Trumps DOJ doubles down on utilizing Civil Asset Forfeiture
Jul 28, 2017 4:41:36 GMT -5
Post by avordvet on Jul 28, 2017 4:41:36 GMT -5
Just as wrong and unconstitutional as it was under obama's reign, But the GOP sheep shrug it off and go about their day...
On Civil Asset Forfeiture, Jeff Sessions Is the New Kamala Harris
Tiana Lowe July 20, 2017 4:00 AM
The attorney general wants to expand a practice that is essentially government-sanctioned stealing from citizens. Conservatives should oppose this.
With the news cycle centered on Russia and Republican health-care flops, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s swift and quiet assault on the Fifth Amendment has gone largely unnoticed. In a reversal of one of the few conservative legacies of the Obama administration, the Trump Justice Department plans to restore the ability of police to seize money and property from suspected criminals without due process. The Department of Justice formally announced on Wednesday that it will roll back heavy restrictions imposed on law enforcement by former Attorney General Eric Holder, and thereby encourage law enforcement to plunder private property and cash in order to . . . fund law enforcement.
The process of civil asset forfeiture, referred to in Sessions’s order as “federal adoptions,” has long attracted criticism from proponents of civil liberties. The process allows police to seize property that they suspect may have been illegally obtained. It involves local government essentially stealing from citizens who have not yet been tried for or found guilty of a crime, and it seems to directly violate the due process guarantees within the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. In a few notable cases, such as that of small-business owner Lyndon McLellan from North Carolina and college student Charles Clarke, citizens have been robbed of hundreds of thousands of dollars without so much as being charged with a crime. The practice emerged during Prohibition and has exploded during the War on Drugs, evolving into a multibillion dollar industry for the police state.
www.nationalreview.com/article/449668/jeff-sessions-civil-asset-forfeiture-plan-government-sanctioned-stealing
Tiana Lowe July 20, 2017 4:00 AM
The attorney general wants to expand a practice that is essentially government-sanctioned stealing from citizens. Conservatives should oppose this.
With the news cycle centered on Russia and Republican health-care flops, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s swift and quiet assault on the Fifth Amendment has gone largely unnoticed. In a reversal of one of the few conservative legacies of the Obama administration, the Trump Justice Department plans to restore the ability of police to seize money and property from suspected criminals without due process. The Department of Justice formally announced on Wednesday that it will roll back heavy restrictions imposed on law enforcement by former Attorney General Eric Holder, and thereby encourage law enforcement to plunder private property and cash in order to . . . fund law enforcement.
The process of civil asset forfeiture, referred to in Sessions’s order as “federal adoptions,” has long attracted criticism from proponents of civil liberties. The process allows police to seize property that they suspect may have been illegally obtained. It involves local government essentially stealing from citizens who have not yet been tried for or found guilty of a crime, and it seems to directly violate the due process guarantees within the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. In a few notable cases, such as that of small-business owner Lyndon McLellan from North Carolina and college student Charles Clarke, citizens have been robbed of hundreds of thousands of dollars without so much as being charged with a crime. The practice emerged during Prohibition and has exploded during the War on Drugs, evolving into a multibillion dollar industry for the police state.
www.nationalreview.com/article/449668/jeff-sessions-civil-asset-forfeiture-plan-government-sanctioned-stealing
Civil Asset Forfeiture: Where Due Process Goes to Die
by Kevin D. Williamson, June 25, 2017 4:00 AM
Police can take your money or property and keep it, even if no charges are filed. Clarence Thomas is famously taciturn on the bench. But his few words carry a great deal of weight.
Though the matter has not yet come before the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas is very much at the center of a federal case with a name that sounds like it ought to have come from a William Gaddis novel: United States v. Seventeen Thousand Nine Hundred Dollars in United States Currency. The case has the potential to help rein in one of the most abused powers enjoyed by American government: asset forfeiture.
The case involves a New York couple, Angela Rodriguez and Joyce Copeland, who lost the above-mentioned $17,900 to police in a case in which no charges were ever filed against them. They sued for recovery of their money, and — incredibly — a federal court found that they lacked standing to sue for possession of their own assets. The D.C. Circuit Court sees things differently and has ruled in favor of allowing Rodriguez and Copeland to at least have their day in court and attempt to reclaim their money.
Current asset-forfeiture practice, like much that is wrong with U.S. law enforcement, has its roots in the so-called war on drugs. The practice of seizing assets is ancient: It dates back at least to 17th-century maritime law, under which ships illegally transporting goods would be seized, along with the contraband inside. Asset forfeiture was used against bootleggers during Prohibition, but it really came into its own in the Reagan era, when the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 empowered federal and local law-enforcement agencies to take property from drug kingpins for their own use. The sudden, unlikely inventory of exotic cars and yachts possessed by law-enforcement agencies inspired that great cultural document of the 1980s: Miami Vice.
www.nationalreview.com/article/448942/civil-asset-forfeiture-police-abuse-clarence-thomas
by Kevin D. Williamson, June 25, 2017 4:00 AM
Police can take your money or property and keep it, even if no charges are filed. Clarence Thomas is famously taciturn on the bench. But his few words carry a great deal of weight.
Though the matter has not yet come before the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas is very much at the center of a federal case with a name that sounds like it ought to have come from a William Gaddis novel: United States v. Seventeen Thousand Nine Hundred Dollars in United States Currency. The case has the potential to help rein in one of the most abused powers enjoyed by American government: asset forfeiture.
The case involves a New York couple, Angela Rodriguez and Joyce Copeland, who lost the above-mentioned $17,900 to police in a case in which no charges were ever filed against them. They sued for recovery of their money, and — incredibly — a federal court found that they lacked standing to sue for possession of their own assets. The D.C. Circuit Court sees things differently and has ruled in favor of allowing Rodriguez and Copeland to at least have their day in court and attempt to reclaim their money.
Current asset-forfeiture practice, like much that is wrong with U.S. law enforcement, has its roots in the so-called war on drugs. The practice of seizing assets is ancient: It dates back at least to 17th-century maritime law, under which ships illegally transporting goods would be seized, along with the contraband inside. Asset forfeiture was used against bootleggers during Prohibition, but it really came into its own in the Reagan era, when the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 empowered federal and local law-enforcement agencies to take property from drug kingpins for their own use. The sudden, unlikely inventory of exotic cars and yachts possessed by law-enforcement agencies inspired that great cultural document of the 1980s: Miami Vice.
www.nationalreview.com/article/448942/civil-asset-forfeiture-police-abuse-clarence-thomas