[TKDietz]

This guy may very well have been carrying drug money. The government did not prove that though. The higher court apparently ruled that having a large sum of money in your vehicle is proof enough of drug activity. That's bad, because that will expand forfeitures even more and a lot of people who weren't guilty of a thing will have their money seized. Sure, it's stupid to carry a lot of cash, but should we punish people who have done nothing wrong other than not use particularly good sense? These forfeitures are getting out of hand. In my county law enforcement seizes at least several hundred thousand dollars a year. Most are not large seizures. Often it's less than a hundred dollars, or just a few hundred, or maybe even a grand or two. They pretty much any money they find and then file forfeiture suits and serve the "victims" complaints that they must respond to in twenty days. Often these people have no idea how to respond to a lawsuit so when they twenty days have passed and no Answer is filed, the prosecutors just send the judge a default judgment to sign and they get to keep the money. Then they spend it on important things like "company cars" for all prosecutors, some of their staff, several in law enforcement, the wife of a cop who they claim is in law enforcement because she is a probation officer, etc. All of our prosecutors have their cell phones they use for personal purposes as well as work paid for, their memberships to the gym are covered, cable TV in all of their plush offices, fancy all expense paid continuing legal education trips, some furniture they purchased to "loan" to the judge for his plush personal break room (this one ticks me off worse than the others), and on and on.

[Tancred]

Hey everybody, please take a few minutes to read what the judges actually wrote on this case, not just what was reported in the article:

http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2006/moneyseize.pdf

Here's a revealing quote from the decision itself:

Gonzolez purportedly carried $125,000 in cash with him on his flight, for the purpose of buying a truck that he had never seen, from a third party whom he had never met, with the help of a friend whose name he could not recall at trial.

Folks, if you just take the time to look at the actual decision itself, you will find that it supports my initial suspicions that these guys were up to no good. I think that the court made the right decision on this one.