Free Republic

On Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced the “Deterring Undue Enforcement by Protecting Rights of Citizens from Excessive Searches and Seizures,” or DUE PROCESS, Act. The reforms contained in Grassley’s bill would significantly alter the federal civil asset forfeiture landscape, dramatically improving the lot of innocent property owners caught up in a skewed and unfair forfeiture system. Civil asset forfeiture laws target property, not people. As a result, no criminal charges or convictions are needed in civil forfeiture cases. Rather, the government need only prove by a preponderance of the evidence that there is a nexus between...

" If some policeman thinks you’re doing something illegal, your life is over. Without money, you cannot hire a lawyer and they can just rob everything you have on a whim."

Oklahoma Highway Patrol Uses New Device To Seize Money Used During The Commission Of - News9.com http://m.news9.com/story.aspx?story=32168555&catId=112032 Posted: Jun 07, 2016 5:57PM CDT Aaron Brilbeck, News 9 You may have heard of civil asset forfeiture. That's where police can seize your property and cash without first proving you committed a crime; without a warrant and without arresting you, as long as they suspect that your property is somehow tied to a crime. Now, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol has a device that also allows them to seize money in your bank account or on prepaid cards. It's called an ERAD, or...

--snip-- He was never charged with a crime and the state even dropped its effort to seize the money. But a trial judge wouldn't go along. And the Arkansas Court of Appeals last week refused the appeal to return the cash. --snip-- But the appellate court instead ruled that civil forfeiture cases must follow the state’s civil procedure rules, which only allow 10 days after judgment to file motions “to vacate, alter, or amend the judgment.” In short, he was too late in filing. Since Espinoza’s motion was “untimely,” the Court of Appeals dismissed his appeal.

Oklahomans whose assets are unjustly seized through the civil asset forfeiture process can recover their attorney fees under a new state law. Gov. Mary Fallin on Thursday signed legislation passed by the House and Senate that allows for the recovery of attorney fees in forfeiture cases. Republican Sen. David Holt of Oklahoma City authored the bill and says he believes it will encourage

Despite new Michigan laws that begin to limit the ability of law enforcement agencies to take property from a person who has not been convicted of a crime, civil liberties activists say that the practice, known as "civil asset forfeiture," is still a problem. Their plan of action? Work at the local level to ban it. “We need to put police back in the role of being protectors of society rather than glorified armed robbers, which is what they’ve become under civil asset forfeiture,” said Shane Trejo, who is organizing petition drives in Oakland County. Trejo became involved through his...

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts signed a bill on Tuesday that eliminates civil forfeiture, which allows law enforcement to seize and keep property without filing charges or securing criminal convictions. The bill, LB 1106, passed the unicameral legislature last week by a vote of 38 to 8. Civil forfeiture has ensnared a wide swath of victims in Nebraska. A Peruvian pastor once had $14,000 seized during a traffic stop. Only after the local chapter of the ACLU intervened was he able to recover his cash. Last year, a federal appellate court upheld forfeiting more than $63,000 in savings from a decorated...

Here's an interesting factoid about contemporary policing: In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did. Martin Armstrong pointed this out at his blog, Armstrong Economics, last week. Officers can take cash and property from people without convicting or even charging them with a crime — yes, really! — through the highly controversial practice known as civil asset forfeiture. Last year, according to the Institute for Justice, the Treasury and Justice departments deposited more than $5 billion into their respective asset forfeiture funds. That same year, the FBI reports that...

In June 2014, the IRS seized $153,907.99 from Ken Quran's bank account - his life savings - even though he did nothing wrong. . . the IRS may seize a person's bank assets if it discovers a pattern of frequent transactions under $10,000. Banks are required to report cash transactions over $10,000 and it's a crime if one tries to avoid that reporting by purposefully keeping all transactions below that amount. The laws are intended to suss out drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime or terrorist activity. But the IRS doesn't need any evidence of wrongdoing before seizing the...

Two Communist Party MPs have prepared a draft law that reintroduces property confiscation as punishment for crimes. They propose it for many cases, including instigation of hatred, organization of mass unrest and drug trafficking. One of the bill's sponsors, Yury Sinelshikov, told business daily Kommersant that despite the fact that the law currently allows to confiscate property acquired by criminal means, in reality such measure is applied very rarely. The main reason being that once property is purchased it is very difficult to tell which funds were used for the acquisition. The MPs suggested a return to the Soviet-era practice...

Recently I wrote about a suit challenging the law in Arizona - a state that's very friendly towards the abomination called civil asset forfeiture. There, innocent people who have had their property stolen by public officials have to worry that if they fight to get it returned and lose the case, the government will force them to pay out additional money to cover its legal costs in fending off their claims. Across the state line in New Mexico, a different but equally vexing legal situation prevails. Back in summer, the state legislature unanimously passed a bill that defangs the civil...

During a talk radio debate last week, Tulsa's district attorney, Steve Kunzweiler, warned that civil forfeiture reform would invite "some of the most violent people in the history of this planet" to set up shop in Oklahoma, making decapitated bodies "hung from bridges" a familiar sight in the Sooner State. Last month, Steve Jones, an assistant district attorney, told Tennessee legislators "criminals will thank you" for making it harder to confiscate people's property. These are the noises that cops and prosecutors make when people talk about restricting their license to steal. A new report from the Institute for Justice, which...

Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. In 2010 alone, the value of assets seized grew by +52.8% from 2009 and was six times greater than the total for 1989. Then by 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year, making this 35% of the entire number of assets collected from 1989 to 2010 in a single year. According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses....

Even though Michigan took steps this year to restrict civil asset forfeiture and require more disclosure of the practice, an authority in the field says the state has not gone nearly far enough. The just-released second edition of the "Policing for Profit" report by the Institute for Justice gives Michigan a grade of D- and ranks it 44th in the nation for practices it uses under a state-federal forfeiture program. In Michigan, civil forfeiture laws allow police agencies and sheriffs to keep 100 percent of the proceeds from items their officers seize, one item that contributed to the state's poor...

According to the Institute for Justice’s grading of the states on how bad they are when it comes to civil asset forfeiture, Arizona is among the worst, getting a grade of D. (Only five states are worse, with D-minus grades.) One reason why Arizona deserves its bad grade is the fact that its law attempts to deter individuals who have had their property seized from trying to recover it. Specifically, property owners who decide to fight back are liable for repaying the state for its attorneys’ fees if they lose. A recent case, Cox v. Voyles, et al arose out...

Findings of a recent poll suggest that most Americans are unfamiliar with civil asset forfeiture laws, a highly controversial policy that lets police and prosecutors seize private property — including cash, vehicles, and homes — without ever convicting the owner of a crime, or in some cases, even arresting the person. In a Huffington Post/YouGov survey released Aug. 28, nearly 3 of every 4 respondents (72 percent) answered no when asked if they had heard of the term “civil asset forfeiture.” A majority wrongly believed that an individual’s property can be seized “only if the person has been charged with...

Expect the Mongols Nation case to be dismissed by Judge David O. Carter next Monday afternoon. A hearing on the dismissal is scheduled for 2 p.m. in Carter’s courtroom in the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and Courthouse in Santa Ana, California. The case has attracted national attention. At issue is the question of whether the government, or a couple of rogue federal prosecutors named Christopher Brunwin and Stephen R. Welk, can forbid members of the Mongols Motorcycle Club from wearing the club’s distinctive insignia. Brunwin and Welk have made careers of this. They attempted to seize the Mongols trademarks in...

One of the most abhorrent current governmental practices is that of civil asset forfeiture. Turning the usual rules of due process of law upside-down, civil asset forfeiture enables local, state, or federal authorities to confiscate money and/or property from individuals merely on suspicion that the property was somehow involved in a criminal activity. These odious laws should, as I have previously suggested, go the way of the Jim Crow Laws. They’re unfair, easily abused, and incompatible with due process. Once property has been taken, it is necessary for the owner to go to court and try proving his innocence –...

The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office has agreed to change two of the most scrutinized aspects of its civil forfeiture program - a $6-million-a-year juggernaut aimed at taking cash and property out of the hands of drug dealers. In federal court filings this week, city lawyers agreed to limit their practice of barring homeowners from properties tied up in forfeiture proceedings until the case has made its way before a judge. Prosecutors also said they would no longer enforce several controversial requirements routinely included in deals struck with property owners to settle forfeiture cases. Those include restrictions blocking relatives accused of...

LOS ANGELES (CN) - A former FBI special agent has been indicted for allegedly stealing over $100,000 in drug money seized during the execution of search warrants, the Justice Department said Thursday. Scott Bowman, 44, was charged on Wednesday with three counts of conversion of property by a federal employee, three counts of obstruction, two counts of money laundering, one count of falsifying records and one count of witness tampering. The indictment was unsealed on Thursday and alleges Bowman stole the money between June and August 2014, after the funds were transferred to his custody following the execution of search...