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Comment by gowld | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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...)

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