feds to do this, however. Civil asset forfeiture has been banned in various localities, but is still legal federally - so non-federal police arrange to have a Federal officer (DEA etc) on hand to take care of that part, and then a certain percentage is kept by the federal government and the rest given to the local authorities. So first it would need to be banned federally.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

belltaco 4y ago

The immediate first thing that should be done is that police departments should have no way of benefiting from the seized cash or assets because it creates a perverse incentive across the board for everyone in the police department to overlook transgressions. It should be held by the county/state and the interest accrued till a judge decides. If it's forfeited, it should go into the county or state public benefits program that only benefits the poorest of the poor, seniors and homeless people.

lrem 4y ago
The obvious thing to happen next cycle from instituting such rules: the benefits program's dedicated budget gets adjusted down by the expected value of forfeitures.
- MarkSweep 4y ago
  Maybe instead any money collected civil asset forfeiture should be required to be sent to the Federal Reserve where it is destroyed. That should prevent any of these sorts of perverse incentives.
  - account42 4y ago
    For money that could work. For other assets (e.g. art, anything that has an environmental cost to create it) society may benefit from them being preserved. I guess you could still auction them off and burn the money.
    - lrem 4y ago
      And that's how you get auctions where all the bidders are personal friends of the judical officer.
namelessoracle 4y ago
There is actually proof that this works. Using Felony Probation and Parole in a particular state as an example, at one point it went to the department that ran Probation/Parole. So the Probation/Parole Officers were encouraged to aggressively pursue getting the fees for probation/parole. Then it was changed to go to the states general fund (so the department stopped getting it effectively). MAGICALLY the officers only got encouraged to care about restitution payments and started being very blaise about failure to pay fines and fees.

_uy6i 4y ago

Seems a simple way would be that people who have assets seized should get the greater of a) $20k OR b) 3x the value of items seized AND c) attorneys fees At least this allows 1) people to litigate smaller seizures 2) creates disincentives for the more abusive cases

engineer_22 4y ago
I appreciate that you're offering a solution. I think the proposal would put the burden on tax-payers.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  As it should be if the public wants the assets sized. Someone should have to pay for the collateral policy damage. It seems that the burden should to those who voted for the policy opposed the innocent victims.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

jackcviers3 4y ago

How do you understand the original intent? > Civil forfeiture allows police to seize — and then keep or sell — any property they allege is involved in a crime. Owners need not ever be arrested or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be taken away permanently by the government. --[1] They don't need to prove or even charge you to take property from you. It's robbery. The law needs to require a warrant issued by a judge to sieze the property. The property siezed needs to be stored as evidence, kept separate from other budget items in law enforcement organizations so that it cannot be used to cover expenditures (through auction or otherwise), be under the same sort of provisions as indefinitely holding individuals without charges, be returned in total when charges are not brought to trial or when a trial results in an acquittal, and the material should be subject to destruction after a guilty verdict and appeals are exhausted. Basically, the siezing organization shouldn't be able to use the material proceeds as part of the organizations' operating budgets at any time unless the material is voluntarily submitted by the convicted parties in lieu of levied fines after a conviction. It is evidence, not a funding source. I'm not saying that the government should not be able to take illegitimately gained property from convicted criminals; but that the incentive to do so for material gains by the government without conviction is rife with the potential for abuse as things currently stand. [1] https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-police/asset-forfeiture-abuse#:~:text=Civil%20forfeiture%20allows%20police%20to,away%20permanently%20by%20the%20government https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-po....

QuadmasterXLII 4y ago

Local governments simply cannot be trusted to dole out any punishment that they benefit from financially. We need to fund our courts from taxes, and require punitive fines to be payed by destroying the money instead of by the prosecutor pocketing it.

chrismcb 4y ago

The original intent was to stop drug dealers without having enough to convict. It is difficult for dealers to deal if they lose their car or boat or money. And apparently it is "obvious"the items came from ill gotten gains.