“We are all equal under the law. You can’t charge a person more because they have more money.”
There may have been a Supreme Court case about this but under civil forfeiture law the police could seize your vehicle if you were found with drugs in your car. The penalty for getting caught with a joint in your car would be very different for a guy driving a $500 wreck, and another driving a new Porsche.
Civil forfeiture is something I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the last 15 years. If you have a lot of money on you, they can simply take it because they suspect that it is drug money. And they won’t even press charges against you. They will LITERALLY press charges against the money. I kid you not.
Google it. There are two cases making their way to the SCOTUS as I type this. One is a guy sent by his boss to buy a few used big rigs. The cops confiscated his $185k at the airport. The other is a woman and her father with alzeimers. In this case, they were pulled over by a cop and searched. The money was confiscated and they never got any back. This was also in the “just under $200k range.
Civil forfeiture law is becoming the new “unarmed black guy shot by cops” thing. It doesn’t happen often, but it is mindbogglingly unjust and it affects people with even less than $1,000 on them.