Comment by krispyfi
3 days ago
It's never made sense to me, but the standard explanation is that because they aren't accusing a person (the owner of the money), but only accusing an inanimate object (the money itself), constitutional protections don't apply. Pretty scary that this is accepted as normal!
>It's never made sense to me, but the standard explanation is that because they aren't accusing a person (the owner of the money), but only accusing an inanimate object
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.
But when you fly people who clearly have an owner (themself) to another country and they don't have a passport, the country holds the airline accountable.
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.
If you never want to get captains to be willing to sail to your ports again… also, manifests can be wrong, or insufficiently descriptive. Manifest may accurately say a container is full of machine parts. But neglect to mention the machine they are parts of is a machine gun.
Airlines seem to have a policy of passports need to be valid (not expire) for six months after the trip.
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.
> But when you fly people who clearly have an owner (themself) to another country and they don't have a passport, the country holds the airline accountable.
> 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.
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Even then that would imply some legal personhood on the part of the vessel and it's operations, much like a registered company.
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.
> 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
It's the explanation, but it still makes no sense to me. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures..."
You really have to twist that in bizarre ways to come out saying "yeah but we can seize that guy's money."
It doesn't make sense because it's insane mental gymnastics being used to justify obviously unconstitutional conduct. The bill of rights is very, very, clear on this.
The bill of rights applies to criminal law. Civil asset forfeiture falls under 'civil' law (hence the name) which works under very different rules (for example the standard for a finding of guilt in much lower for civil law than criminal). The US Justice system routinely bypasses controls/limits/restrictions placed on it by moving things over to the 'civil law' side.
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Nah, it's not. Things sometimes needs to be spelled out so that there's ZERO wiggle room. That's why the universal declaration of human rights had to be so extensive and verbose. There are people that will justify a missing comma as their actions being allowed by the constitution.
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It's obviously not, or you wouldn't find so many people (successfully!) arguing against your interpretation.
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.
This here dog is an officer of the law and he smells money in your car, and uh, ya see, that money's wanted. please step out so i may confiscate it. Disagree with his infallible assessment? that's disorderly conduct sir, place your hands behind your back.
Just don't ask for a "lawyer,dawg" because they don't have one of those.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/11/02...
It gets pretty messed up when the police can take custody of an entire house because someone once had drugs there.
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.
In general, it's pretty messed up that there's an exceptionalism about drug related crime (and some other kinds of crime).
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.
>> the standard explanation is that because they aren't accusing a person (the owner of the money), but only accusing an inanimate object (the money itself), constitutional protections don't apply
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.
SCOTUS is out of touch with reality. And I'm not reacting to Trump-era decisions - even under Obama, the justices were watering down the Bill of Rights in cases like Salinas v. Texas (2013).
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.
> 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.
Then I should be able to sue the police departments property. Gosub100 vs copcar. They can then file a claim to get it back from me.
Sorry bro, qualified immunity was invented by the courts to prevent that.
> but only accusing an inanimate object (the money itself), constitutional protections don't apply.
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.
You're just making things up. Civil Forfeiture is used for non-money items regularly, the definition of money has nothing to do with it.
Cars are not money, and are often confiscated/impounded/sold for Civil Forfeiture.
So bitcoins are safe, i assume. And, as a bonus, a dog can't smell it:)
I think so but then again so is a bank card. The card itself your property. And the money it gives access to are with the bank which means the concept of civil forfeiture no longer works (the police can't just frisk the bank and take the money).
Very interesting. So I can walk safetly in the street with a million dollar necklace, but not with $1000 in cash?
As safe as you can be with a million dollar necklace around your neck... But you're safe from legal civil forfeiture. Abusive forfeiture is a whole other matter entirely and (IANAL) I'm willing to bet the ones committing the abuse will get the presumption of innocence and you will have to prove the abuse.
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not necessarily; If the police recently busted a <gun ring/drug deal/insert generic illegal activity> paying for goods with that same style necklace(or any mental gymnastics to link the item type to a crime) then they could seize it as surely it is part of illegal activity.
> accusing an inanimate object (the money itself)
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.
That is sophistry.
It appears that the law is full of totally BS circumventions like this, that only make sense as abuse of the spirit of the law.
Like how you're legally supposed to not have an "expectation of privacy" for your mail, because it's handed by the post office...
You don’t have an expectation of privacy for the outside of your mail, because people can see the outside. The inside of the mail you do have an expectation of privacy, because someone can’t just see the inside of your mail. Unless it’s smelly, because people have noses.
"It doesn't matter that you don't consent to the search. We're not searching you, just that stuff that is attached to you. So, shut up, or we're arresting you for interfering"
Imagine if the same logic was used for a criminal defense: "Your honor, I didn't kill $VICTIM, it was the $WEAPON that killed $VICTIM".