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

washingtonpost.com

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

#301

Post by Shivetya »

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…

when government agencies can bypass courts and assign fines, not offer jury trials, what safety does the common man have?

Civil forfeiture is a major problem but the abuse of using administrative law judges (ALJs) is becoming a big one as well.

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

#302

Post by thedufer »

Goronmon wrote: post #64
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.

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. I would say that calling civil forfeiture as theft makes more sense then comparing civil forfeiture to taxation. Unless you live in an area where "taxation" means armed men come to your house and demand all your cash on April 15th. Honestly, I don't really buy the argument th…

> Unless you live in an area where "taxation" means armed men come to your house and demand all your cash on April 15th.

They don't bother with armed men. If I refuse to pay long enough, they just take it straight out of my paycheck (wage garnishment). No need to intimidate someone when you own their bank.

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

#303

Post by stegosaurus »

The basic problem is, as people have pointed out, euphemistic political language and moral relativism.

Asset forfeiture is theft. Taxation is theft. Imprisonment is kidnapping. War is killing. And so on.

They are not necessarily evil. It would not be evil for me to steal my neighbours' rifle if I knew he had nefarious plans. It is not evil to take money from a billionaire if he willingly allows the poor to starve otherwise.

But it is still theft.

Somehow people seem unwilling to use the basic, concrete, obvious terms and prefer intelligent-sounding euphemisms.

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

#304

Post by rayiner »

I think we should repeal the civil forfeiture laws, but the article plays a little fast and loose with the law.

In a civil forfeiture, the government has the burden to show probable cause for the forfeiture, and in a contested proceeding has the burden to show that the assets are subject to forfeiture by a preponderance of the evidence.

The burden of proof does rest on the property owner for invoking the "innocent owner" defense, but that is narrower than it sounds. That defense is involved when, e.g. someone buys property with money that was given to them by someone who obtained it through illegal activity. The government still has to establish the money came from illegal activity, but the owner can assert that they did not know about and did not consent to the illegal activity.

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

#305

Post by leap_ahead »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #292
leap_ahead wrote: post #221

Russian citizen here. This sort of things I have regularly been hearing about the US over the last decade make me really sad. Some 20 years ago America was a symbol of civil liberties for us. I considered one day maybe going there to work and live. A few years ago I still entertained an idea of going there for an internship. Today I'd be scared to go there even as a tourist or on a short business trip. Let's say I go…

Here's some advice: stop reading/believing everything you read on the Internet/see in movies and come over for a visit. Distorting your perceptions with solely sensationalist articles (though not saying this one is)/pop culture only does yourself a disservice.

Maybe some day but not today. Today I'm not comfortable with the mere idea.

What if some patent troll learns I'm going for a visit to the US? What if they secretly tell the police to arrest me at the airport and then sue me over some dumb patents?

What if somebody makes a joke on the Internet and then I'm detained at the airport and interrogated whether I have fought in the Ukraine?

What if they learn I have some Muslim friends and decide to question me if I knew of any bombing plans? What if they send me to one of their secret prisons to beat out my consent to spy on my friends?

You see my problem?

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

#306

Post by rayiner »

stegosaurus wrote: post #303

The basic problem is, as people have pointed out, euphemistic political language and moral relativism. Asset forfeiture is theft. Taxation is theft. Imprisonment is kidnapping. War is killing. And so on. They are not necessarily evil. It would not be evil for me to steal my neighbours' rifle if I knew he had nefarious plans. It is not evil to take money from a billionaire if he willingly allows the poor to starve oth…

Both asset forfeiture and taxation are taking, but they are not "theft" because that is taking in violation of law. Lawful takings cannot be theft by definition. "Theft" is also not a concept that exists in the world outside our legal books and dictionaries. In the state of nature, everything is mine that I can take for myself.

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

#307

Post by skolor »

vidarh wrote: post #138
adventured wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The US is less corrupt than France for example Careful there. The Transparency International page you link to is the perception index. It measures what a set of people perceives corruption to be like in each country, and composits results from a number of different surveys in a way that as far as I know is not benchmarked against other data to verify if survey results actually matches reality. You can not use it as…

After looking through their data a little, I'm curious: who is paying all these bribes[1]?

7% of people who interacted with the police report paying a bribe to them? 11% for education I could believe, but 15% to the judiciary, 17% to "land services"?

Maybe I just need to step my bribe game up, but that seems significantly higher than I would have expected.

[1] http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/country/?country=united_...

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

#308

Post by LordKano »

Frondo wrote: post #209
itistoday2 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are free to move to another country. Please explain how I can do that. I would actually like to move to Switzerland, could you explain how I can freely do that as everything I've researched indicates it's neither free nor possible in any reasonable amount of time. If not Switzerland I'll settle for some other country where I can live freely and be safe from coercion. > If no automobile maker will sell you the e…

You can leave the U.S. whenever you want. The U.S. isn't restricting your ability to leave. If the country of your choice doesn't permit you to emigrate, that doesn't mean that you're suddenly free from your obligations to whatever country will host you. Wouldn't that be convenient? "Sir, I don't have to pay taxes. I want to move to Switzerland, but they're full right now, so I can't." (And the "threat of prison" is…

And the "threat of prison" is some of the dumbest hyperbole out of the antitax crowd--for nearly all cases, they'll simply garnish your wages, or something equally non-freedom-constraining.

Oh they regularly send people to prison for failing to pay taxes. Does the name Wesley Snipes ring a bell? They sent him to prison for three years on three misdemeanor counts of failing to file tax returns, even after he brought a check to court for the outstanding balance.

On a basic level, that's what all laws are. They are a series of escalating punishments and threats that end soon after "then, we'll send guys with guns to take you to prison".

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

#309

Post by seanmcdirmid »

stegosaurus wrote: post #303

The basic problem is, as people have pointed out, euphemistic political language and moral relativism. Asset forfeiture is theft. Taxation is theft. Imprisonment is kidnapping. War is killing. And so on. They are not necessarily evil. It would not be evil for me to steal my neighbours' rifle if I knew he had nefarious plans. It is not evil to take money from a billionaire if he willingly allows the poor to starve oth…

Theft has a very specific definition:

noun 1. the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another.

So to claim X is theft, you are claiming that it is wrongful; i.e. evil.

> Somehow people seem unwilling to use the basic, concrete, obvious terms and prefer intelligent-sounding euphemisms.

Somehow people seem to be willing to twist and distort basic, concrete, obvious terms to push and reinforce their ideology.

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

#310

Post by giltleaf »

itistoday2 wrote: post #15
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…

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 "…

This is a good point and I'm struggling to grasp how deep this article indicates this problem goes. I just finished reading Emergency by Neil Strauss and this just motivates me more and more.
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