Thursday, July 13, 2017

Even a Broken Clock...

Connecticut Bans Civil Forfeiture Without Criminal Conviction [More]
That's the way things oughtta be. Why isn't it?

[Via Michael G]

Posted by David Codrea at 7/13/2017 10:47:00 AM

1 comment:

e.b.roberts said...

Asset forfeiture...a relic of Admiralty Law...is the gift from judges writing fiction (the thing [money; property] rather than a person is considered the criminal lawbreaker), that keeps on giving...

It is interesting to look at the sort of 'crimes' that are potentially punished by confiscation of property/wealth through the legal fiction of asset forfeiture, such as drug war crimes, soliciting prostitution and the like, and compare to serious crimes that involve real harm to person and/or property that are not accompanied with governmentally legalized theft, such as murder, rape, robbery and so on...

Making convictions the 'legitimate' gateway to such means of theft provides us little protection when the courts act more like mass-production assembly-line conviction mills rather than arbiters of justice.

The quote at the beginning of the article, “Civil forfeiture is one of the most serious assaults on Americans’ private property rights.” is valid and true regardless whether or not it's preceded by convictions-the result of 90+% criminal indictments.

Though it may be possible to put forth a just theory of civil asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture as practiced today would be regarded as an abomination by a majority of the Founders.

Theft is theft...no matter how much lipstick is smeared on that pig.

7/14/2017 8:24 AM

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