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How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

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Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#191

Post by Fuxy »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #181
zaroth wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could imagine reading it this way: DEA agents confronted the only black man in the train car and demanded he open his bags, shook him down, and stole his cash. In a brazen theft which DEA agents later claimed was legal under the veil of "civil forfeiture" the state prosecutor has refused to press charges, and the judge on the case has refused to provide relief for the plaintiff... I hope we continue to see a rele…

There are candidates in the lineup for presidency who are against such practices. Instead of waiting for momentum to build, one can take action now.

I would think candidates would be prime targets with all that money laying around and no way of proving how they got it.

Then again we know that won't happen since the cop would most likely get in trouble so it's just a law to steal money from the common people who can't defend themselves.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#192

Post by mapt »

thedufer wrote: post #42
itistoday2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am concerned that by calling it "civil forfeiture" this article is using language to mask a very basic crime. What was described in this article is called stealing or theft. To call it anything else is to mask and downplay what was done to this man. It is to enable the very act that was committed. George Carlin observed this as a dangerous trend in our language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc Call it "…

Civil forfeiture isn't "soft language", it's a precise legal term. You may not agree with the principle (I certainly don't), but calling it theft is no different from a libertarian doing the same with taxation.

It's a hell of a lot different from a popularly-legislated general tax on the economy. These people are committing literal armed robbery, in order to fund themselves. It is explicitly contrary to the Fifth Amendment of the constitution, in spirit and in letter. They are pulling people over and rifling through their wallets for cash. That's not supposed to be how constitutional liberal democracy works, at a very fundamental level.

"nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.""

"Civil asset forfeiture" precisely resembles the worst caricature of the behavior we were attempting to defend against when we wrote that. And it's affecting everybody going through police jurisdictions that rely on that revenue, not just the minorities that the drug war was designed to persecute in order to get Reagan & Bush Sr re-elected.

I understand some of the politics of why the executive and the legislature ramped this up - perceptions that a generation of children was being lost to a class of sinister urban drug-pushers, and a desire for vigilante justice even when we couldn't convict them of anything. I don't understand how any judge anywhere could approve any of it. They're supposed to be above that. If you accept these legal fictions into your worldview, what's the point of having a justice system at all?

This should have been ended decades ago, when hysteria about the 'crack epidemic' wore down. As far as I'm concerned, when a local cop steals money from you and claims he has a form that says that's okay, that's a reason for the FBI or Internal Affairs to come in and prosecute that person. Because they stopped being a legitimate representative of the people in any capacity: they stopped shepherding law-abiding citizens and started feeding on them. We used to have a word for that, 'dirty cops', and we used to believe, or at least hope, they were aberrations.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#193

Post by pjc50 »

adventured wrote: post #79
AwesomeGriffin wrote: post #33

I've heard this sort of thing happening in Third World countries. Perhaps the US is - for all its advanced technology and creature comforts - essentially now a Third World kleptocracy. Silicon Valley and Manhattan are like Dubai - gaudy showcases that don't represent the true nature of the hinterland. I would be very wary about working in Dubai; I would be equally wary about working and living in the US for the same…

The US still ranks among the best nations on earth when it comes to low corruption in fact. The civil forfeitures problem is non-trivial, but you're drastically exaggerating. The whole of the US has a very highly functional, low-corruption judiciary system, and a mostly still intact and strong property rights system. Most of America is low crime, low corruption, the opposite of what you're implying. In fact it's beca…

mostly still intact and strong property rights system

The title system is weak and outdated, and the mass fraud of "robosigning" (http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/false-affidavits-fore...) has not been adequately addressed.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#194

Post by gmac »

fencepost wrote: post #175
zaroth wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is some process by which you can prove the money is yours and you are entitled for it to be returned? For example, petitioning to be involved in the case, can it be denied? Is it just a procedural nightmare? Then what? I'd just be interested in the deeper story about actually trying to get the money back. If you show the paper trail of exactly where the dollars came from, are the judges still ruling against…

The problem is that you're paying for legal representation. Even if you get the money back by the time you pay legal bills there may not be much of it left.

So this 'civil forfeiture' is appalling and Orwellian enough in its own right, but it's also one of those cases where the apparent inability to award costs in US courts seems truly insane.

If this happened under the English legal system, you can be pretty sure the courts would make the DEA pay both sides' legal costs for meritless seizures like this one.

So if you were prepared to take the risk of going to court you'd at least stand a good chance of getting all your money back.

(IANAL, But My Wife Is).

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#195

Post by yc1010 »

mindo wrote: post #174
Qantourisc wrote: post #101

As a potential tourist or traveller (I am not to be fair), I wouldn't risk travelling to the US. I'm not sure if there are actual tourists who feel the same, but I'm sure there are other avoiding the US.

Personaly the more I read the less I'm interested to ever go to US. I admit, it's partly because of gun control (absence of it), police burtality and twisted laws, but at the same time I don't even know a single place I would to visit in US...

I have traveled thru' most of the lower 48 states on several occasions, and have to say these were the most memorable trips of my life (I am from Ireland). I have been to all of Europe + some of middle east & far east & latin america, but the US does stand out when I look back with great food, nice people, and amazing wide open spaces and scenery and never got in trouble with law, tho I can imagine it happening (for example: I was constantly warned bye people to stay under speed limit , while in Ireland it is more of a guideline!), since socially the US is a tinderbox about to explode, which is obvious if you ever endup in a wrong part of any town.

As for places to visit, where to start! Grand Canyon, White Sands, Las Vegas, LA, Appalachian Trail, Space Coast, Yosemite, San Francisco, Oregon, Savannah, DC, Key West, Texas.... shit the list goes on... now that I think of it the scale of the country and being able to drive everywhere is simply breathtaking, I have traveled thru more of the US than most Americans I spoke to and to be honest yee guys have a great country populated by mostly friendly and nice people.

Yes I realize there must be exceptions, but I never got into any trouble travelling the breath and length of the US, and would recommend it to anyone, hell I be back in a few months for more :)

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#196

Post by gadders »

imroot wrote: post #10

While civil forfeiture is scary, my (very very brief) stint doing criminal law as a public defender showed me that there's also a bigger side of this -- seizing the assets of individuals who are charged with a crime so that they cannot attain private counsel, make bail, or receive any creature comforts while incarcerated. What will generally happen is that after sitting in jail for 120+ days, they'll jump at any oppo…

There is a good novelisation of this process in the Dean Koontz book Dark Rivers of the Heart. Worth a read.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#197

Post by itistoday2 »

vidarh wrote: post #148
itistoday2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In common usage, theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. We are unable to give consent (consent implies choice), so it is theft through coercion (prison). See "group fund" for a voluntary form of taxation: http://groupcurrency.org

I always find this line of discussion amusing, given that most forms of property only meaningfully exists in the presence of coercion or violence to restrict others access, yet in my experience the people who gives the "tax is theft" line tend to be right wing libertarians who also tend to want strong enforcement of private property laws and tends to be totally humourless about it if Proudhons "property is theft" is…

I've lived long enough to be called "right wing" for the first time in my life... that is a first (I think).

As far as Proudhon (first time hearing this), it seems he was referring to land only, and that "property did not extend to exclusive possession of labor-made wealth."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft!

It's unclear to me how someone can "own" a piece of land which they did not create but stumbled upon. To me it just seems like a situation where the person with the biggest gun wins, and has nothing to do with "property". So in that sense, perhaps, yes, claiming ownership over something you did not create (Earth) might very well be interpreted as theft.

However, the notion of "land property" is a potentially convoluted rabbit hole that is very different from a straightforward discussion about taking money people earned with their own labor under the threat of force.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#199

Post by Frondo »

itistoday2 wrote: post #46
thedufer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil forfeiture isn't "soft language", it's a precise legal term. You may not agree with the principle (I certainly don't), but calling it theft is no different from a libertarian doing the same with taxation.

> Civil forfeiture isn't "soft language", it's a precise legal term. It is both. > calling it theft is no different from a libertarian doing the same with taxation. Taxation today is theft.

Taxation isn't theft.

Taxation is you paying the bill you've incurred for living in this country. You've lived here, gotten some benefit from the services the government provides, and when the bill comes you start saying "theft!! theft!!!"?

The anti-tax crowd is the biggest bunch of moochers and freeloaders this side of Wall Street. They're just out for a free ride, leaving the rest of us to pay for it.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#200

Post by realusername »

adventured wrote: post #79
AwesomeGriffin wrote: post #33

I've heard this sort of thing happening in Third World countries. Perhaps the US is - for all its advanced technology and creature comforts - essentially now a Third World kleptocracy. Silicon Valley and Manhattan are like Dubai - gaudy showcases that don't represent the true nature of the hinterland. I would be very wary about working in Dubai; I would be equally wary about working and living in the US for the same…

The US still ranks among the best nations on earth when it comes to low corruption in fact. The civil forfeitures problem is non-trivial, but you're drastically exaggerating. The whole of the US has a very highly functional, low-corruption judiciary system, and a mostly still intact and strong property rights system. Most of America is low crime, low corruption, the opposite of what you're implying. In fact it's beca…

This is the perception of corruption, not the actual corruption. When it comes to the political system, the US is much more corrupt than most European countries. At least in France (since it's your example) you can't legally bribe politicians, it is not enforced a lot but at least it's illegal. In the US, financing of parties (so bribery) is the norm for the presidential election. And at least, minor parties have a representation in France, so there is a hope that the system can still change, in the US, since there is no way to have a representation of the small parties by design, only a revolution can make things change.
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