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SCOTUS Cracks Down on Civil Asset Forfeiture

since9

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The Article: https://news.yahoo.com/scotus-cracks-down-civil-asset-181114542.html

"The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that state and local governments are not exempt from the Constitutional prohibition against imposing “excessive fines” on citizens, significantly constraining the ability of law enforcement to seize the property of criminal suspects."

It's been a while since I recalled the Supreme Court ruling unanimously on anything. Sounds serious!

Personally, I view civil asset forfeiture right up there with any criminal sneaking into someone's home and taking what's not theirs.

For once, I agree with J. Ginsberg: “For good reason, the protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history: Exorbitant tolls undermine other constitutional liberties,” Ginsburg wrote. “Excessive fines can be used, for example, to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies. . . . Even absent a political motive, fines may be employed in a measure out of accord with the penal goals of retribution and deterrence.”

In this case, the forfeiture was more than four times in excess of the maximum allowed by Indiana law.

Personally, I believe ALL civil asset forfeitures are heinously wrong. If there's a punitive fine to be imposed, then by all means, impose the fine. But do NOT take people's belongings!!!

 

eye95

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What’s with “excessive”??? Even so much as $1 is “excessive” without due process of law.

I don’t have time to read the judgment yet, so I will have further comment later after I have read it.
 

Ghost1958

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Not sure what anyone thought LE would do with the ability to take folks cash land and veh8cles with no grounds to do so other than take folks cash land and vehicles.

Any power LE has WILL be pushed past it's legal limits and abused until it taken away from them.
 

eye95

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Well, I have had a chance to read the ruling.

meh.

SCOTUS took issue with the size of the seizure, not with civil asset forfeiture as a practice.

Size doesn’t matter.
 

Ghost1958

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Well, I have had a chance to read the ruling.

meh.

SCOTUS took issue with the size of the seizure, not with civil asset forfeiture as a practice.

Size doesn’t matter.

Agree. The act of civil forfeiture should be abolished entirely.
 

JTHunter2

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Eye - while I agree with you that CAF is a problem, for the authorities to take property valued at over 4 times the fine/penalty shows that it was an excessive amount.
However, without CAF, there would be little recovery for victims of things like ponzi schemes, investor fraud, etc. CAF is needed to strip those perps of their ill-gotten gains to try and return as much as possible to the victims. It wans supposed to be used to enrich governmental agencies which, unfortunately, has happened far too often.
 

eye95

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Civil asset forfeiture is not necessary to force restitution.

Civil asset forfeiture accomplishes one thing: extrajudicial punishment. That is dangerous and anticonstitutional.
 

KBCraig

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SCOTUS took issue with the size of the seizure, not with civil asset forfeiture as a practice.

Size doesn’t matter.
It mattered to the appellant, whose argument was that a CAF seizure valued many times the maximum possible criminal fine, was excessive. Counsel chose a strategy most likely to win, and did.

SCOTUS rules on what is presented.
 

eye95

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I did not opine on why the court did what it did. I only clarified what it did.

The thread title asserted that “SCOTUS cracks down on civil asset forfeiture”, implying the the practice was the center of its ruling. It wasn’t. Size was.

Precision in the statement of facts is kind of important. Especially in the era of fake news.
 

Ghost1958

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Civil forfeiture is one of the stupider laws passed.
Many a family has wound up destitute because a family member was involved in something they had no knowledge of.
Mostly drug related charges steming from the "drug war" stupidity.
 

FreedomVA

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Civil forfeiture is one of the stupider laws passed.
Many a family has wound up destitute because a family member was involved in something they had no knowledge of.
Mostly drug related charges steming from the " drug war" stupidity.

Just like any law, it start out with good intentions to punish the thugs, organized crimes and gang bangers, but in the end money and greed is god. Then it gets applied to everything from here to KingdomCom.
Keep that in mind people when anti-gun laws are allowed to pass with good intentions.
 

hammer6

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“Excessive fines can be used, for example, to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies. . . . Even absent a political motive, fines may be employed in a measure out of accord with the penal goals of retribution and deterrence.”



Except when considering the 2nd amendment.
 

JTHunter2

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IIRC, wasn't the CAF originally used in drug cases where they courts figured some (or all) of the assets were "ill-gotten gains" from the drug trade?
 

Ghost1958

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IIRC, wasn't the CAF originally used in drug cases where they courts figured some (or all) of the assets were "ill-gotten gains" from the drug trade?

That was the spirit of the law but it was never the way it was used by LE.

It simply just is a revenue generator for LE.
 
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