Comment by eevilspock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eevilspock | Hacker News Reader

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If we want to have a reasonable discussion about this we need to first dis-conflate two things:

1. Is pre-emptive asset seizure justifiable to prevent allegedly ill-gotten gains from being hidden away prior to judgement?

2. Do such seizures unfairly prevent the accused from hiring the counsel of their choice?

My thoughts on #2: If you argue that this will result in an unfair trial and increased likelihood of a false guilty verdict, then what about people who couldn't afford to hire their counsel of choice in the first place? Any argument or system where judgements are biased by wealth is fundamentally not justice. In other words, my answer to #2 is no. The ability to hire good counsel should not be dependent upon one's assets. The outcomes of trials should not be dependent upon which side has more money. Some alternative systems that would be fairer, in my opinion:

A. All counsel is provided by the state and each side gets assigned counsel randomly.

B. Each side contributes as much as they want to a pool of funds. Each side gets to spend half of the pool on the counsel of their choice.

B is the better solution for a free market-based society.

Except that if you had read the article, only $140,000 of the defendants money was "allegedly ill-gotten", meaning the government seized ALL of their money, not just the allegedly illegal money.

Your #2 is a non-starter because #1 is flawed.

> meaning the government seized ALL of their money, not just the allegedly illegal money.

Red Herring. I made general statements, not opinions about the specific case in the article. Please judge the statements on their own. I was pretty careful in my choice of words, e.g. "to prevent allegedly ill-gotten gains".

> Your #2 is a non-starter because #1 is flawed.

You failed to de-conflate.

Your original comment was a top level comment on the article, and is verbatim:

> If we want to have a reasonable discussion about this

The "this" in that sentence (to any reasonable human) would mean that you were talking about the subject of the article, the people that got their money seized, not "in general asset forfeiture".

So no....not a red herring.

If you wanted to be careful, your first statement should read: "if we want to have a discussion about asset forfeiture...".

To argue, that forfeiture does not harm your defense, since in theory, the wealth of a person should not change your chances at court (where in practice it is!), is absolutely not helpful. To defend an unjust system by a theory that is not holding in practical life, is really dismissive.

First fix the problems of the US juristic system, before trying to crush the ordinary citizen with further ordeals.

Even the Magna Carta defended the possessions of a free person from the access of the state without court trial. What the US started here, is a slap in the face of the base of our civilizations.

#2 is not just about counsel.

If your living on your savings then what do you do if they take all your savings for a multi year trial?

Fair point, but I was answering the statement in the article, "preventing you from hiring the counsel of your choice.". #2 is still a valid question. Yours is an entirely separate question, e.g. "3. Should such seizures, assuming there is justification, be limited so as not to leave the accused without the necessary means to live, or to cause financial loss even if they are found innocent?"

Well, your conclusion about #2: «my answer to #2 is no» - does not hold because «judgements are biased by wealth» unfortunately is a well known fact, so your conclusion should have been the «system (...) is fundamentally not justice» and the answer to #2 is yes in the current system. Because the way you put the question «Do such seizures unfairly prevent...?» you are not talking about some hypothetical perfect system, you are talking about the system in place.

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