Police seized $10k from him. a court ruled he had no right to an attorney
reason.com
reason.com
1. Civil forfeiture is an action against the property, not the owner. And property has no rights. How convenient. This justification gets even more ridiculous when you consider the property is alleged to be the proceeds of crime but this isn't a criminal action;
2. The action to recover such money is a civil action not a criminal one so no right for the government to provide you with legal representation (as noted in this article); and
3. Police departments have a direct profit motive to seize asets without due process as they get to keep most or all of the proceeds.
The direct profit motive leads to "forfeiture corridors". This is where typically drugs will go in one direction and the resulting cash will go in the other. The police will set up to seize only the cash going in one direction and not care one iota about the drugs going the other way.
This is disgusting and has no place in the rule of law.
Edit: acting like a goat, finding the highest moral ground: every dollar seized by police without a criminal conviction gets taken by an angry mob from the representative officials.
People don't get immunity for regular jobs. Just don't do crimes. IMO they should lose all immunity the moment they exceed their lawful authority. I would, in particular, have Cheney tried and then strung up from a dead tree.
Government Officials would still enjoy differing levels of immunity in the course of their official duties, however qualified immunity specifically is a court created immunity that is a scourge upon the legal system that should be done away with. The legal system has methods to shield government officials from liability for doing their actual jobs, while not allowing immunity for abuse. Qualified Immunity simply shields government officials from liability for abuse
[1] https://wordsandnumbers.libsyn.com/episode-219-unqualified-i...
[2] https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-qualified-immunity-and-what...
The thief takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber.
Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful 'sovereign,' on account of the 'protection' he affords you.”
― Updated / modernized quote partially taken from Lysander Spooner
That just sounds like drug dealing with extra steps.
It comes as no particular surprise that American law enforcement, below the Federal level, is not actually all that interested in stopping illegal drug trafficking. Illegal drugs mean more crime, and that's good business for them!
Maybe "theft with extra steps" because they do in fact essentially steal the money and add the extra steps to legally inoculate themselves against the consequences if they were to go and just steal the money.
Either way, profiting from the sale of illegal drugs is uncomfortably close to drug dealer.
The federal government incentivizes it as well with a profit sharing program. According to the video, its over 68.8 billion seized and the average amount is $1300. It'll cost you $5000 in legal fees to get it back, so most people won't bother. Just raise taxes already and quit with the literal highway robbery.
https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit-3/
Think of the children! Just Say No!
Furthermore, any government owned equipment used in unlawful surveillance or military operation should be subject to seizure and liquidation by any tax payer as it was spent and used in willful disregard of tax payers and their representatives.
If people ever wonder why there is such a backlash against "Boomers", the drug war and the completely insane laws that came with it are a huge part of the reason.
Law Enforcement, and the Policing for profit supporters have massive budgets to convince victims of drug addiction that law enforcement is the proper place for the "war" on drugs to be fought
As such while under normal circumstances American's do have high aversion to government overreach, Americans have allowed massive amounts of overreach under the guise of protecting people from the surge of drugs
However after nearly 50 years of this "war", all we have to show for it is higher and higher drug addiction rates, and a Militarized police force that is more fitting for dictatorship than a democracy
I would rephrase that to "Americans have a high aversion to overreach exercised on people like them". The Patriot Act was popular when it was passed, and only became unpopular when people realized it was being used on them. Civil Forfeiture only really came to light when it started impacting "normal" people.
We're largely fine with overreach when it only impacts foreign citizens, criminals (especially drunk drivers, drug dealers, terrorists and pedophiles, but excluding white collar crime), and undocumented workers.
I still see very little concern for how the judicial system places enormous pressure on criminal defendants to take plea deals. CBP has enormous extra-legal authority when near the border.
We've really only ever been concerned with overreach that's likely to impact us as individuals.
[1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/police-say-seizing-proper...
Jesus, this is depressing.
Also from reason.com (2/18/22): "The FBI Seized Almost $1 Million From This Family—and Never Charged Them With a Crime" [0]
In April 2020, agents showed up at the Nelsons' home and informed them that Carl—a former real estate transaction manager for Amazon—was under investigation for allegedly depriving the tech behemoth of his "honest services." In plainer terms, they accused him of showing favor to certain developers and securing them deals in exchange for illegal kickbacks. "That never happened and is exactly why I've fought as long and hard as I have," he says. "It's that simple."
[0] https://reason.com/2022/02/18/fbi-seized-almost-1-million-fr...
The solution, as it's always been, is to criminalize asset seizure and go after agencies that use it to maintain their slush funds. Cryptocurrency isn't in the picture.
However, hiding your assets is functionally illegal in the circumstances that are interesting during civil asset forfeiture: civil cases have discovery available to them, and the standard for compelled information during civil discovery is extremely low (the prosecution only needs to show that the information might reasonably lead to admissible evidence). Hiding your assets during discovery means perjuring yourself.
1. IANAL, but can't you plead the fifth on that?
2. I agree that cryptocurrency isn't a silver bullet against government action, but it still seems like an improvement to the status quo, where they can seize your stuff whenever they want and you have to sue them to get it back. With crypto, the most they can do is figure out how much money you have, but they can't seize anything without going through the courts. That in itself basically solves the civil forfeiture problem.
I think it varies by state. The 5th amendment explicitly concerns criminal matters and not civil ones, so each state has a patchwork of laws and jurisprudence determining whether you can plead (and what the consequences are) during civil discovery.
During a quick search, it looks like many states allow adverse inference when pleading 5A in civil cases.
That sort of defeats the entire point of the 5th amendment. At best, it should perhaps signal an investigation may be called for, but I'd argue that civil asset forfeiture is misqualified as a civil case if that is the case, as the admission of adverse inference against a plaintiff in a civil case would further tilt the scales of justice in favor of the government, which if we're really being honest here, does not need the help.
Not really -- civil matters aren't matters of crime (it's not illegal to divorce your spouse), so it makes sense on the surface that protections against self incrimination don't apply.
The problem here is civil asset forfeiture itself, which should be either completely illegal or at the very least subject to a higher standard of proof than it currently is.
The judicial system jas some serious issues when it comes to not reigning in Executive excess.
[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/07/02/48...
if you abide by a few basic principles (keep your wallet cold, actually read through smart contracts before executing them, read the specification of everywhere you are putting your tokens) you'll be just fine.
To the sibling comment, -- sure Bitcoin exchanges are sadly a security crapshow but that its a brief exposure (and one can obtain Bitcoin without an exchange, though the alternatives have their own costs). Once you've obtained and securely stored your Bitcoins they should be safe from both hackers and government due process violations.
It's not always easy to correctly store Bitcoin, but it's possible which is something you can't say about other equivalently liquid assets when your threat model includes things like the abuses described in this article.