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

Post by a3n » Wed, May 13, 2015, 12:26 PM UTC

gnaritas wrote: post #91

a3n wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the point. Of course whatever 3rd party you vote for won't make it. But it's a registered vote, and it takes a vote away from the two parties. How is voting for a Rep or Dem not a wasted vote, considering what they're doing to us? 3rd parties aren't fucking us (yet). Vote for whoever isn't fucking us, not because they might win (they won't), but to register the protest.

No he didn't miss the point, you did. You didn't read his link and your comment shows that.

Post by spacemanmatt » Wed, May 13, 2015, 12:29 PM UTC

vfclists wrote: post #240

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…

How many commenters here have a deep personal commitment to press their representatives to change this law? Is this all jaw-jaw and no action?

Post by spacemanmatt » Wed, May 13, 2015, 12:43 PM UTC

hippich wrote: post #7

ekianjo wrote: post #3

The important bit: > he may have been singled out for a search because he was the only black person on that part of the train.

race-card popular lately, but civil forfeiture is a problem here. More race you bring - less efficient you get with fighting real issue at hands. If you do little research - people of all races and sexes were hurt by that, and local/federal police benefitted from it.

Post by alchemism » Wed, May 13, 2015, 12:46 PM UTC

ionised wrote: post #188

swombat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, you can talk about it, you can get a lawyer, you can have newspaper articles written. And is this helping Joseph Rivers, a victim of shameless organised theft and institutional racism? The "most people are unaffected" argument, which gets trotted out a lot, has a strong reek of the Martin Niemøller idea: ( http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392 ) First they came for the Socialists, and…

> Is this what America was built on? I'm pretty sure it was.

Post by pbhjpbhj » Wed, May 13, 2015, 12:50 PM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #237

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…

>I'm not reading about the massive backlog of forfeiture cases, mostly it seems like people don't even try. For two reasons. One, you can't afford a lawyer because the government took your money. And two, there's not a lot of point in spending $300k to get $12.5k back from the government. The DEA is using tax dollars - they can stretch out the proceedings until you run out of money.