Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Charges? We Don’t Need No Stinking Charges

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

So if I may, I would like to explain the basic problems with asset forfeiture in simple and straightforward terms. In their opposition to it, the editors at National Review said, “Asset forfeiture is a constitutionally questionable practice,” and while it was good to see them calling for Jeff Sessions to get a hold of himself, I would prefer to call it constitutionally damnable. The Attorney General just loosened some of the restrictions on the godless practice that the Obama administration had placed on it . . .

Excuse me. I have to go lie down for a bit.

Over the last decade, the government has seized 3 billion (with a b) worth of goods from people who were never charged with a crime. This can happen because the bulk of cases come from civil cases. That’s right. They can just take your stuff, never charge you, and never return it. Your stuff—the French always have an apt phrase—is les gone.

Just because the police like it, and just because it seems strict, and just because it cracks the heads of some drug kingpins, doesn’t make it good law.

State Resistance to Government Theft in the US

Some Progress

The struggle against civil asset forfeiture in the United States is making some progress at a state by state level.

Last Monday, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy signed a bill to curb the state’s civil forfeiture laws. Under the new law, property confiscated via civil forfeiture may be permanently retained only if the property was seized through a lawful search and if the seizure ultimately leads to the suspect’s criminal conviction. Without a guilty verdict, the government must return all property to the rightful owner.

Prior to this new bill, Connecticut’s civil asset forfeiture policy made it legal for an individual’s property or cash to be seized and indefinitely retained by the state even if they have not been convicted or even accused of committing any crime.

According to the Institute for Justice, state civil asset forfeiture cases constituted 77 percent of all Connecticut forfeiture cases between 2009 and 2013. This indicates that that less than one-quarter of Connecticut’s forfeitures did not require proof that the property owner had committed any crime.  “Civil forfeiture is one of the most serious assaults on Americans’ private property rights,” said Institute for Justice Senior Legislative Counsel Lee McGrath.  [The Blaze]

Good news.  Roughly half a dozen states have already restricted the practice of civil forfeiture, or outlawed it altogether.

The Ghosts of Ahab and Jezebel Have Returned

Tyrannical Powers

Asset forfeiture has rapidly devolved into a form of state tyranny.  In New Zealand the practice of seizing assets from criminals is still bound fairly narrowly by law.  But in the United States, the seizing of assets from innocent citizens has rapidly become an ignoble, gross injustice.  

The struggle to outlaw the practice continues.  Eventually it will be overthrown, we trust.  Opposition includes people from all sides of the political spectrum.  It is a practice so immoral, so unjust, so venal and so tyrannical that it deserves the moniker "Ahabism" after the notorious King Ahab of Israel and his Phoenician queen, Jezebel.

Kevin Williamson updates us on the current state of Ahabism in the United States.

Civil Asset Forfeiture: Where Due Process Goes to Die

Police can take your money or property and keep it, even if no charges are filed.

Kevin D. Williamson
National Review Online

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 enjoyed by American government: asset forfeiture.

The case involves a New York couple, Angela Rodriguez and Joyce Copeland, who lost the above-mentioned $17,900 to police in a case in which no charges were ever filed against them. They sued for recovery of their money, and — incredibly — a federal court found that they lacked standing to sue for possession of their own assets. The D.C. Circuit Court sees things differently and has ruled in favor of allowing Rodriguez and Copeland to at least have their day in court and attempt to reclaim their money.
Current asset-forfeiture practice, like much that is wrong with U.S. law enforcement, has its roots in the so-called war on drugs.