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Comment by dv_dt | Hacker News Reader

Civil forfeiture is very much not limited to when the property owner is unknown. That is perhaps where the practice started in some distant past, but forfeiture has expanded to include the seizing of property as long as there is a pretence of a crime, but no conviction nor usually even an arrest.

Here's a some search hits under "civil forfeiture cases"

[1] NFL defensive tackle Letroy Guion was stopped and had 190k of cash seized. He had bank statements to prove the provenance of the money.

[2] Overview of cases and depts sued for systematically seizing cash from people stopped, but never charged with a crime.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/11/civil-asset-forfeit...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2014/03/12/...

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Your characterization of the first article is misleading:

> Guion was charged with two felonies, one for the marijuana and another for possession of a firearm in commission of a felony. Police secured the cash, though Guion’s agent claims the money was from NFL paychecks and that he has bank statements proving it was not related to the drugs. A spokesperson for the Starke Police Department told The Huffington Post they have not received this documentation and that they gave Guion a receipt stating their intent to permanently seize the cash.

Constitutionally, seizure (the money has not yet been forfeited, only seized) only requires probable cause. Finding a large amount of cash next to almost a pound of illegal drugs is undoubtedly probable cause to conclude that the money is the proceeds of illegal activity.

Ok, I initially didn't research farther than the inital article. At this point:

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/03/24/letroy-guion...

With a plea deal and 5k fine & court fees, "the charges were dismissed without adjudication of guilt.

There’s still a civil forfeiture case pending, so he can get his money back."

So now there is no criminal basis for the state holding onto his money...

Edit: 5k court fees -> 5k fine & court fees

A plea deal involves an admission of guilt to something, otherwise prosecutors would have no incentive to offer it. Exactly what is another question, but I don't care enough to research the case.

For many people, even if completely innocent, a plea deal is a smarter choice than going to trial. So at the very least they are guilty of taking a plea deal. Possibly something more, but that can't be inferred.

But no guilt has been established, and not even a formal charge at this point - so we are left with a question of how can a citizen be deprived of their property by the gov't when neither of these has been established.

A guilty plea is a formal admission of guilt.

Perhaps I don't understand the meaning of this then: "the charges were dismissed without adjudication of guilt."

I am not defending the practice of civil forfeiture, and I said so, though obviously not clearly enough.

I was explaining the operational legal reason for the existence of court cases in which one of the parties is an an inanimate object, nothing more.

You also explicitly claimed that the practice of civil forfeiture doesn't include forfeiture of property whose owner is known:

> this won't have a direct bearing on civil asset forfeiture of the kind you describe, because that only takes place where the identity of the property owner is unknown

Yes, that was inaccurate, but it was also in a quick and explicit edit correctly distinguishing the practice from the circumstances of the case described in the original article and is obviously not part of the core argument I made.

I also frequently make typos and consistently spell a few words wrong. Are there any other nits you'd like to pick?

Apologies if I overemphasized one portion of your comment. I actually thought it was informative, but think it lacked that one critical element of conflict in the practice as a whole. I now think I understand what you meant in the phrase "the identity of the property owner is unknown" is that this is an assumption under which the theory of the laws of forfeiture is operating.

Can you perhaps expand on why this assumption hasn't been successfully challenged as a basis for overturning many of these other cases where there clearly is a property owner? That's the head scratcher to me in how long this practice has continued.

As I said (but should probably have said at the beginning rather than the end) I think the use of civil forfeiture in practice is frequently horribly corrupt. While the basic idea has merit - we don't want criminals to profit from ill-gotten gains - the application of that principle frequently turns into an asymmetrical and highly politicized contest between who can better manipulate the rules, to the point of drastically undermining respect for the principles they were established to uphold.

I'm sorry that I don't always make it clear enough when I'm making a narrow technical argument vs when I'm making a sweeping ideological one. I am 100% against police departments being able to profit from civil asset forfeiture, both because the incentives for abuse become overwhelming and because the existence of abuse is then used by others as a pretext for undermining the system within which such rules originate.

My personal concepts of the relation between individuals, society, government, law, and justice, are radically outside the mainstream, which is why you should consider switching to a monarchy and installing me as King, or Queen. On the other hand, distilling those radical ideas down to a manageable set of operational principals that don't require everyone to be a philosopher is difficult, which is why you should probably hold off on the coronation for a bit.

From the examples I have read on Civil forfeiture in recent years it seems like a complete joke. It seemed to be used a lot to basically outright steal money from people for the city/state or whatever government entity. Regardless of how it started some of the cases seem that it would be shameful even in some of the most corruption ridden country. At least in those places everyone might call this the norm but they would at least call it theft.

"Asset seizure by police has been abused to hell and back, and I have no hesitation in saying that many police officers and institutions are corrupt."

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