Posted on 01/03/2017 1:01:46 PM PST by reaganaut1
By a very large measure, Americans oppose civil asset forfeiture. They think that it is wrong for the government to take property from someone who has not been convicted of any crime. The most recent evidence showing that is found in a recent Cato Institute survey on public attitudes toward the police and in it, 84 percent said they oppose allowing the police to seize a person’s property on mere suspicion that he may have been involved in crime.
Unfortunately, it seems that Donald Trump’s choice for Attorney General, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, is among that small minority of Americans who reflexively support civil asset forfeiture because it supposedly helps fight crime. At least, those were his thoughts during a Judiciary Committee hearing on civil asset forfeiture in May 2015.
The committee had listened to testimony from Russ Caswell of Tewksbury, MA. He explained how his family-owned motel was seized by federal and local officials because some of his customers had violated drug laws while in the rooms they had rented. That was sufficient grounds for the seizure, which would have netted the cooperating agencies (the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Tewksbury Police) roughly $2 million after selling the property. Caswell would have lost nearly his entire wealth merely because of criminal activity he did not know about occurred on his property.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Personally, I couldn’t possibly agree more with you. At issue is the proceeds from the criminal act could be gone by the time a civil procedure completes.
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Perhaps but at least they are not funding joe doe police special drug unit’s new cars.
it has nothing to do with Sessions. Repeal or continuance will not be his business. Those here that raise the issue are just plain foolish
Doesn't matter to me if it's civil asset forfeiture at the local level or federal level -- it's 100% wrong. Period. That's a deal-breaker for me.
fortunately you have nothing to do with it
taking such a narrow view is bad for America
Well, aren’t you the jack-booted thug?
Sessions is a great man. You may disagree on seizure but he is going to be a great AG. Get over it. Free Republic is getting almost unbearable.
I agree.
Hello, due process.
I once had a phone call at the business I used to own, the caller was with the fish and wildlife department. He told me that my boat, a sixteen foot Larsen deep V hull with a one hundred horsepower engine, had been found about a hundred miles from my home. He read off the hull number, engine serial number etc. and all matched my records perfectly. The strange thing was that my boat was sitting on a trailer in my yard and had not been moved in months. I told the man that I was certain it was not my boat and that was the last I heard from them. I still have not figured it out, some people asked why I didn’t go and claim the boat since everything matched but I was not about to go near it, I figured it had been used in drug trafficking, I just don’t know how someone could have an identical boat and motor with matching registration numbers and serial numbers.
Thanks for relating your experience. That was spooky.
I've noticed over the years, that supporters of asset forfeiture are normally involved in profiting from it in some way.
The interest in it by law enforcement seems to magically go away if the profits go to the state's general fund rather than the thieving entities, because then it is just paper work with no discernible payoff to them. Several states have passed laws to take away the profit motive, and you see a rapid drop-off of AF actions, until they figure out a way around it.
It was likely some kind of entrapment action.
Anything else is theft.
The problem which DOES need to be addressed is the accused disposing of assets which would be seized upon conviction in such a way that there is nothing left to seize. But if you're a criminal to begin with you've probably had your liar...I mean, lawyer set up protective fake ownership anyway.
If there's anything I can do to make it completely unbearable and run you off, let me know.
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