Posted on 10/26/2019 12:09:08 PM PDT by Mount Athos
Thanks to chronic abuse and misuse by local police departments, the days may be numbered for South Carolina's forfeiture system that allows cops to seize and keep cash and property of the people they arrest in order to fund their own departments.
Circuit Judge Steven H. John has ruled that the South Carolina's civil asset forfeiture regulations violate the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the citizens.
Civil asset forfeiture has been in the crosshairs across the country for years now because it allows police and prosecutors to declare that any money or property owned by a suspect is "connected" to a crime, seize it, and then ultimately keep it for themselves. And because this is a civil process, police and prosecutors can do this without having to convict anybody. It's the assets that are considered the defendants (in this case, the respondent is actually the $20,771 that Horry County wants to seize from a man charged with trafficking cocaine), prosecutors typically have a lower threshold to make their case than "beyond a reasonable doubt," and people who are pulled into these forfeiture cases don't have access to public defenders and have to fund their own lawyers.
The end result: Police trying to keep whatever they can grab off anybody they arrest, claiming it's all proceeds or property connected to criminal activities, and using it to line their own pockets. This incentivizes police to look for people who have assets that can be seized. Local newspapers in South Carolina teamed up to investigate the extent of abuses and discovered police agencies across the state had seized more than $17 million in assets across three years. In one-fifth of the cases, nobody was charged or even arrested for a crime.
Judge John notes all of these problems in a decisive ruling that smacks down the practice of civil asset forfeiture. In his 15-page opinion, he writes that South Carolina's forfeiture practice violate both the U.S. Constitution and the state's because the statutes "(1) place the burden on the property owner to prove their innocence, (2) unconstitutionally institutionally incentivizes forfeiture officials to prosecute forfeiture actions, and (3) do not mandate judicial review or judicial authorization prior to or subsequent to the seizure." He also notes that the statutes violate citizens' Eighth Amendment protections against excessive fines.
South Carolina's asset forfeiture system is particularly terrible because 75 percent of the seized assets go directly to the law enforcement agency that seized the property, while 20 percent goes to the state solicitor's offices (the prosecutors). The money seized goes directly to the people trying to seize it. The money seized is supposed to be used solely for "drug enforcement activities," but John observes that this restriction has very little oversight; law enforcement ends up approving spending above and beyond what their agencies have budgeted, with the understanding that they'll make up the difference from seizures. That doesn't even get into the issue that tying a police department's budget to proceeds from fighting the drug war warps their priorities to such a degree that they're not focusing on crimes that have actual victims.
Later in the ruling, John painstakingly goes through a checklist to show exactly how the state's forfeiture system leads to bad incentives and a cycle of revenue-seeking: (image of checklist in original article link)
"We have to find more money to seize or our budget will run out and we'll lose our jobs," is not a model for a policing system that is focused on fighting actual crime.
But the fight to reform South Carolina's system is far from over. The decision doesn't extend statewide, and Horry County's Solicitor's Office has filed a motion asking John to reconsider his ruling, noting that, among other things, the defendant in this case pleaded guilty to the crimes and the seized cash is worth much less than the potential maximum fine of $50,000 he could have faced.
Writing at Forbes, Nick Sibilla notes that in the wake of local reporting about the expansive abuse of asset forfeiture in South Carolina, lawmakers attempted to pass a bill which would have eliminated civil forfeiture entirely. It stalled due to some technical issues with the wording, but Sibilla expects a revised version to return in the next legislative session. If it passes, South Carolina would join New Mexico, Nebraska, and North Carolina in completely eliminating civil asset forfeiture. A conviction would be required in order for police and prosecutors to try to keep somebody's cash and property for themselves.
truncated title to fit
“S.C. Judge: Unconstitutional for Police to Seize Property Without Proving Crimes”
Uh, yeah? No kidding?
bttt
Let’s get this going all the way to SCOTUS.
Right now local & state cops are no better than Mexican cops when it comes to shake-downs.
For example,if large quantities of drugs are being sold out of a particular home and the owner(s) of that home knew about it and did nothing to stop it I can see making loss of that home as being part of a guilty plea or verdict.
But stopping a guy on the highway for a broken tail light and seizing the $5,000 in cash that he's carrying because it *might* be drug related is criminal.
They’ve enjoyed their gravy train for years. They won’t go down without a fight.
Rotten bastards.
So, our ARs and AKs are safe from beat0?
We have that crap here in Louisiana. It never should have been allowed to take root.
Yea really.....Sounds like a complete no brainer on it’s face.
Only the IRS is entitled to take the property of citizens without due process, or even a suspicion of criminal behavior. The only “crime” that need be proven is that the property exists, and the IRS won’t tolerate competition. As onerous as the police seizures are, they don’t compare to the injustices inflicted by the federal government.
Attention red flag law states.
I’ve no problem with asset foreiture- since our Founders had no problem with it.
In certain circumstances- mostly smuggling.
But the abuse now is rampant.
Welcome to Sanders/Harris/o’rourke World. And, without a 2nd Amendment, how much worse does anyone think it could get?
‘...because the statutes
“(1) place the burden on the property owner to prove their innocence,
(2) unconstitutionally institutionally incentivizes forfeiture officials to prosecute forfeiture actions, and
(3) do not mandate judicial review or judicial authorization prior to or subsequent to the seizure.”
I might argue that the first two could apply to red flag laws.
This was always a BS policy/system paying police depts to steal from citizens. If anything the money should be used for anything BUT law enforcement.
Kind of the same logic about welfare...pay a man not to work they won’t. Pay a police dept to steal from citizens and they will.
Even in the case you say is ok, the police dept should not get the money. Maybe the general fund or something else, but you can’t pay the police to steal. It gives them too much incentive to lie and fabricate evidence to ensure they get their payday.
Well gee.
That’s really great of you.
Since nobody else minds it if there is a conviction first either. The whole reason for the conversation at all is because a conviction hasn’t been required for many decades.
Amazing. A judge figured this out...
Posted the Freeper in a forum that the left has called to criminalize.......
Why would you want to give any “public servant” the power to take everything away from you? Being Jewish was not a death sentence in Germany in the 1920s and yet by the 1930s the Nazis has begone to perform “civill asset forfeiture” and reducing Jews to poverty.
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