Earlier quoted context omitted.
In some states it is illegal to defend against civil forfeiture practices using hidden compartments in your vehicle to store 100% legal property (e.g. cash, jewelry, confidential information)
Which states?
U.S. Supreme Court to hear civil forfeiture case
101–110 of 258 posts
Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear civil forfeiture case
#102I’m always surprised that civil forfeiture isn’t considered a violation of both the fourth and fifth amendments. The fifth amendment says “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“, and the fourth requires probably cause to seize property. Civil forfeiture is somehow allowed without due process or probable cause. And the money kicks back to police departments, which is a clear public use, and there is definitely no just compensation.
Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear civil forfeiture case
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
To start, I am totally horrified by civil forfeiture, so please no one construe this as defending it. But our personal opinions aside, I don't think the Indiana Supreme court decision is really very surprising from a legal perspective. The eight amendment is selectively incorporated and the excessive fines clause is not incorporated. The 14th amendment gave the courts the justification they needed to incorporate part…
The eight amendment is selectively incorporated and the excessive fines clause is not incorporated. Interesting - what does "incorporation" mean in this context?
> The incorporation doctrine is a constitutional doctrine through which the first ten amendments of the United States Constitution (known as the Bill of Rights) are made applicable to the states through the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/incorporation_doctrine
The linked document contains a table explaining which parts of the bill of rights have been incorporated.
Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear civil forfeiture case
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's worse is they don't even need a shred of evidence to take your stuff. In some states, having more than $10,000 in cash on your person is automatically considered "evidence of criminal activity". That means that the police, just by seeing that you have more than $10k in cash, can simply seize it and then force you to spend your time and additional money proving that the money didn't come from crime. And, of cou…
In some states it is illegal to defend against civil forfeiture practices using hidden compartments in your vehicle to store 100% legal property (e.g. cash, jewelry, confidential information)
Interesting article about a guy who was sentenced to 24 years in federal prison for building hidden compartments for customers of his car stereo shop:
Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear civil forfeiture case
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
The basic reading would be, that unless the Constitution defines a power of the federal government, that power resides with the states and citizens. As mentioned in the Wikipedia article, its addition was basically CYA, as it was and is true regardless of its enshrining within the Constitution. As such, its existence does not really mean anything beyond what the Constitution already meant. It just provides a handy sh…
> federal laws ... use funding carrots rather than criminal-punishment sticks There are limits to this, some of which are set out in South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987). These limits (quoting wikipedia) are: * The spending must promote "the general welfare." * The condition must be unambiguous. * The condition should relate "to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs." * The condition i…
Do you have a background in law?
Reading through this comment thread is very interesting, I just can't help but try to understand how so many geeks are so well versed in case law :)
Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear civil forfeiture case
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically you're right. The 10th amendment has been largely neutered by selective incorporation, a very broad reading of the commerce clause, and other decisions. That said, the world in which the 10th amendment is very strong and the fourteenth is weak is much worse for civil rights. Suddenly the states can declare official support for Christianity, ban dissenting speech, shut down newspapers they dislike, search…
At the margin, people would begin moving to different states. The current system has some pros (which you enumerate), but also some massive cons in the form of high exit costs, since you're exiting the entire federal apparatus rather than the government of a single state.
> At the margin, people would begin moving to different states.
"They can simply move away" is a fantasy solution. 99% people would/could not move until/unless it became a crisis situation.
Sure, you could move, but what about your infirm parents? The costs are already high for between-states moves.
Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear civil forfeiture case
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
In some states it is illegal to defend against civil forfeiture practices using hidden compartments in your vehicle to store 100% legal property (e.g. cash, jewelry, confidential information)
Which states?
Ohio, California, Georgia, Illinois, and Oregon.
http://reason.com/archives/2014/02/16/the-crime-of-having-a-...
http://policelink.monster.com/training/articles/2191-hidden-...
https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/legal-digest/legal-digest-inves...
Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear civil forfeiture case
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't for the life of me understand why the 10th amendment does not have a more prominent place in the American political system than it does. It is because government would be hamstrung if they respected it? It would seem to the layman that is the entire reason it exists!
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Generally, after ratification the 10th Amendment was treated as a truism: essentially a useless amendment that simply confirmed the federal system of government. The words of the man who drafted the amendment, and who opposed it's inclusion: I find, from l…
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Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear civil forfeiture case
#109Civil Forfeiture is essentially "guilty until proven innocent." And I don't mean that hyperbolically, I mean literally if the state takes property or cash under Civil Forfeiture you have to prove your property innocent to get it returned (via expensive civil litigation). That means that they can seize property or cash under a certain value with near impunity because the cost of recovering it is greater than the cost…
> You only really started to hear about Civil Forfeiture once the police started going too far and taking things from the wealthy or powerful
From my perspective it was more like police brutality: the internet and cameras were what made awareness mainstream by making it easy to spread (especially in areas where the local media has a credulous relationship with the police) and harder to dismiss.
Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear civil forfeiture case
#110What I've learned recently is that most people only read headlines when it comes to Supreme Court cases, and the headlines are written to be intentionally misleading. Most Supreme Court cases have a lot of nuance to them that most people miss. For example, in this thread, people keep saying that United States v. Ursery upheld Civil Forfeiture, but it did no such thing. The case was about whether CF is a criminal puni…
You seem to have a more accurate perspective on this case than most of the comments. Thank you for posting.
But I'm still confused on one point: It seems like the supreme court has already ruled that the 8th Amendment applies to the states in Roper v. Simmons[0], Robinson v. California [1], and others. To me this pretty directly means that a state law dictating a cruel and unusual punishment is unconstitutional.
So if supreme court isn't deciding whether cruel and unusual punishments at the state level are unconstitutional in general (a previous ruling), and it isn't deciding whether this specific civil forfeiture was cruel and unusual (a decision to be made by the state court), what exactly are they deciding? Is there some unplugged hole in the middle, like whether any CF case (regardless of details) could be cruel and unusual? Or is there some other reason that the previous rulings don't apply here?