Town Seized Building, Offered to Return It If Owners Bought Two Cars for Police
reason.com
reason.com
"Article the sixth... The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Police under the US Constitution have to go before a judge and court and make an Oath under perjury of law describing the items to be seized. There has to be a justification and supported by affirmation meaning evidence and supporting facts. In the case of the building that was seized it was operating a perfectly legal business under state law. It had the necessary licenses and permits. There needs to be a direct challenge against this type of extra-judicial seizure in the US Supreme Court as it's a clear challenge to the entire operation of the rule of law and legal system.
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
To me it is disqualifying for those analyses being taken seriously. If you are claiming that you are doing no interpretation and others are, that just not credible within the law. Of COURSE they are interpreting - that's literally the job. The idea that you aren't interpreting and instead are only divining what others meant is so incredible that it needs to stop being repeated.
Stop repeating the propaganda because it just normalizes a ridiculous phrase.
There is no such thing as textualism, there is just (1) a belief that your are doing a thing you labeled textualism but is philosophically incompatible with the concept of the law or (2) lying. Anything from the right in the us as it relates to the constitution is (2).
But Roe v Wade went further than that, with all the talk about pregnancy trimester nonsense. I buy into the premise of a right to privacy being derived from the 14th Amendment, but there's certainly nothing about trimesters in that amendment; it reeks of the court trying legislate. Either this right to privacy exists or it doesn't, it shouldn't be conditional on trimesters. I think this is where they fucked up.
Anyway, now Congress has to do what they should have done 50 years ago and sort this mess out the proper way.
Anything and everything not specifically outlined in it is either retained by the people or governed by the states.
If the Supreme Court says the federal government doesn’t have jurisdiction they are simply returning the responsibility to the states or default legal status. They literally can’t strip away a right by returning it to the people.
They basically ignore the question of whether a fetus is alive or a citizen. It's the state's interest in protecting a potential person/citizen vs the woman's right to privacy.
The trimester system allows the controlling interest to shift as the fetus becomes closer to a citizen (and thus increasing the validity of the state's interest). In the first trimester, it's not at all close to a citizen and the woman's rights reign supreme. There are some concessions for the state in the second trimester, and by the third trimester, it's close enough to a citizen that the state has a compelling interest in preventing harm.
They explicitly call out that the right to privacy is not absolute, which is basically par for the course. The 1st Amendment doesn't let you incite violence, the second doesn't guarantee your right to buy a tank and ammunition, felons can't vote, prisoners can be slaves, etc. Basically none of our rights are absolute. It's a balance between preserving the rights of the people and the interests of the state.
It's an arbitrary framework, which the SC acknowledged, but you have to draw a line somewhere. Without a consensus on when life begins, that's always going to be an arbitrary line.
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The upcoming court ruling, denies and disparages a right that was retained by the people for the last 50 years. In fact, it leads me to believe that the very reasoning used by the SC according to the memo is unconstitutional (they argue that since the word abortion doesn't appear in the constitution that it can't be considered by the court, a position that goes against the text and spirit of the 9th amendment)
I’m not well versed enough in its history to know if this is abnormal. I find it unacceptable, but given the state of government in the US, I don’t have any solutions.
Since we're talking about abortion, let's restate what should be abundantly clear - nobody is using abortion as a substitute for birth control. "Pro-choice" is an utterly stupid term that plays right into the political tempest-in-a-tea-pot, completely on-brand for the Democratic party. An appropriate label would be pro-medical-care. This whole topic is akin to debating whether individual states should be able to prevent their residents from receiving blood transfusions.
The only reason i can see you saying this is that you are angry and have found a group to other. Perhaps you should do some meditation or smoke a joint or whatever to relax, and stop directing your anger at people advocating for a position you agree with.
The politickers have chosen the strongest statement to rally their own group around, but what it has actually done is create a potent straw man for opposition to rally around.
This is about the right to bodily autonomy, not medical care. Right now we have a right to not be searched, but don't have a right to do what we want with our own bodies. Give it a few years, watch in amusement as redneck states start attempting to ban tattoo parlors for "decency" reasons under the auspices of "proper medical care."
Does "bodily autonomy" apply to vaccines?
Folks who worked for govt agencies and contractors were fired for refusing and there were serious efforts to deny govt services on that basis.
Feel free to play games with "forced" but we both know how you'd come down wrt comparable measures and abortion.
They're literally different and you know it to be true, but you'd prefer to play semantics because you can't back it up with logic. Like the idea that losing your job for failing to comply with public safety measures is the same as being charged with murder for aborting an ectopic pregnancy. Severing an employment relationship is nothing like incarcerating someone.
What? You're not? But you said that they were different.
The difference is that one involves abortion while the other involves vaccines.
And yes, I'm going to argue meaning. There aren't any tautologies here.
That's great and all, but how did they ass-pull the third trimester restriction? Courts recognizing rights not explicitly found in the Constitution is what the 9th amendment permits. But to ass-pull a restriction to a right, when that restriction isn't found in the Constitution or any law passed by congress? Is that really what the 9th Amendment is about? That's hard to swallow if so. What if SCOTUS ass-pulls a restriction to the 1st Amendment and says it never applies to computers? Is that the sort of thing the 9th Amendment permits?
That ruling returns the relevant power to the states, see the 10th amendment.
This argument proves too much. One might say, for example, that the right to crush annoying smartphones isn't specifically addressed in the constitution or amendments thereof, and thus we must have that right. However, the states do have laws against theft, vandalism, etc. so we don't actually have the right to crush any smartphones that annoy us. The way to preempt those state laws would be with a federal law establishing such a right.
I am pro-choice, but such a federal law addressing abortion could have been passed at any point in the decades since (or before?) Roe. My understanding of the leaked ruling is that it would be overruled by such codification.
The weakness of the appeal to 9A explains why Roe itself did not rely on that.
Even ignoring any say the rest of the Constitution has on civil forfeiture, even the parts that you quote do not prevent civil forfeitures on their own.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"
The rub here is "unreasonable". The fact that the constitution explicitly proscribes "unreasonable" seizures means it also allows "reasonable" seizures.
So there is no clear answer here because unreasonable is completely subjective.
The thinking of course is everyone could potentially join a militia, therefore everyone is defacto covered under the second amendment.
Because one first part explains the rationale, the second part describes the right.
I personally think the current state of affairs does a pretty good job balancing the two parts of the amendment. States are allowed to put a lot of restrictions on how you can buy guns, and where you can carry/use them, but ultimately people are allowed to have them. You aren’t allowed a nuke, you are allowed a shotgun. Exactly what level of personal firepower should be allowed for a “well regulated militia” could be a constant source for debate, but I think the balance is kept pretty well.
I know this is apostasy, but because the founders weren't omniscient beings that drafted perfect documents. Rather they were politicians basically just winging it while trying to come to some consensus. Critically, they lacked an understanding of the limitation of logical systems that would only be discovered in the 20th century - the repercussions of which are with us to this day.
> Exactly what level of personal firepower should be allowed for a “well regulated militia” could be a constant source for debate, but I think the balance is kept pretty well.
From the commoner's perspective, most explosives are basically illegal even though they could be responsibly kept by anyone with a little land. So no, I don't think any balance has been achieved. For starters, anything that a domestic-facing police department is allowed to have should be fair game for the rest of the People as well.
Hand waving away the wording about military utility, and only focusing on the individual right.
We can, and need to have a debate about both, and not just the latter. That is my point.
"(2)the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia."
Even in the few active state militia they would be considered eligible, not members.
SCOTUS has had contradictory decisions in the past on whether private gun rights hinge on military applications of the specific firearms, but indeed this is the talking point - state militias.
Collectively, the people who parrot "Shall Not Be Infringed" are really trying to avoid the militia debate entirely.
Generally, when trials take a very long time to happen, it's because the defendant has decided it is in their interest to waive the right to a speedy trial.
(Yes, the timeframe is longer than it was in the 18th century, but trials have also gotten more complex: mostly in ways that benefit defendants).
EDIT: Nevermind, I see that you addressed this down thread.
Shorter would compromise the defense, who has less warning of the need to prepare for trial (that's why in the federal system, the defense, in addition to having a waivable statutory right for trial to start within 70 days of charging, also has a waivable statutory right for it to not start less than 30 days from charging.)
And it is speedy compared to the problems which motivated the guarantee.
Speedy civil trials are not a constitutional right. (Though, when it comes to forfeiture, the long timelines are one of many problematic aspects).
So it’s doubly troubling as they are also ignoring the presumption of innocence and other such protections.
These forfeiture trials are not criminal trials. There are plenty of ways you can be civilly liable without breach of contract.
I do think the standard should be higher than a typical civil case (beyond preponderance of the evidence).
But this artifact of law has a reason to exist: if there's stuff that's most likely involved in a crime with no identifiable owner, it makes sense for it to be seized. Especially the original case of distant and difficult to identify ship owners. (Once an owner can be identified, I do think there should be greater protections-- deriving from the fourth, not the sixth, amendment.
I am saying the court system is misclassifying criminal cases as civil ones. You want to increase the standard of evidence which IMO means roughly the same thing. But, I can see why you might disagree.
An interesting instance of this happened recently, when an appellant in a civil case to our Supreme Court (who also happened to be a lawyer) deliberately leaked the court's draft opinion to the press while it was under embargo. The court wasn't sure what to do, as contempt findings carry an automatic right of appeal and yet there's no-one to appeal to from the supreme court.
(As we have more than one benchful of Supreme Court justices, they decided to assemble one panel for the 'first instance' hearing, which was itself distinct from that who had heard the original case, and a completely fresh panel for the appeal[0]. He was fined £5000 and the appeal was dismissed on all grounds.)
Allegations of fraud in a civil case have also historically been treated differently, because losing could have a similar effect on a litigant's reputation (and ability to carry out a business) as a criminal conviction. It's sometimes possible to get a civil jury trial under these circumstances, for example, which have been effectively abolished in this jurisdiction.
Umm, Gitmo was messed up. But, to be clear, the United States does not guarantee constitutional rights to non-citizens who have not touched US soil, so this is a bit of a canard.
> J6 detainees?
Despite rumors of hundreds of January 6th detainees languishing in jails-- the actual number is approximately 35. Most of these have waived speedy trial. Most of these have not been detained for a very long time.
A few are still undergoing legal discovery. It's a problematic set of circumstances: further, closely related arrests happen; without providing additional information on the new arrests to existing arrestees' counsel, convictions could later be set aside. In turn, this restarts some clocks. On the other hand, judges are getting frustrated and warning the prosecution that these delays are becoming excessive.
I can't find this detail in my copy of the constitution. 6A in particular specifies "the accused". It's true that most Gitmo prisoners were never actually accused of anything (because they had never done anything, in particular anything related to actions undertaken by Saudi nationals under the direction of Saudi intelligence personnel), and were eventually released without apology. However, any prisoner who ever actually went to trial would certainly be classified as "accused".
The overwhelming majority of defendants not waiving speedy trials get a trial within a year.
Of the remaining, there's a big share that are various kinds of edge cases where it makes sense that a trial has taken a little longer than normal.
And then there's the remaining abuses and problems, which are relatively small in number but should be addressed.
3-4 months to get a criminal case together, with discovery requirements, etc, seems reasonable.
> No anyone ever hitting 1 year is clear evidence of total failure of the system to even pretend to care about this issue.
I don't agree. Terrible stuff happens occasionally-- it is not evidence that every element of the system is broken everywhere.
IMO the big issue is bail and pre-trial detention. Yes, criminal cases being in limbo is bad (and the constitutional right of speedy trial is important)-- but a lot of the reason why they take longer now than in the 18th century is because of additional protections for defendants.
The fact that civil forfeiture is so contrary to all the other definitions of "reasonable" that courts have emphasized over the years should make it a clear violation of the Constitution.
We presume the jury are reasonable people (unfortunately the US also screws up how juries work) and so if they have a consensus that must be reasonable.
The UK uses "double reasonableness" in it's anti-tax avoidance law. It says the jury should ask themselves if any reasonable person might have done this anyway. If your jurors can't conceive of how even one other reasonable person could think what you did made sense, except that it reduced tax liability, then in fact it did not reduce liability, your avoidance scheme doesn't work.
In the absence of that, though, jury rulings against the specific seizure is the next best defense.
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable … seizures, shall not be violated, … but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the … things to be seized.
From the article:
> In a response to an interrogatory filed in the Kozbials' subsequent lawsuit against Highland Park, a city police officer answered "none" when asked to identify any predicate felony offenses justifying the seizure.
What was the probable cause supported by oath or affirmation?
The constitution describes people's property and makes people subject to it. Suing a car or a pile of cash is farcical - because the constitution doesn't have authority over objects, it has authority over the people who own and possess the objects.
Its the same basic factual explanation as to the difference between two consenting adults and adults and children/animals that seems to befuddle those who don't like gay rights.
First, the overwhelming majority of civil forfeiture happens in states, where a mere claim of the constitution not explicitly giving the federal government authority doesn't hold water (or invoke the incorporation doctrine).
Second, Federal courts have long exercised authority over objects and courts having authority over objects is something that is broadly considered constitutional.
> Suing a car or a pile of cash is farcical
It may seem farcical, but it has a decent legal basis and a reasonable reason for existance: there are times that property seems to A) be involved in crime, and B) unclaimed by owners. E.g. distant shipowners engaged in smuggling. It seems reasonable for the government to seize the property in these cases.
It's much more problematic when a clear owner can be identified (or, when an owner comes forward after seizure). I agree in those circumstances action should be brought against the people, and should require a higher standard than the preponderance of the evidence, for property to be kept.
> Its the same basic factual explanation as to the difference between two consenting adults and adults and children/animals that seems to befuddle those who don't like gay rights.
I don't quite see the connection.
Yes, a reasonable seizure is either through eminent domain (with just compensation) or the result of a criminal proceeding as punishment.
Unreasonable would be seizures with no criminal proceedings or just compensation.
Which leads to some pretty hilarious case titles:
"United States v. Article Consisting of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less, Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls"
[edit] "South Dakota v. Fifteen Impounded Cats"
[edit] "United States v. One Solid Gold Object in Form of a Rooster"
In my opinion this tactic should be illegal.
[edit] As far as I know this only really exists in the US, and in Canadian admiralty law (so, only in the US).
[1] https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/terrorism-and-illici...
[edit] Well, two problems: frequently the entity seizing the property gets to keep it and add it to their budget - or split the proceeds. This creates an incentive for them to move forward this way.
I just can't make sense of the "vs" in the case titles, in what way is the object fighting back? Why is there a case at all and not "here is a list of contraband seized at the border" ?
I would assume the legal procedure is what determines what actually happens to the object. Just like the police arrest people but don't sentence them or put them in prison directly.
There's also the problem of you have no rights at the border anyway, even though you should.
If I use a payphone to order a hit, is it reasonable for the government to come rip it out of the ground? What if I use a freeway to smuggle drugs? Now the road must be torn out?
Money is fungible and has all sorts of uses. Any particular pile of cash is no more or less likely to be intrinsically criminal in nature. Just like phones and freeways.
Another angle of defense might be to ask if it's even possible to violate the 6th amendment. What would violating the 6th amendment look like? I suspect the answer will closely resemble civil forfeitures.
The building was part of the person's effects. I don't understand how your argument is legal (not that I don't believe you - civil forfeiture has been going on long enough that I assume SCOTUS has heard a sampling of cases).
It beggars belief that this practice has stood for decades.
I'm pretty sure that's been modified to US people on US soil, at least 100 miles from a border, have constitutional rights, but those rights were all intended to mean something different than what they actually say.
Hope it has a good lawyer then I guess?
Anyway, my point is sovereign citizens seem to see the system as a machine, the function of which can be manipulated by giving it cleverly formulated inputs. They have a hacker mindset. They see lawyers and politicians doing this sort of thing all the time, and believe they can do the same if only they find the right incantation. It's as though somebody witnesses the Fonz hit a jukebox to make it work, then figure they can do the same trick if they hit that jukebox in the same way. Except it will never work for them, the jukebox only behaves that way for the Fonz.
but the reality is that law was never this, and their life of protest is led against a straw man, and it's completely ineffective in bringing reality closer to that principle.
That civil asset forfeiture has survived is simply because the courts are gutless about it.
There is a very long and plainly wrong string of Supreme Court decisions which stretches all the way back to the nation's founding. The courts are very good at precisely the opposite thing that you're describing.
I think most people kind of assume that the courts are this sort of shining beacon of enlightened liberal thought: they occasionally seem to have "duds" -- but those are intelligent and well reasoned duds. They're interpreting the constitution in a way some don't like, sure, but still upholding it nonetheless, right?
I mean, this thread here about civil asset forfeiture is a great example. If you ask any non-lawyer brained person whether it's wrong, they'll say, yeah, of course it's illegal for the government to just steal your shit. Why is this even a question?
Oh, but no, you see, the courts have wisely decided, using an argument that you might hear from a 5-year-old ("actually, this piece of property is actually a mystical ghost that we can treat as a people!"), that stealing your shit is, in fact, legal.
I really encourage anyone curious about this powerful and unaccountable institution to read some of the shittier Supreme Court decisions. They are often, simply put, stupid. Like, a regular non-lawyer person can read them and handily "eviscerate" their arguments.
Ignoring the fact that the point of a mask is to "sanitize" the germ filled air coming out of or into your mouth, the same law says "or other measures" as needed to protect the public.
It was such poor logic, especially considering the context of the original law at the time (fighting tuberculosis) and the potentially damaging aftermath of such a precedent (not hard to imagine a future, more deadly virus that some politicians decides is a political inconvenience).
I do however find some sympathy with _one_ of their arguments, where they argue they never consented to be governed.
I mean when I think about it, I was born into an established system that imposed its rules on me from birth. I had no say in accepting/rejecting the rules. I'm essentially property of the state, subject to its whims with little to no hope of changing them. So I get where some people come from with a "naw fuck that" attitude, even if I see such resistance as futile.
Not directly sov-citizen related, but that does intersect with a broader community of people upset over how property works in the US. Namely, you don't own a damn thing. All deeds/titles are fee-simple, in that you merely buy and sell the right to rent that land from the government for as long as you can afford it. "Renters" in the colloquial sense are really renting twice, which is why "owning" is better. True ownership of property however no longer exists in the US.
Maybe we can experiment with better society designs on mars, where landowners are truly sovereign and the state only owns the commons. Enforcement then only exists in the commons (and optionally on property with the consent of the owner).
I expect what forms on Mars, at least initially, will resemble the high seas a lot more than it does any country. You'll have facilities owned and commanded by corporations operating under flags of convenience, more or less free to engage in any nastiness they like (at least until a navy or coastguard with guns shows up to enforce their will on the facility.)
To paraphrase, Socrates says "Though not explicitly, I have by my actions agreed to be ruled by the laws of Athens by carrying out my life here and not choosing to move away to somewhere with a different set of laws"
[1]http://www.columbia.edu/itc/lithum/wong/textclip.html @ [52b]
I believe Plato will say they consented to be governed by this state, not at birth, but throughout their life by choosing to stay in a place that is governed by this state and enjoying the benefits.
In your belief, from what comes Plato's link between place and state? Places exist before states and often afterward. Can a state exist without place? If a place can exist without any particular state, can a person have a link to a place independent of a state?
Imagine if I'd edited it to read: 'choosing to stay within the bounds of the government, and enjoying the benefits'
Sovereign citizens do enjoy the benefits of the US state, do not reject them nor make strides at moving away from them (from anything I've read).
In modern times this isn't really the case. There tend to be immense legal restrictions on movement, let alone living + working in different areas. And the differences that do exist between even nations within the same "sphere" tend to be relatively negligible compared to, again, the sort of monumental differences you'd see just between different Greek city-states like Athens/Sparta.
There were extreme legal restrictions on movement in Ancient Greece, too. You couldn't just pack up your bags and move to Spara or Athens and become part of the citizen class.
And as a non-citizen, there were a lot of different ways that you could be abused by citizens, with little recourse.
Just because despotism and abuse was decentralized, doesn't mean that it wasn't despotism and abuse.
Would you rather be born into a state of anarchy? I think Hobbes addressed this.
https://lithub.com/the-dawn-of-everything-is-not-a-book-abou...
Steven Pinker has muddied the water with quite a lot of nonsense in The Better Angels of our Nature. An interesting, better-sourced and less cherry-picked read is a 2013 paper in Science[0].
There is an appeal to the thought that humans in a natural state are peaceful. Because if modern society has made mankind violent, then we can hopefully roll back it's influence and restore us to that peaceful state. But that's not what our evidence suggests.
This article examines existing hunter gatherers: https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2007/12/19/nobl...
For a book that dives into the archaeological evidence, see War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat.
There is also an idealogical appeal by the likes of Pinker to the idea that nation states are the only structures that can prevent us from a return to a kind of endemic violence amongst hunter-gatherers. This thought has historically been exploited by those who would steal their lands, and do it "for their own good".
You might call it "doing a Chagnon" - precipitate violence, use that to characterize a people as warlike, then use that as a pretext to take even more resources.
Of course it's possible to find a hunter-gatherer society which is more violent than a particular modern nation state. It's also trivial to find an inverse example. When you look at what evidence we do have, you see that hunter-gatherers are no more or less violent than the rest of us, and when violence does flare it happens for the very same reasons it happens anywhere else.
1. https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-e...
- the "ethnographic evidence", which I accept you're not defending, largely features indigenous peoples during an active genocide.
- the archaeological evidence is, naturally and obviously, extremely few and far between. Much of it doesn't relate to hunter-gatherers at all. As for the rest? Taking one at random: the 12% violent death share at Ile Téviec. Read the sources and this is extrapolated from three (3!) bodies. Two of which were apparently not violent deaths after all. The remaining body? We have no clue if the incoming arrowhead was from warfare or a hunting accident. How unfortunate if a single 6,000 year old hunting accident is labeling entire peoples violent and uncivilized. Either way, it's nonsense all the way down.
What was the historical rate of violence amongst, say, the Zo'é people? They are very isolated today and violence is apparently unheard of, but what happened in the past? We can't possibly know. What of the Awá? No hint. The Sentinelese, even? Who knows?
My point is that all of these data are so limited, so compromised and often so cherry-picked it's revealing nothing very helpful. What little we do know is that rates of violence amongst different hunter-gatherer peoples today, despite them all being under immense outside pressures, are extremely variable... as it is between all other different groups of humans. That observation doesn't sell books, though.
Incorrect. Plenty of hunter gatherer societies are highly isolated and are not experiencing active genocide or displacement. Even ignoring those outliers that are in such a situation, they still exhibit rates of violence many times greater than modern societies.
> - the archaeological evidence is, naturally and obviously, extremely few and far between. Much of it doesn't relate to hunter-gatherers at all. As for the rest? Taking one at random: the 12% violent death share at Ile Téviec. Read the sources and this is extrapolated from three (3!) bodies. Two of which were apparently not violent deaths after all. The remaining body? We have no clue if the incoming arrowhead was from warfare or a hunting accident. How unfortunate if a single 6,000 year old hunting accident is labeling entire peoples violent and uncivilized. Either way, it's nonsense all the way down.
Correct, no sane anthropologists would use a single sample to draw conclusions. But there are many such sites and estimates are drawn across a wider body of samples.
> What little we do know is that rates of violence amongst different hunter-gatherer peoples today, despite them all being under immense outside pressures, are extremely variable... as it is between all other different groups of humans
For the third time, no, this is incorrect. Rates of violence among hunter gatherers, even among those highly isolated from other societies, is much greater than modern societies. You're probably reading sources that claim that few death occur due to war. But that's because the authors of these papers just categorize the motivation for killing as something else, like revenge. The rate of death is usually in the 10-15% range.
- much doesn't relate to hunter-gatherers at all - some is a tiny sample size (in the only case I dug into, n<=1!) - the bulk of it involves peoples under pressure from encroachment (and worse) - by its nature it's woefully incomplete, some of it cherry-picked, and ignores the majority of hunter-gatherer peoples
It's a fascinating and important question, though.
Of course a social contract is not at all the same as a real contract, a social contract is not a document that you sign, it applies to you whether or not you ever consented to it. But when language that seems to conflate the two is used to persuade people who don't really have a firm grasp on the way the world works, it seems cruel to laugh at their confusion.
They also never consented to birth.
They are free to renounce their citizenship, however. Nobody is forcing them to stay US citizens.
> Maybe we can experiment with better society designs on mars
Hate to break it to you, but Mars colonies (assuming they ever exist) are going to be dictatorships. Lifeboat ethics don't leave a lot of room for arguing, let alone voting.
The questions of where you'll go and how you'll support yourself are something that you'd best figure out before starting that process, because after you start your country of origin may well say 'not OUR problem anymore' about you.
But Sovereign Citizens are rugged individualists who don't need no handout, eh?
> You also can't renounce without obtaining another citizenship
That is false for US citizens. See:
They have three options. One, they can choose to live and operate under those rules. Two, they can work within the system to change the rules. Or three, they can go somewhere that has rules more to their liking. This isn't a prison; they can leave any time they choose. One could even argue that by staying in the country, they are (informally, implicitly) consenting to be governed by its rules.
But instead, they try a fourth alternative: Stay, but pretend that the rules don't apply to them because of laughably bogus legal theories. That doesn't work, no matter how many new legal theories they try, and no matter how much bogus logic and philosophizing they throw at it.
We've got a lot of non-sov-cit people who don't consent to the rules. We call them "criminals".
Getting a work permit in another country is usually pretty hard, for instance.
Still, even with that, I think we (as a society/civilisation) need people like that, challenging the system in all sorts of ways. And not everyone not obeying the rules is a "criminal" — none of the civil offenses qualify, for instance, even in the legal sense.
Of course, some of those "challenges", especially most of those criminal ones, should be dealt with proper "retaliation" (prison sentences, large penalties...) from the society so it's obvious which "challenges" are not welcome. But let's not forget that many of the things we take for granted today have been criminal in the not so distant past.
It's also not trivial (Next to impossible, actually) to survive alone, completely independent of society.
If you want the benefits of society, you have to abide by its rules.
I still think it's good that all norms are being challenged even if it's often times hypocritical or selfish.
The sovereign citizen material, though, really does leave the impression that there must be something underlying the absurdity.
Mental illness? It generally comes across as the type of homegrown rant material you'd find stapled to a telephone pole.
That's an illusion of choice, though. There isn't any unclaimed, habitable land anymore. If your views don't align with any of the 195 existing countries, then this isn't actually an option. It's just 1 or 2, but in a different location.
You can't be an anarchist, ever. There's nowhere to do it. If you want to live somewhere that pledges itself as a Christian theocracy, you better hope you're Catholic. Ditto for most religions, really. Or if you want to live in a sovereign entity with the population of a small town.
The options are really just "suck it up" or "spend your whole life trying to change it". I'm genuinely curious what the sovereign citizens would do if they were allowed to secede any land they own. It's not for me, but I am curious whether they'd actually leave or if they just don't want to follow the rules.
I do think people should be allowed to sue their parents for wrongful birth, though.
Nah, not when there's an obvious and simple remedy.
I get hung up on what happens if you choose not to opt-in.
You seem to be speaking of property tax on land. Did you know not all land is on county assesor tax roles? Have you researched how to find land not in the county tax catalog?
Edit: see this comment from elsewhere in this thread with a link to a scholarly history of civil asset forfeiture: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31449092
Property is an asset, not a corporation (though could a corp. be an asset of a holding company?) but philosophically-speaking, "property itself as a defendant" and "corporation as a legal individual" seems connected.
In the case of Florida, if it isn’t struck down, it’s going to caused the cities in the surrounding area to have to pay higher taxes and take on Disney’s debts.
The hack they came up with is to just disable type checking and pass in whatever object they have available.
TFA describes the inevitable runtime errors
I’d mourn for the US, but it seems it’s been dead & gone longer than I’ve been alive.
The civil libertarian language comes from being heavily seeded by small Protestant cults, but not wanting to fall into European-style religious wars over it. Also, ironically, to protect the rights of a slaveholding minority.
That practice should be a crime, by itself.
Any sane court system would believe that charging an inanimate object with a crime is beyond bonkers.
Where things went off the rails is when they started applying this to cases where the owner of the property was known, and that owner should have their normal fourth amendment rights.
The Presidential Surveillance Program was justified using Smith v. Maryland. The argument was that, if Smith had no reasonable expectation of privacy for metadata in isolation, no aggregate of citizens had an expectation of privacy. Therefore mass surveillance of metadata is legal. You let the government see the phone records of one citizen without a warrant and decades later you have something like 33% of all email, TCP/IP, and phone metadata being collected and analyzed by a government agency without a warrant.
The old saying that the 1st Amendment doesn’t apply to “yelling fire in a crowded theater” was an argument a Supreme Court justice used to justify jailing a man for handing out anti-draft pamphlets. You let the government regulate speech that poses a clear and present danger and they use that to make it illegal to oppose a draft.
This whole 'you can't yell fire in a crowded theater' thing is not a real thing.
Per @popehat:
5/ '"shout fire in a theater" is a rhetorical device used in 1919 to justify jailing people for writing anti-draft pamphlets in World War I. The First Amendment standard (to use the term generously) applied in that case has been dead for more than a half-century.'
6/ 'The same judge went on to smirk "three generations of imbeciles are enough" to justify forcible government sterilization of persons deemed undesirable by the state, so you know, he had a way with words.'
7/ 'So when you trot out "you can't shout fire in a theater" in response to a First Amendment question, you're using the catchphrase a eugenicist used to support jailing people for criticizing the draft in a case that hasn't been good law for a half century.' [1]
That's true, but it's also true to criticize anyone citing the constitution by pointing out that it was written by slaveowners and perpetrators of genocide.
For some reason, though, that argument never goes over well. Maybe it's because the character of the person who made an argument hundreds of years ago is only relevant when you disagree with the argument.
Bringing a civil suit doesn’t change the fundamental fact of this being unreasonable seizure. It’s seizure. And it’s unreasonable.
Naming it something else or inventing a process for doing it doesn’t change reality.
The difficulty comes when you stretch the concept like with civil forfeiture. It's not even necessary: England and Wales has the Proceeds of Crime Act to allow seizure and forfeiture of criminal property and all the cases under that are ordinary in personam actions between the state and the putative criminal.
Your use in this comment make me think that usage is tied to this legal concept of in rem.
You can sue the owner. If they don't show up that doesn't mean that they automatically win the case - if anything, it's the opposite. If you can't identify the owner you can make the case against John Doe and still have a state appointed defender represent the owner's rights. You can get a court-ordered injunction to detain the ship until the case is resolved.
I don't see why you need to invent a new legal concept here at all - other that it makes things easier for the state to seize things when they don't need to worry about such pesky things as rights.
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/the-constitutionality...
There has been, and the Supreme Court upheld it. As I recall, they didn't even bother hearing the case.
You are confusing originalism with textualism (there is an argument that the current Court’s dominant philosophy [or mode of rationalization, for the more cynical] is both originalist and textualist, but your particular argument is more of an appeal to textualism than originalism.)
And all the stuff about particularity of warrants is nice, but it doesn't actually lay out when warrants are required.
"Unreasonable" is a highly subjective term and should not exist in legal documents.
1) change all state laws to nuke the practice
2) leverage the practice much more heavily such that more important and influential people want to nuke it
Even that's just a start. According to https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2018/12/19/cops-can..., when one state banned civil forfeiture, it was so profitable that several cities kept doing it in violation of the state law, until courts finally forced them to stop 3 years later.
So next the federal DEA stepped in. Since the federal government still practices civil forfeiture in the state, local police agencies are encouraged to tip off the DEA to any property that might be federally seizable, and then the DEA pays kickbacks to the local police force that provided the tip.
This all sounds like racketeering and conspiracy to me. But you see, when the federal government does it, it's NOT racketeering and conspiracy.
How would you say we should handle this scenario? We have a good reason to believe that the property is actually mine, and also that if it is not seized soon then it will be lost forever. (Since, as we all know, court rulings happen on much longer time scales.)
If you have an overly aggressive civil forfeiture law then the police can seize things when they shouldn't. But if you have none, then don't you hamstring law enforcement unnecessarily, and instead provide greater incentive for crime?
Police don't need civil forfeiture to hold evidence in advance of pressing charges, or to recover stolen property and return it to its rightful owner. They only need civil forfeiture if they intend to keep the car for themselves.
or 3) Prove you are an innocent owner.
That's only for people and organizations with expensive legal teams.
I'm not sure how long it has been this way, but "innocent until proven guilty" isn't true in most of the country. If you are arrested, you will spend at least a day in jail if you can make bail. If not, you will spend weeks or months in jail prior to your first hearing. Often, that hearing will just be to setup another hearing, months down the line. So, you could be in jail a very long time without ever having a hearing at all, and without the state proving your guilt.
Even if you are rich and innocent and lucky, then you will spend a day in jail, and spend thousands on bail and lawyers, and if found innocent you will still have all of it on your record, lost all of that money, a day of your life, the abuse of the police officer and jailors, and there are many situations where answering "yes" to "have you ever been arrested" will disqualify you.
So, yeah, innocent until proven guilty is not a thing in the US. I fear that people might read this and think it's hyberbole, or that I'm part of some right-wing conspiracy theorist thing. It's not, I'm not. If you know a LEO, ask them. A LEO in the US is judge, jury and executioner, and they are quite happy for this to be the case. It means they get to do whatever they want. It is remarkable that Chauvin got convicted for murdering George Floyd on camera! That's why I think the BLM protests aren't quite right - should be CLM, civilians lives matter, because it's not about race, it's about giving low-to-average intelligence people absolute power over everyone around them.
Not quite.
If rich you get all your bail money back. If poor you do a bail bond and dont get the deposit for the bond back. Or cant even afford that and stay in jail. (The effects compound because its often not the first time)
If rich, an arrest record means nothing. If rich enough, an indictment or being found guilty means nothing because you don't need employment.
And thats before we talk about fighting the case. Or making the investigation harder.
Its a completely parallel society because the consequences are so different.
That is not true. In most places you are NOT ALLOWED to post cash bail, you have to get a bond because it has the effect of outsourcing police-work. No, I'm not joking.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/jailed...
If you have your arrest records expunged you are expected to answer "no" to the "have you ever been arrested" question when asked by an employer or potential employer. It's a stupid system. In at least a few states, they're not even supposed to ask, because it's such a dumb question.
It's simply this: any asset seized must go to the general fund, not into a law enforcement fund.
If a local police department seizes cash or a car, that asset goes to the state. If federal law enforcement does the same, it goes to the treasury, not the FBI or ATF or the Justice Department.
This small change would remove the incentive to seize assets for any reason other than stopping criminals.
We also need due-process reforms, but this would be a good start. Government departments should never profit from criminal activity.
This would remove the financial incentive for seizure and would preserve its punitive aspect, both general and specific deterrence. As a check against wanton destruction, the seizing entity should remain subject to a civil cause of action of conversion (in regular language, liable for taking stuff) in case the defendant (or now plaintiff) can prove that the seizure didn't follow due process, or that the underlying justification for seizure in the first place was unfounded.
Obviously, this suggestion isn't fully baked. But it's worth considering why anyone should benefit from punitive measures such as asset seizure (or punitive damages in a civil lawsuit).
But besides that: Just because it would be a "shame," doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. After all, some people think it would be fun to burn a Rembrandt.
What about spite?
Perhaps an additional measure could be that a jury of the people should decide if the property is returned to the person or if it goes to the state/treasury. Most people seem to think civil forfeiture is problematic.
Better simply to not allow it at all.
edit I'm not sure of the best way to improve or change this, so would love to hear from others on the best way to make that change possible.
Unfortunately it's expanded to all sorts of ridiculous and blatantly unconstitutional seizures in the last few decades.
Such seizures should have the same procedural limitations as arrest of an individual does. Individual procedural limitations:
- Police can arrest you and throw you in jail if they have reason to suspect you committed a crime.
- Within a certain number of days of being thrown in jail, they have to either produce concrete charges against you, or let you go
- While the trial is going on, you can apply for bail to get your freedom.
- You can't finally be thrown in prison until you've been convicted by a jury of peers.
You could apply parallel standards in this situation:
- Police / coast guard could seize a ship if they have reason to believe it's smuggled goods
- Within a certain number of days, they have to either produce concrete charges against the owner, or let them have your stuff back.
- While the trial is going on, the owner should be able to apply for "bail" to get their stuff back. A judge can determine if it's worth the risk or not, just as they do for prison cases
- The stuff can't be finally taken away until the owner has been convicted by a jury of peers.
Adding in something like, "All seized goods are distributed to the poor" or something rather than "All seized goods go to the department which seized them" would go a long way towards ending this sort of abuse.
- Police arrest you
- You can request a Writ of Habeas Corpus
- The judge then issues the Writ
- The police either have to accuse you of a crime or let you go.
You could do the same thing wrt the stolen goods:
- Police sieze contraband
- Owner requests Writ of Habeas Stuffus
- etc
In the case of an owner in another country and is pretty sure they'll get arrested if they show up to claim their stuff, then they'll choose to leave the stuff where it is rather than apply for a writ. After a year, the police could consider it forfeit by default.
The legal theory which underlies civil forfeiture is "in rem jurisdiction" where it's not the owner, but rather the property, which is the defendant in the case. If the case is at a Federal level, then it will be something like "United States of America vs. $50,000 in United States currency".
The standard of proof is not at the criminal standard ("beyond a reasonable doubt") but instead the civil standard ("preponderance of evidence").
So, seize the goods in anticipation of convicting the owner. Make a law that says the owner can apply for a writ, and a case must be made. If the owner doesn't show up, then the goods are abandoned property. That allows the case described to be prosecuted, while not opening up the insane abuses we've all heard so much about.
The situations it's intended to address are things like this:
Bob meets regularly with known members of Mexican drug cartels, but doesn't actually seem to be involved with the illegal sale of drugs. Bob files his taxes every year and makes a modest income. However, every day, Bob drives over the border at El Paso in his car with a million dollars of cash in a briefcase.
If the DEA stops Bob, he asserts that the cash is his. Since it's not obvious that Bob has actually committed a crime, shouldn't there be some mechanism to allow the obvious profits of crime to be confiscated without having to convict Bob?
A lot of reasonable people think the answer to that is "yes"; but it is apparently hard to create a mechanism that doesn't also result in the police confiscating your car because your friend that's riding with you has $500 of cash, a bunch of empty baggies in his pocket, and prior drug dealing conviction.
I was attempting to describe a situation where, if the law permitted it, you could bring in a jury and let a prosecutor make the case that Bob's briefcase constitutes the proceeds of crime, and have a solid chance of success at the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof which is required for a conviction.
But you can't prosecute a briefcase full of cash; and Bob's actions are not in themselves criminal. Without some kind of asset forfeiture system, nothing can be done.
There's a pretty reasonable public policy argument that this is not an acceptable situation.
So you're saying:
* You have evidence enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Alice, the owner of the cash, has committed a crime, and that this cash is the result of that crime
* Bob himself hasn't done any crimes at all.
We can't prosecute Alice because she's in Mexico; and we can't prosecute Bob, because he hasn't done anything wrong.
Well then, seize the cash, and let Alice come for it. If Bob claims it's his and applies for a writ, show the evidence to the judge that Bob isn't actually the owner. If Alice applies for the writ, present your case against her. If she doesn't come for it after a year, treat it as abandoned property. Everybody gets due process.
If you don't have enough evidence to prove that Bob isn't the owner, you don't have enough evidence to convict Alice of a crime, and therefore it's a violation of human rights to take her money.
Civil forfeiture works fine for this case, which is the whole point, because indeed neither will Bob be able to demonstrate it's really his, nor will Alice be arriving to collect.
Where it all goes wrong in other cases is "Bob claim it's his and applies for a writ". i.e. it becomes Bob's responsibility to prove his ownership in court, rather than the government's job to prove anything at all.
i.e. the government performs an administrative seizure without any proof obligation, and then reverses the burden of proof onto the person from whom the assets were seized
In the real world, for small-time asset forfeiture, the amount involved is too small to be worth the effort; or Bob often doesn't have the money for a lawyer to bring that action; or this all happens while he's traveling away from home, so the court appearances are going to involve air fare, time off work etc. Or Bob is presented with the problem of proving something that is difficult to evidence, like "I have been saving this shoebox full of cash in the closet for a long time for my daughter's quinceañera"[1].
Ultimately, yes, due process is available but it's not free, it's not low-friction, and it's many a time not worth it.
[1] https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/578798-the-high...
I said at least twice that it's the government's job to prove that it's Alice's and not Bob's.
You proposed a hypothetical scenario where there is plenty of evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this cash was the result of a crime by Alice. So, when Bob comes and claims the cash is his, present that evidence. It's not a matter of Bob proving that it's his; it's a matter of Bob proving that this "beyond reasonable doubt" evidence you have of Alice's crime is bogus.
We're getting really into the weeds here; I'd expect a lot of the precedents to be established by a series of cases. But I would think that a reasonable starting point would be that possession implies ownership by default; and that if the government wants to prove that the money that was in Bob's possession is not Bob's, then the burden of proof is on the government to prove that. In your hypothetical scenario, there is plenty of evidence that the money is not in fact Bob's, so it's not an issue.
If it turns out the evidence that the money is really Alice's drug money is actually pretty thin, that's a reason Bob should get the money back.
Obvious to who?
If it's so obvious then charge Bob. If it's not then no confiscation.
Why do we want some weird half conviction? And if do you want that then do a plea deal.
No, those people are absolutely not reasonable! Those people want a magic world where we have crystal balls that tell us exactly who's innocent and guilty. That would certainly be nice, but that's not the world we live in.
It's frustrating when the guilty go free because of the rules we have in place to protect the innocent; but those rules didn't come out of nowhere. They are the result of the hard-won experience of thousands of innocent people being punished. If you remove them then innocent people will be punished again.
Absolutely-fucking-not.
Law enforcement should never be able to seize property without the charging of a crime when they know who owns the property.
why not? prosecute them normally, if they show up then the trial proceeds as usual, if not then convict them in absentia and then forfeit the goods. why does this require a whole new system that bypasses all the constitutional rights for domestic citizens?
And legal systems of any nation are more than just the constitution.
So the idea that you can just read one clause in the constitution and therefore clearly know what is allowed and isn't (also, even the interpretation of that clause is not as easy as you are portraying here) is absolutely false.
In any case when a legal system clashes with the wording of the constitution it is that legal system that is wrong. That's what "highest law in the land" means. That is the entire purpose of having a constitution.
Experts love to hide behind "it's complicated!" but in this case they have nowhere to hide.
Pull over a guy, take the paper cash out of his wallet without charging him with a crime. No amount of wordplay can make that constitutional in a reasonable persons mind.
What we are talking about here is just taking the cash, sending you on your way and spending it, sidestepping your legal rights like access to a court provided attorney or a jury trial. It probably doesn't do much to prevent crime even, the fentanyl runners would much prefer you just take the cash they have on them and let them go.
"Shall not be infringed" is a super common refrain among the 2A crowd but taken hyper literally you couldn't take guns away from criminals actively in prison.
I think civil forfeiture is far outside the bounds of what could be condoned under the Bill of Rights but my interpretation only matters at a distance of influencing representatives to pass laws or the SC to rule differently.
If you prefer a criminal matter, swap it out for fraud.
Could you give an example of this?
It's a little hard to reconcile slavery with, say, the Fifth Amendment's prohibition on being "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".
You would've granted slave owners more votes? You feel they were under represented? If I lived in a state alone with a enough slaves I should have been able to dictate policy for the entire nation?
I would have not had slaves.
The alternative here was the articles of confederation or nothing and the states go their own ways as countries, not some fantasy in which the southern states torpedoed their own economies out of some love of the nation.
The constitution and the included 3/5ths compromise most certainly brought about the end of slavery much faster than taking a hard line circa 1790, or anything else that tipped the scales away from the united states forming a national identity would have.
You can't pretend it's not contradictory, though, in a document talking about rights and liberty, and that was the question posed.
That is what amendments do - they change things, and those ones came at no small price. So what is the point about complaining about a problem that six hundred thousand people already lost their lives in a successful attempt to resolve? Slavery has been illegal in this country for a century and a half.
No argument against your point, but a similar[0] Constitutional issue persists today:
Residents of Wyoming are established as 3.23 people for Congressional representation.
Residents of California are about 4/5ths of a person.
[0] Nothing is similar to slavery, and specifically here the fact that the voting power of these 3/5ths allocations was given to people who did not represent the interests of the humans that comprised the allocations in the first place!
> No argument against your point, but a similar Constitutional issue persists today:
Yes, a very similar issue does exist, but the one you are pointing to is not similar.
> Residents of Wyoming are established as 3.23 people for Congressional representation.
The unequal weighting of population for representation in (in descending order of distortion) the Senate, Electoral College, and House as a whole is not really similar to the awarding of extra weight to those who are permitted by the State to vote specifically for people denied liberty as was done in the 3/5 compromise.
The fact that those disenfranchised by felony disqualification are counted—and as whole persons, not 3/5—especially given the way targeted criminalization and penal servitude directly replaced chattel slavery, is, OTOH, a very similar issue.
In addition to felons (permanently disenfranchised in most states), you have temporarily-disenfranchised prisoners, and prison-based population distortions that favor some districts over others.
You could probably make an even greater comparison between the voting powers of:
- a Californian living in a district with high noncitizen population
- a Wyomingian living in a district with a large penitentiary
At least this allows 1) people to litigate smaller seizures 2) creates disincentives for the more abusive cases
Someone should have to pay for the collateral policy damage. It seems that the burden should to those who voted for the policy opposed the innocent victims.
> Civil forfeiture allows police to seize — and then keep or sell — any property they allege is involved in a crime. Owners need not ever be arrested or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be taken away permanently by the government.
--[1]
They don't need to prove or even charge you to take property from you. It's robbery.
The law needs to require a warrant issued by a judge to sieze the property. The property siezed needs to be stored as evidence, kept separate from other budget items in law enforcement organizations so that it cannot be used to cover expenditures (through auction or otherwise), be under the same sort of provisions as indefinitely holding individuals without charges, be returned in total when charges are not brought to trial or when a trial results in an acquittal, and the material should be subject to destruction after a guilty verdict and appeals are exhausted. Basically, the siezing organization shouldn't be able to use the material proceeds as part of the organizations' operating budgets at any time unless the material is voluntarily submitted by the convicted parties in lieu of levied fines after a conviction. It is evidence, not a funding source.
I'm not saying that the government should not be able to take illegitimately gained property from convicted criminals; but that the incentive to do so for material gains by the government without conviction is rife with the potential for abuse as things currently stand.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-po....
There's always the route of undoing civil asset forfeiture entirely, because it makes zero sense to anyone that encounters it or to our justice system.
This is also a good time to point out: when states and the federal government disagree, without mandate for state agencies to follow state law (weed is legal in Michigan) this is the result. The citizens are who pay the price for disagreement, and that mechanic especially needs to change.
Edit:
Fair, they passed "guidance". I'd encourage anything at this point. Doing nothing is for the birds.
You want meaningful reform on anything within 500 miles of this topic from the legislature? Good luck.
Nihilist and fatalist approaches like yours make the outcome certain. If I show up, speak like a big boy, and provide evidence someone might listen. This is the difference.
That's how it works already. That's also why they can do it to whoever they like.
It seems like you've been suggesting just that "the relevant authorities should use their discretion." That doesn't strike me (or, apparently, others) as much of a reform, since that exactly describes the status quo, which does not seem to be working.
What is the role for oversight that you're suggesting? Who does the overseeing? How?
>I'd encourage anything at this point.
fennecfoxen was advocating that it isnt worth trying something
>You want meaningful reform on anything within 500 miles of this topic from the legislature? Good luck.
The goalposts were clearly moved from if even attempting reform is a waste of time, to having a workable solution
Legislatures don't want to make any change unless the people want it. People have to demand it.
Something at the top could help.
Marijuana had nothing to do with this. The police needed a pretense for the civil asset forfeiture, but nothing under the law even requires that the pretense be true, there are no consequences for just lying about it, etc.
People really need to get familiar with civil asset forfeiture. It's done to all sorts of people for all sorts of make-believe reasons by police.
Eg https://reason.com/2020/12/17/justin-amash-introduces-bill-t..., https://ivn.us/2017/09/13/amash-gabbard-lead-surprising-vict....
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/institutef...
There are many ways to do so legally, from equipment donations to contributing to the sheriff’s reelection campaign. For 0.1% of profits you can get them on your side in some situations that might come up:
- you get burgled
- federal law enforcement takes an interest in your industry and asks “who should we look at in your jurisdiction?”
- you need a flexible interpretation of local zoning or fire codes to run your operation, especially if cranky neighbors might complain about noise or smell.
Start with small contributions proactively before they make trouble.
edit: In Illinois, at least, for it to be bribery there needs to be proof of an explicit quid quo pro e.g. a recording of you saying "If you give me X, I will do Y."
Note that "I'm going to give you X," "What a coincidence, I'm going to do Y" does not count.
Sorry if I'm being repetitive ^^^, but seeing the impact of civil forfeiture first-hand really shook me. I still get angry, and it took place 30 years ago!
Between the insane capital required and level of asinine compliance stuff and box checking you need to do to get into the legal weed industry more or less precludes those people from being "easy targets". Your local dirt mover is going far less likely to be able show up in court with a "and that's exactly where each dollar bill came from" accounting than your local weed grower.
I don't know if this would make it more difficult for a seizure to occur but it seems that it would since the physical person is no longer the "owner" or even responsible for operating.
If the assets are worth any significant amount, it's worth protecting them and yourself from the law... as crazy as it sounds.
Police showed to my uncle’s cellphone store. Said their daughter’s IPhone was broken and left a note to an address of a different cellphone shop.
You’re expected to go to that shop, buy the phone in the name of his daughter. They probably won’t actually collect the phone. They will return it for cash.
If you don’t comply, the police will invite your customers to go for a ride around the block.
https://www.aclupa.org/en/issues/criminal-justice-reform/civ...
Any forfeiture, or any supposed necessary violation of individual rights, should require investigation, and should cost the organization behind it, regardless of outcome. This may seem difficult to work, but incentivizing the opposite is completely absurd, and makes corruption inevitable.
So while I don't think they should have done what they did, I'm not shocked that cops walked into a building full of marijuana plants and thought "we have to bust these guys". I think if marijuana became completely legal and unrestricted nationwide, cops would probably get it - "welp, I guess this is legal now".
This seems like a nightmare.
Related video by John Oliver on Last Week Tonight regarding Civil Forfeiture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks