Free Republic

FBI Overstepped in Search of Hundreds of Safe Deposit Boxes, Court RulesThe 9th Circuit compared the searches to the “abuses of power” that “led to adoption of the Fourth Amendment in the first place.”The FBI overstepped its constitutional authority when agents searched hundreds of safe deposit boxes without warrants in 2021, a federal appeals court ruled. The court compared the FBI’s tactics to the kind of indiscriminate searches that led to the enactment of the Bill of Rights in the first place.In March 2021, the FBI raided U.S. Private Vaults, a safe deposit box company in Beverly Hills, California. The...

An FBI raid on private safe deposit boxes has triggered a significant legal battle over civil asset forfeiture and the lengths to which federal authorities can use the practice, which has often been referred to as “Policing for Profit.”The outcome of the court proceedings could turn this into a landmark case that helps to further define the parameters in which federal law enforcement can use the controversial procedure.FBI agents cataloged Cartier bracelets, Rolex watches and stacks of cash as they combed through safe deposit boxes seized from a Beverly Hills business accused of money laundering. But the owners of many...

The decision provides important protection for property rights, and features a powerful concurring opinion by prominent conservative Judge Amal Thapar. In many states, asset forfeiture laws allow law enforcement agencies to seize valuable property based on mere suspicion that it was used in a crime, and then keep it even if the owner was never convicted of any crime. On top of that, some force owners to wait many months before they even have a chance to challenge the forfeiture in a hearing. Yesterday, in Ingram v. Wayne County, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a...

Two local TV news outlets, WFAA and CBS11, picked up a story this week that was first reported on the Dallas Police Department’s Facebook page. On the surface, it reads like a feel-good story: On December 2, an adorable K9 named Ballentine identified a piece of carry-on luggage at Dallas Love Field Airport that contained $100,000 in cash. Police seized the money and posted a photo of the dog with stacks of cash laid out on a table. Good boy. Case closed. But not so fast. According to the reports, the money belonged to a 25-year-old woman from Chicago,...

Q: Can the government take your property without a conviction? How is that legal? Civil forfeiture is when the government seizes the money, homes and cars of people engaged in criminal activity. The money is mostly used to boost the budget of law enforcement agencies. Historically, civil forfeiture was used infrequently until it was developed as a tool in the war on drugs in the 1980s. It expanded in use to seizing the cars of intoxicated drivers, or the proceeds from activities ranging from illegal gambling to securities fraud. The reason this is legal is that, while people have constitutional...

One of government’s most shocking powers is civil asset forfeiture or seizure. This power occurs when law enforcement confiscates private property with or without charging the owner with a crime. In Tennessee, the betting odds say it is more likely personal property will be taken by law enforcement than through a robbery. Scary, isn't it? Going back slightly more than a decade you will find Tennessee law enforcement has taken more than $150 million in cash and personal property – without criminal charges or legal accusations of criminal activity. The proceeds from these types of seizures are generally applied to...

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other Department of Homeland Security agents seized more than $2 billion in cash from travelers in U.S. airports between 2000 and 2016, according to a new report by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm. The institute's report is the first to comprehensively analyze the use of civil asset forfeiture by federal law enforcement in airports, where multiple news investigations have revealed horror stories of passengers having their money taken even though they weren't ever charged with a crime. Take a case that Reason covered: Rustem Kazazi, a U.S. citizen who...

When he heads to airports now, Samuel Haile thinks of that day at Buffalo's airport a few years ago. The government took $12,000 from his carry-on and wouldn't give it back. Haile was not charged with a crime ... Dozens of passengers have suffered such a loss in recent years in Buffalo. With an X-ray machine, a screener spots a dense mass in a piece of luggage. If it's an unusually large sum of cash, the government takes it on the suspicion that it's drug money. At Buffalo and every other airport in the country, the TSA screens bags and...

SOUTH FAYETTE TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A local man’s life savings of more than $82,000 was seized at Pittsburgh International Airport in August, and now he and his daughter are suing, Channel 11’s news exchange partners at TribLIVE reported. Rebecca Brown, 54, of Lowell, Mass., told TribLIVE her 79-year-old retired father, Terry Rolin, of South Fayette Township, asked her to help manage the cash he and his late parents had hidden in hiding spots throughout the family home. “It was late Saturday night after the banks closed when he gave me the money, and I had an early (Monday) morning flight...

Governor Phil Murphy today signed legislation (S1963) mandating comprehensive disclosure and transparency requirements for the system of civil asset forfeiture. “New Jersey law enforcement agencies currently have no permanent statutory requirement to disclose civil asset forfeitures,” said Governor Murphy. “This legislation would boost confidence in our justice system by requiring county prosecutors to track and report data on this practice. Allowing the public to understand how assets are being seized, where seized funds go, and where forfeited property is going is a huge step forward for transparency and accountability.” Under the bill, county prosecutors would submit quarterly reports to the...

When police arrested Luis Melendez on drug charges, they found $2,928 in cash alongside drugs and weapons in his bedroom. The drugs and weapons became evidence in his criminal case, but prosecutors also went after the money in civil court using a common but little-understood practice called civil asset forfeiture. When Melendez fought to keep the money, they used his statements against him in his criminal case. New Jersey’s highest court on Wednesday declared this practice an abuse of power, though the ruling upheld Melendez’s conviction based on the other evidence against him. The decision places additional limits on New...

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case that may rein in abusive property seizures by state and local governments through the highly controversial legal tool known as civil asset forfeiture. The case at issue involves a man named Tyson Timbs, who sold $225 worth of heroin to undercover police officers on two occasions, as a means of raising money to support his own drug habit. Police arrested Timbs while he was driving to a third drug deal, and he ultimately pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to a year of home confinement and five years of...

Utah Supreme Court to decide whether police can avoid ban on taking money from motorists not charged with any crime by calling in the feds. Voters in Utah banned state officials from seizing property from people who committed no crime almost two decades ago -- or so they thought. Ever since Initiative B passed with 69 percent of the vote, police have evaded its provisions by seizing cash, turning it over to federal authorities, and then taking a cut of the proceeds in a way that is prohibited under state law. The Utah Supreme Court last week held oral arguments...

Courts in 14 Alabama counties awarded $2.2 million to law enforcement agencies through civil asset forfeiture actions filed in 2015 – a practice some Alabama lawmakers is hoping to end. Civil asset forfeiture essentially allows law enforcement take and keep property even if its owner isn’t convicted of a crime. On Wednesday, the Alabama Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill to change the civil asset forfeiture process in hopes of protecting the property and due process rights of Alabamians. Under current state law, law enforcement agencies can seize property on the mere suspicion that it was either involved in a...

A lucrative battle against Mexican drug cartels is being fought on the sides of an interstate in three of Alabama's more rural counties. Civil asset forfeiture has come under fire in recent years, as some law enforcement agencies across the country have deployed the tactic in ways that have been widely criticized as abusive. But a small drug task force operating in Greene, Marengo and Sumter counties - collectively, Alabama's 17th Judicial Circuit - has leveraged the practice to take millions of dollars worth of cash, drugs and other property off the street in recent years, much of which they...

Police can take your money or property and keep it, even if no charges are filed. Clarence Thomas is famously taciturn on the bench. But his few words carry a great deal of weight. Though the matter has not yet come before the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas is very much at the center of a federal case with a name that sounds like it ought to have come from a William Gaddis novel: United States v. Seventeen Thousand Nine Hundred Dollars in United States Currency. The case has the potential to help rein in one of the most abused powers...

Civil forfeiture remains a controversial issue in America since it's "a process by which the government can take and sell your property without ever convicting, or even charging, you with a crime." The procedures are civil, which means defendants do not receive the same protections given to criminal defendants.Connecticut has put an end to this procedure when the legislature passed a law that bans civil forfeiture without a criminal conviction.Video - "Policing for Profit Visualized: How Big Is Civil Forfeiture?"The Law Democrat Governor Dannel Malloy signed HB 7146 into law on Monday after it "passed both the House and Senate...

The legitimate purpose of government? It is to protect citizens from force and fraud, to defend individuals against violent and criminal attacks on their persons and property, and, beyond that, to leave them at liberty to pursue their own happiness. Tyranny, conversely, is what we call governments that engage in force and fraud, committing violent and criminal acts against innocent people — even when those crimes are cloaked in the costume of legality. In these United States, at this modern moment in time, which is it? Do we live in a legitimately governed country or an abject tyranny? Or is...

Justice Clarence Thomas questions the constitutionality of taking property from motorists with civil procedures. The idea that the government can take away someone's car or cash without due process offends at least one member of the US Supreme Court. In a statement Monday, Justice Clarence Thomas called on his colleagues to revisit civil asset forfeiture, the process that allows prosecutors to go after assets allegedly linked in some way to a crime. The justice argued the system has been widely abused. "Civil proceedings often lack certain procedural protections that accompany criminal proceedings, such as the right to a jury trial...

The U.S. Border Patrol says over $3 million has been seized after it was found on Tuesday inside two cars in Escondido, California. ... The cash was being smuggled from the U.S. into Mexico.