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Comment by DontGiveTwoFlux | Hacker News Reader

A swipe against excessive civil forfeitures succeeds. These aggressive actions require citizens to forfeit property far in excess of any harm committed. In the court case, a man had his car seized when caught selling a few hundred dollars of heroine.

We have laws to punish illegal behavior, but it’s not right that all your property get snatched up too. The most egregious of these cases often involve no due process at all. People who are stopped and found to have large amounts of cash simply have it seized, even if they are never charged with a crime.

Recourse is often slow and expensive. It’s unlikely that this ruling will immediately change the rampant unconstitutional practices many police departments and towns rely on. But it is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, they will be taken to task in time.

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Also the maximum fine for the offense is $10k, and he was given $1200 in fines. Yet a $42k car was taken.

That was 4x the maximum penalty, and almost 20x the fine. How that was ever legal remains confusing to me.

It wasn't legal; that's what this case is about.

The authorities sometimes break laws.

This case wasn't about the legality of taking the car. It was simply about whether the 8th Amendment applies to states.

The decision was about whether the 8th applies to states. The lower court is now instructed to evaluate whether the fine was excessive, which it obviously was.

Of course, nobody will go to jail for it. I'm happy for the ruling, but it doesn't seem to do much to discourage future abuse, since nobody actually gets held accountable.

I'm not sure why you want someone to go to jail for this incident specifically. The police acted in a manner that, at the time, they believed to be lawful. When the state was sued they also thought the police acted within the law, backed the officers, and won their appeal. Then after both sides made the best case they could, the supreme court ruled their actions were ultimately unconstitutional.

Do you really expect a random police officer to be a constitutional scholar? Dude should get his car back along with some damages to make up for the time/money he had to waste on this case but I don't think anyone should be going to jail over it.

I think the real problem here is that the courts are failing to provide the "independent judiciary" role. The whole point is for an independent expert to look at the law and situation and make a determination. The problem is that the local/state judiciaries very infrequently find a police organizations behaviors unlawful. Time and time again, the local law enforcement stretches the definition of unreasonable/excessive/etc and the courts go along with it. The statistics are completely out of whack (to lazy to dig up the reference I saw a few years ago) on the side of the police. Which is why there are so many of these crazy cases making themselves to the supreme court. Its the airport search situation, at no point has a court actually stepped in and said this is unreasonable, which is why we find ourselves in a situation of being naked body scanned, felt up, poked and prodded like animals without a drop of probable cause.

> Do you really expect a random police officer to be a constitutional scholar?

You expect that from citizens, as ignorance of the law is not a defense against not breaking it, but police officers are given a myriad of protections(QI), sometimes jokingly called "The Reasonably Stupid Cop Rule"[0]. I don't think police officers should be constitutional scholars, but immunity gives them an incentive to either not learn or just ignore the law.

[0] (https://blog.simplejustice.us/2016/11/30/the-unreasonable-ex...)

Somebody decided to take this guy's car, even though the value of the car far exceeded the stated maximum fine. Feels like theft to me, yes.

If the only consequence for misuse of civil forfeiture is that a victim can sue to get their stuff back, nothing will change.

It gets even more interesting when they are federal but not state crimes. In this case, officers from a relatively far away jurisdiction were seizing cash and cannabis from people following all state and local rules. Just one of the individuals was awarded 1.2 million last week. If this ruling applies to all previous cases police departments are going to go broke paying this back.

laws.https://www.kqed.org/news/11706921/lawsuit-rohnert-park-hopl...

Possibly relevant is also that the car was purchased with (presumably documented) legitimate money - received from his father's life insurance policy. The reasoning was apparently that he used the vehicle in committing the crime, not that he'd purchased it with money derived from criminal activity.

This is 100% relevant, since the "tainted" nature of the money gained from criminal activity is one of the justifications for seizure.

This case was about criminal forfeiture, not civil forfeiture. The aggrieved was convicted of crime, and the forfeiture was a fine for that.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States#Civil_versus_criminal_forfeiture

This case was actually about civil forfeiture, not criminal forfeiture.

If it had been criminal forfeiture, they would have had to show the SUV was purchased using drug money proceeds. Instead, they pursued the civil forfeiture path because it has a lower standard of evidence (more likely than not rather that beyond a reasonable doubt). See page 1 of the opinion, which explicitly states the case is about civil forfeiture...https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-1091_5536.pdf)

Hmm, seems like the 8th amendment doesn't apply to civil forfeiture at all, and this ruling would do nothing for it. Civil I guess sounds like a 4th amendment case.

Is that about right?

EDIT: Also you should tell the New York Times. "Criminal forfeiture" does not appear in the article, though "civil forfeiture" does.

Yeah I keep reading "civil" mentioned in news articles. I even say a lawyer on a news video talking about how this applies to civil forfeiture cases.

What you're saying makes sense, but I'm not seeing it reflected in any of these sources, so I'm doubtful now.

This was long overdue. I’m all for restitution and such, but doing forfeiture above what the penalty or fine would have been is obviously egregiously problematic.

Glad this overreach was rectified but it took a good while to get corrected.

> In the court case, a man had his car seized when caught selling a few hundred dollars of heroine.

Interesting perspective there. Some people think that heroin dealers deserve to be fully hung, drawn and quartered, their head placed on a spike to be pecked at by the crows.

Others might think that 'it was just a bit of dope, why should he have to forfeit anything for that?'.

The car is potentially proceeds of crime it also enables the crime of dealing to be carried out. A reasonable case for him forfeiting it can definitely be made without that being the police preying off the 'victim'. In the UK any police action that leads to people losing stuff as it is deemed proceeds of crime goes to the crown, i.e. the queen, rather than to the local police department. In the USA you need something similar so that the police can't be accused of being on the take.

> The car is potentially proceeds of crime

The car was reliably documented as being purchased from his father's life insurance proceeds. There was no question of it being potentially purchased by illegal means.

Far more importantly, the entire question is irrelevant: we have standardized maximum fines and the burden of proof for very good reasons. Civil forfeiture skips both, making a mockery of the justice system for profit.

Those who believe current punishments for a given crime insufficient should seek to alter the law, whereas exorbitant forfeiture devalues the entire purpose - it serves neither as effective discouragement (being utterly arbitrary and unrelated to criminal magnitude) nor to rehabilitate (rather, the reverse, as departing inmates' tendencies to return will only be exacerbated by forfeiture-induced poverty).

> The car was reliably documented as being purchased from his father's life insurance proceeds. There was no question of it being potentially purchased by illegal means.

This is why it was such a perfect case for the Supreme Court to rule upon. It was clear that the only justification the state could give for the confiscation was the single conviction.

Cheers to Timbs for being willing to take this all the way to get such an important ruling!

>The car is potentially proceeds of crime

Then the state must prove that case rather than it being in implicit assumption.

In the UK the prosecution - 'Crown Prosecution Service' - present the mobile phone evidence and the accused is able to provide evidence for legitimate income. The court then decide whether to take the house and cars. Simple.

Um, no that is not the state proving that the car was bought with 'drug money' that is the accused inability to prove that it wasn't.

> it also enables the crime of dealing to be carried out

His hands also enabled the crime to be carried out, should they be chopped off?

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