Carmen Ortiz’s Sordid Rap Sheet
whowhatwhy.com
whowhatwhy.com
"According to the sworn testimony of a DEA agent operating
out of Boston, it was his job to comb through news stories
for properties that might be subject to forfeiture. When he
finds a likely candidate, he goes to the Registry of Deeds,
determines the value of the property in question, and refers
it to the U.S. attorney for seizure."
Today's quiz in remedial civics: what happens when law enforcement gains the power to control their own funding depending on the way they enforce the law.
P.S. If you'd like a bit of disheartening theater, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_v._$124,700
Market-driven police state?
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
For the record, nowhere in the constitution is the government given the power to seize property, without a warrant describing its evidentiary nature in advance.
Asset Forfeiture is nothing more than theft.
And every prosecutor, cop, or judge who engages in it or allows it is a criminal.
Because both major parties are all in favor of this. Biden was the architect of the drug war that was the excuse for giving the police the power to steal property, and Reagan was the president who signed it into law.
In the past 30 years, thru administrations of both parties, nobody has repealed this law.
The abuse of that law started immediately, and has gone from highway robbery (cops simply pulling over people who look rich and taking their money, never charging them) to a massive $6M heist perpetrated by the FBI where they stole massive amounts of platinum and gold in a "daring" morning raid.
Did you vote for this? IF you really are just now finding out about it, then bully for you and please, consider voting for liberty next time around.
Even if you don't like the 3rd party on offer, vote for it. It won't win, and you've still taken a vote from the demreps.
It has nothing to do with the "current environment" unless by current environment you mean the first past the post voting system.
People who talk about "vote for X party" are just deluding themselves. Parties aren't based on ideologies, they're based on coalitions. To win you need to get a controlling majority of the seats in the legislature, not "be a small government conservative" or "advance the cause of criminal justice reform" or whatever thing you think would fix everything if people would just make decisions based on that. The only reason any party does anything is that they think it will keep them in power.
So that's how you fix problems. You make it so that the candidate who doesn't advance your cause doesn't get reelected -- and you make sure they all understand that before it happens, so that they do advance your cause.
Which is why the drug war has never been fixed. Because we haven't cared enough about it to move the needle. When things like this happen, do you all go out and write your Congressmen a letter that says "fix this or I'm voting against you"? Do media organizations whose lazy government-sources-only coverage favors prosecutors and law enforcement in cases like this get an explosion of phone calls from regular people complaining about biased reporting? No. Which is why it hasn't been fixed.
The moment they are voted into legislative and/or executive branch under current "democracy", they will become a part of the Status Quo.
Which operates on the following rule: Why bother about the spokes when you control the hub?
Having said that, a third party vote is the best option under the circumstances.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-....
Sorry for insisting, but I think it's important. I'm not a US citizen, and I can't vote, the only thing I can do is trumpet it.
Not that the witch hunt is very useful in itself, but it keeps people involved and the more shit we stir, the most likely things will move.
Here's the correct link (too late to edit).
Also, you don't have to be a US citizen to sign (I just read the TOS)!
Thanks to mavhc for pointing out these.
It's functionally equivalent to using the threat of torture to extract a confession.
Is that your legal opinion? You know, there are centuries of jurisprudence exploring the meaning of various constitutional provisions...
And yes, there are centuries of jurisprudence, but it is always changing, evolving, and sometimes even reversing to meet the needs of the present.
That's true in the same way that a broken clock is right twice a day is true.
Politicians, judges and lawyers aren't saints – they follow the beliefs of their times: we currently have policies (torture, detention, eavesdropping, assassination) which are currently politically expedient for many people to accept despite very clearly being unconstitutional.
Have you? Because it didn't happen by magic. They didn't blithely upend things; they argued from first principles and when the founding, axiomatic document listing those principles lacked the needed bases, they changed it through processes that were listed in that document.
If it's such a "clear violation", then you can dig through the case law that explores the many edge cases we've already encountered and cite them as part of a robust, not-easily-dismissed argument that this is a violation. Baldly asserting that it's a "clear violation" says nothing except that you consider your own, personal authority to be a sufficient claim.
Ortiz, and prosecutors like her, may be doing some really shitty things, but they do have this: when they walk into a courtroom, they actually deliver an argument that seems to leave a solid trail between the Constitution and the conviction of guilt. (And it's the defense's job to deliver an argument that the trail is not sufficiently solid.)
Yes. Overturn it. And do it in such a way that it stays overturned.
Guantanamo Bay isn't the only proof the US government tortures it's citizens.
This isn't a game. This is someone's life we're talking about, and about the freedom of citizens not to be tortured and punished before even being found guilty.
Even if it is "legal", it's not right. You wouldn't want that done to your son or mother. No, because it's cruel, unfair and can produce devastating results.
Are you sure you're even on the right website? Gamespot is here: http://gamespot.com
Really? I thought the burden of proof was on the prosecution side to demonstrate guilt.
One well known case in the early 90's was an old black gentlemen who owned a plant nursery, and was detained at an airport for the crime of being black and in possession of $30,000. I think the story was featured on 60 Minutes and the NY Times.
The guy was the son of a sharecropper, was illiterate, did not use checks or credit cards. He had flown from his home to Texas every year with a bag of money to buy plants to ship north to sell after becoming too old to drive. He wasn't committing a crime, so he wasn't arrested -- but his money was kept as it was considered suspicious by the Federal authorities. It was a catch-22 situation, as litigating against the Feds will cost alot more than $30k.
These sort of shakedowns are common in the third world by corrupt police. Make no mistake, this is the same sort of police here. Didn't used to be like this. There has always been some corruption of course, but it wasn't the normal way that things are done.
This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. It is worse than the "your body is a container of alcohol" line used when prosecuting underage drinkers. How can US politicians back something which is so obviously at odds with the rule of law?
But hey, it doesn't affect me directly so why should I care? /s
Theft is a crime.
Of course, whose going to prosecute the prosecutors?
But in civil cases it's "balance of probability".
But there are ways to get that kind of low standard in criminal trials, as well.
What's REALLY fun is when a case gives prosecutors the ability to throw in accusations they don't intend to prove to the usual standard just to inflate sentencing guidelines.
Though, it looks like the Supreme Court is currently taking up a related issue (instance where someone was given additional time due to the judge's application of a 'accomplice brandished a weapon' allegation by the prosecution to raise the minimum sentence. So maybe this practice is on its last legs. (a man can dream).
A few days later, more out of frustration, I created the following meme:
http://memecrunch.com/meme/DV7N/carmen-ortiz-for-great-justi...
Image is here:
http://memecrunch.com/meme/DV7N/carmen-ortiz-for-great-justi...
Hopefully someone here finds it darkly amusing.
The system incentivizes abuse of power and coercion of suspects. No one in the system is honestly interested in absurdly high sentences. hey are only interested in "winning", which is the main problem.
Competitiveness has its place in sport, in the economy and at hackathons.
But a trial should NEVER be a competition. I am aware that the legal system in many countries devolved to this. BUt we should not rest to attack this aspect.
> Thanks to tough-on-crime laws and mandatory-minimum sentencing, prosecutors are able to extort—if they so choose—a quick end to the proceedings and a headline-worthy admission of guilt.
"Tough-on-crime" is the real culprit -- and it's what a strong majority of Americans support.
These agents profit from destroying people's lives, and they Break the law when they do so.
The problem is, who is going to prosecute the prosecutors? Whose going to collect evidence? The police who enjoy protection by prosecutors? The judges who work for the same employer?
I wish I had an answer to how to make sure this doesn't happen again, but I don't. As long as the majority of Americans have safety as their #1 concern, things are only going to get worse. And if I knew how to change the attitude of an entire nation, I would be making a killing in marketing.
Don't think she's particularly evil, she's your everyday average prosecutor.
I don't get the impression that anyone is saying "Everyone does it, so she's fine".
By getting mad at her personally, you are in effect becoming Timothy McVeigh. He took out an entire building full of feds and nothing happened. I'm not even sure that carpet nuking Washington, D.C. would put a dent in federal overreach. It's a mass social movement, not a breakdown of part of the system.
At no point did I suggest that anybody be harmed.
So go read my comment.
...
Now, what you read was a conditional statement. The article claims that prosecutor Ortiz is a bad seed, a "lone gunman theory" of a rogue lawyer who conducts legal lynchings on her own accord.
What I replied is that IF that hypothesis were true, she would have been taken out long ago. A lone psychopath simply cannot go around destroying people's lives in broad daylight. If nothing else, the widow of one of her victims will do her in. Since she still breathes, the rogue prosecutor theory is conclusively disproven.
Read the next paragraph of my comment.
Now, Timothy McVeigh had a rogue government theory, just like the article we are discussing. He thought that if you could just prune back the feds a bit, do a little gardening, that they would get the message. He obviously failed. If anything, he made them stronger and more determined. So the theory that government overreach has anything to do with individual government employees is very conclusively disproven.
Logically, then, if you believe that naming and shaming prosecutor Ortiz will help, you are making the same mistake as Timothy McVeigh, and for the same reasons. The correlation of Ortiz's actions with Aaron's outcome does not imply causation.
You are glad I am being downvoted into oblivion. Of course you are. You are part of the system, and the system defends itself against strong statements about how things actually work. You and your downvoting friends are antibodies trying to maintain the status quo. You are part of the vast social movement that has given us asset forfeiture and national bunny rabbit police.
The system definitely needs to change. But we, the people, are part of the system and can exert political pressure on other systems to change. Sometimes you need a person to be an icon of what is wrong, and work change through her. This is far more powerful than any act of violence. (And indeed, gross abuse of power is getting worse, but it is also not widespread. So while there are thousands of Americans who have won the "your life is now ruined whatever you do!" lottery held by the government, it's still only thousands. When more than 1% of the population wins this lottery (4M or so), then I think physical violence should be considered. But not before.
Of course, I could be misinterpreting what is being said, and the commenter is free to correct me, but it does look that way given he jumped from removing Ortiz from office to assasination.
My God man, have you no sense of decency or decorum?
Honestly, is it too much to expect that people read carefully before censoring things?
The problem with prosecutors is that they'd better know where that line between 'appropriate' and 'inappropriate' is, and if they're looking for magic words in poorly-worded statutes for their Trump Card, they've failed in their duty.
Until the public is willing to call foul on these people, this practice will continue. Until the Congress (and state legislatures, who are somewhat less competent on the whole0 can get THEIR acts together, they need to look at everything they right from the perspective of a rogue prosecutor.
That's tough, but, crap, you take a government job, you get saddled with some hard work from time to time.
Petition the Obama administration to: Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-stat...