That is correct, but you need to understand the context. It originated in the 1600s as a way for maritime law to deal with pirate/smuggler ships who were operating in international waters, not flying the flag of any nation, and with no registered owner. Charging the ship and its contents with the crime rather than an unknown individual made sense in that context. Applying it to a car registered in the United States, driving down a highway in the United States, and being driven by a US citizen makes absolutely no sense because standard law can and should deal with that situation.
To me it's a leap too far to assign it to a specific object. It has no ongoing operations, it's not a fluid, "living" thing.
But here we are. This is where a more modern supreme court ruling would come in handy I guess.
I'd hate to see how this modern supreme court rules. Odds are likely to be in favor of keeping this policy, especially if some of that money is used to buy an RV or fund fancy vacations
Why not hold the captain of the ship responsible for loading illegal cargo? Isn't this the whole point of a ship's manifest, to record what's on the ship? Like extend it slightly more to also record the legality.
> Why not hold the captain of the ship responsible for loading illegal cargo? Isn't this the whole point of a ship's manifest, to record what's on the ship? Like extend it slightly more to also record the legality.
Just because an airline lets you fly somewhere, you can still be rejected at the other end. I think it's a bit much to expect every captain to know the legality of everything in their hold, to all destinations, and enforce that.
Is it too much to ask? They should be offloading that to whomever they're getting the cargo from and whomever they're getting their cargo from should have a valid import/export license which means they're willing to go through the steps to ship cargo legally.
Our daughter was going overseas and we had to get her passport renewed because it would expire 3 months after she would have gotten home. The country was fine with that but there was a chance that she would show up at the airport and the airline would not allow her to board because it was less than 6 months.
If the airline lets them fly and they're rejected, the airline has to get them back and the airline doesn't want to risk that.
You really have to twist that in bizarre ways to come out saying "yeah but we can seize that guy's money."
Of course someone in power is going to try and twist the meaning to their own gain.
That inevitable desire is literally why the rights needed to be included in the first place.
The US is deeply flawed but generally speaking we have a lot of rights
That's what the amendment system is for.
That's one of the problems with a codified constitution that's as ossified as the one in the US: the language used gets interpreted, and so the meaning of the language depends on the interpretations favoured by whoever's currently holding the reins.
It’s only appropriate when any private citizen could do the same thing. IE: The Army suing a supplier for supplying them with a defective bullets is they same thing anyone who buys large quantities of bullets could do, but people would need to voluntarily enter into such relationships before this applies.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/11/02...
There was a case a few years ago where the parents lost their house because their son once was caught with drugs in the house.
Crime is crime. If they don't take custody of a house because some kind of crime X happened there, they shouldn't do it for drug related cases either. They can always arrest the person dealing the drugs and forgeit the drugs themselves.
That's easy to refute. By the time they take the cash, hand it to the feds, get a percentage back to locals, then a person wins in court and gets their money back... I don't think they give back the exact same physical cash that was taken as "evidence". So when they say it's evidence they are lying - it's not locked up with other evidence, it's taken to a bank and deposited.
Previously, if you refused to talk to the police, that was considered invoking your fifth amendment right against self incrimination, hence the standard advice from attorneys to keep your mouth shut until they were present. Now, you must explicitly invoke it every time the police question you or your silence can be used against you, even if that silence was in response to informal questioning on the street with no intention of arrest.
It all makes sense when you consider how privileged the modern Court is: few of the justices in 2013 or today have actually worked as criminal defense attorneys, and only one has ever worked as a public defender (Ketanji Jackson, for two years; I will give Ginsburg credit for her work at the ACLU, but that is still a notable step above being a public defender). We haven't even had a justice whose read the law (became a lawyer without getting a law degree from a law school) since the death of Robert Jackson in 1954. (Robert Jackson is also the man behind the famous quote "any lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect, in no uncertain terms, to make no statement to the police under any circumstances.")
Now, almost all have come from privileged backgrounds, went to Ivy League institutions, live in gated communities, are completely detached from the reality of what the average American knows about the law, and certainly aren't going to be taken advantage of by the cops. It's no surprise we've seen such an assault on our constitutional rights: they don't understand what life is like outside the ivory tower.
In Brazil we have a problem with the Judiciary too, most of it is completely detached from reality, due to these exact same reasons.
The loophole is that money, unlike most other inanimate objects, isn't considered "property".
Any fine should have the option of a court date attached in order to follow due process, like a traffic fine. But many types of fines don't have the presumption of innocence, or the day in court prescribed. Civil forfeiture is an extension of that process, also relying on the fact that money isn't property so taking it away doesn't violate the "no person may be deprived of property without due process of law" constitutional article.
It's an easy way of declaring ones badassness.
Looking at Mr T, people had to ask themselves, "What kind of person feels confident enough to walk around with that much money on his neck?"
yeah, I know that's the argument, but it flies in the face of all reason
It comes from "we know you're guilty but we can't prove it so we're going to take your stuff away". But that's what presumption of innocence means -- if you can't be proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt then you're not guilty, period! (You might in fact be guilty, but under the law you're not guilty.) Otherwise, there is no presumption of innocence and the police can do whatever they want, just like in some countries where the police are a law to themselves.
Like how you're legally supposed to not have an "expectation of privacy" for your mail, because it's handed by the post office...