> DEA units assigned to patrol 15 of the nation’s busiest airports seized more than $209 million in cash from at least 5,200 people over the past decade after concluding the money was linked to drug trafficking
So was it drug money or not?
So was it drug money or not?
Asset forfeiture is more of a travesty than money "laundering" being a crime is.
The sicker part is that it's just admitting that their justice system is so broken that they wouldn't be able to get convictions against these "criminals" otherwise.
I'm not sure why it's a travesty that it's illegal to conceal the source of illegally-earned money.
Furthermore, forcing people to structure their activities to be legible to the government is making everybody work as an informant against themselves.
You can tell it's one of those specious "laws" that actually destroys the rule of law because it flips the script to guilty until proven innocent.
By another perspective, your comment is spot on, and it destroys a fundamental theoretical characteristic of money.
By yet another perspective, the more recent versions of those laws make it just too easy for governments to spy on every citizen. Although it is not as bad as spying on communications, it can become very bad in the future.
And, finally, by another perspective, I can't recall a single politician caught by the information those laws make available. And I live in Brazil - I've already lost count of the politician arrests of this week.
Just not for the actual purpose of the law, haha. Which probably strengthens your argument.
Not really - the DEA, state and local police regularly steal cash and other belongings from US citizens without any probable cause.
Not at all...
It goes something like this "We found this $10K in a car on a known drug route with out of state plates, prove it's not a drug money." The issues is that it's really hard to prove your money is innocent if, say, you'd been working a job and saving cash (don't trust the banks) for 10 years and are moving across the country.
Except, not, because the government bears the burden of proving that it is drug money, assuming you assert a claim that the funds should not be subject to forfeiture. (If they meet that burden and you wish to keep the money anyway by invoking the innocent owner principal, you have the burden of proving that you were not involved in the illegal conduct that made the money subject to forfeiture or acted to end it as soon as you became aware, though.)
> The issues is that it's really hard to prove your money is innocent
No, though there is a legitimate issue that it may be difficult to afford decent representation to do a good job of countering the government's attempt to prove your money guilty if, you know, the government's just seized your life savings.
(This is actually related to the reason I am inclined to think that the right to publicly-provided counsel ought to apply in any legal case pursued against an indigent defendant by the government, whether or not it is a criminal case.)
> The law, contained at section 1956 of Title 18 of the United States Code, prohibits individuals from engaging in a financial transaction with proceeds that were generated from certain specific crimes, known as "specified unlawful activities" (SUAs). The law requires that an individual specifically intend in making the transaction to conceal the source, ownership or control of the funds.
In other words: if someone's suspected of money laundering, charge them with money laundering, convict them of it and then seize the money after the conviction is obtained.
The fundamental problem is that the standard of proof required is much lower than in criminal law. The legislative remedy some states have started to use is to require a criminal charge to seize property and a criminal conviction for forfeiture.
Requiring charges is a very small step in the right direction. I suspect what will happen is that people with money will now be charged for small, ridiculous offences, misdemeanours, as a way for law enforcement to skirt the law.
A real improvement is to seize, hold, require conviction, and then enforce forfeiture. If a conviction cannot be made, the forfeiture should be invalidated.
That's not an inversion of the way "the rule of law" is supposed to work, its an inversion of the way criminal punishment is supposed to work, because of the particular character of criminal sanction. But civil forfeiture isn't criminal punishment, and doesn't have the features for which that protection exists.
Further, civil forfeiture mostly isn't "guilty until proven innocent"; while the burden of proof is the typical civil burden of proof ("preponderance of the evidence" rather than the criminal "beyond a reasonable doubt"), the government bears the burden of proving that assets are subject to forfeiture in a contested forfeiture.
(The one aspect of civil forfeiture that has a bit of "guilty until proven innocent" is the "innocent owner" defense, on which the owner bears the burden of proof, where property that is subject to forfeiture -- e.g., because it has been proven to be proceeds of a crime -- is nevertheless immune to forfeiture because the owner either did not know of the conduct justifying the forfeiture or took steps to stop the use of the property giving rise to the forfeiture once they did know.)
And to "contest" it requires an attorney at about $200/hour. I would say that counts as a "burden" to 99.99% of the population.
It technically isn't, but the intent is to give the government options to punish criminal behavior and criminal organizations without having to meet the same standards of proof or respect the same set of rights they would under criminal law. Traditional civil law deals with breaches of contract and torts where someone has been harmed and needs to be made whole, not the government attempting to maintain order. Civil asset forfeiture is fundamentally "getting a conviction here would be too hard, let's take their stuff instead".
Most people talking about the burden of proof are misusing the term, but the protections guaranteed to a criminal defendant are reduced or absent in civil asset forfeiture. Using civil law in this manner should give us pause, as there are good reasons for the limitations and guarantees of criminal law.
The behavior at issue (which often is the same behavior covered by tort law) is not the reason for the additional protections of criminal law; the sanctions available under criminal law are the primary reason for the protections.
I'd argue that while it may technically not be "criminal punishment", that is ultimately the final outcome. People for whom a criminal conviction cannot be guaranteed are instead "punished" by having their goods taken. However IANAL, and that is simply my perception of the effect.
That could happen, though I think some reformed laws require it to be a felony, while others require proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the property is tied to the crime.
If someone told you Brazilian police were taking people's cash you wouldn't for one second think there was some non self serving aspect to this. You wouldn't even look to see if there was any law supporting it. You would just dismiss it as corrupt police officers in a corrupt system, just like you should be doing in this case.
Forgot for a moment that you recited that pledge every morning for 13 years of your life, and think about how someone not from America would perceive this
if you want a grand jury to find that the federal officers acted within agency guidelines, then great, you will continue to be able to sleep at night
if you want the supreme court to continue to find those laws constitutional, then great you will continue to sleep at night. Eugenics programs are constitutional and so politically unpopular that all 50 states have laws that nullify the practice.
The rest of us see this perverse practice for what is and would prefer if Congress modifies laws to instruct its agencies to stop the practice and stop funding themselves by taking citizen's money instead of preparing funding pitch decks for representatives which require oversight