I remember an article in Rolling Stone, late 70’s or early 80’s. The author describes riding along with some sheriffs in a county in north Florida. They baically pulled over “suspicious” people, (I.e. DWB, out of state plates, etc.) and if they were found with a decent quantity of money, like over $1000, if they couldn’t prove where it came from, it was confiscated on the spot. keep in mind in those days, there were not a lot of debit cards or easy credit cards especially for poorer people, a lot of people dealt in cash. One fellow in a beat-up old Cadillac had $6,000 in cash and was heading back to Atlanta. He claimed he made the money doing a roofing job. The law officer said he did not believe him, confiscated the lot, and told him he could drive back from Atlanta and argue it in court in a few months. Apparently this happened pretty regularly on this stretch of interstate.
Of course, black people are supposed to trust police officers.
As I understand it, in some states they can not only take anything they “suspect” might have, possibly, been payed for using drug money, but they can do so even if you aren’t convicted of any crime.
And you have to PROVE, some how, that the money to pay for the item did not come from drugs.
Yes, proof by preponderance of the evidence. Meaning the state’s attorney before the state’s judge will argue that their evidence that the property was in any part the proceeds of criminal activity and must demonstrate that to be only the slightest bit more likely than the drug dealer who is saying “No it wasn’t”.
I wonder how the state manages to win these cases.
The drug war in america is strictly profit driven. Everything they seize ends up as property of government employees or government employees friends and family. The stuff no one wants is then auctioned off to the public. There is lots of corruption in law enforcement so that the things they cannot afford to buy they just take from people on bogus drug charges. It got so bad in new york that it made national news.
If you want to see corruption proof go to youtube and find the news report on civil asset forfeiture in the state of tennessee. It’s shocking how these pigs take thousands of dollars from people without any probable cause at all and the higher authorities condone and defend the pigs.
The general rule of fairness, is that the punishment should fit the crime. (No cruel and unusual punishment). Losing your home because your kid sold someone some drugs in it, is far beyond the proper level of fairness. The government has taken a pretty good idea - don’t allow the crook to profit from crime - and perverted it to the point where they hit the better off disproportionately hard with a ton of bricks for some relatively minor offenses - take your house for minor drug trafficking.
However, on the sports(?) news the other day, they mentioned the kid who jumped onto the baseball field during the all-star game now faces up to a year in jail and $10,000 fine. Seriously??? For just running onto the field? Remember when minor crimes were the “thirty dollars or thirty days”? A guy downloading perfectly legal documents from a Harvard database is threatened with 35 years in jail for “hacking” because he automated the download. (He committed suicide).
If they do this for minor crimes, is it any surprise they also take houses and cars? 'Draconian" comes to mind.
Your initial comment sounded like hyperbole to me, since it made reference to a “kid” (i.e. underage), and made it sound like someone was potentially having their house seized when they hadn’t committed any crimes.
I see now, from your link, that Derbacher and his wife had been charged with possession themselves, and their grandchild was 22 years old (and therefore not a kid).
I am not disagreeing with your reference to draconian, and the facts of the Derbacher case may not have warranted the charges, but the facts in that article don’t exactly support the claim that someone is subject to “Losing your home because your kid sold someone some drugs in it”.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think the owner has to have some culpability before their home can be taken.
Sounds like the old prosecutor tactic of “threaten them with 10 life sentences so they plead guilty to what you want, even if they are not really guilty.”
It sounds like a Kafkaesque tactic; threaten them with possessing enough for trafficking (which would make them also liable to the trafficking charge, I assume). They plead guilty on a deal, get probation, but now the state can steal their house.
Note that in the article, a local defense lawyer who dealt with Otah’s cases did say they would “take the house if your kid dealt drugs out of it”. Presumably he was closer to the action than us, and the Derbacher case was by no means an isolated one. If it’s hyperbole, it’s an involved lawyer’s view.
Googling ‘asset forfeiture abuse’ returns several pages of relevant articles topped by an ACLU congregate page where the first article is about them settling a class action suit against a city where around 3 million dollars had been confiscated from motorists where no charges had been filed.
Umm, isn’t a persons primary residence subject to some special protections related to forfeiture and seizure?
I’m not saying they can’t or won’t do it, just that there might be some extra requirements for taking a persons home that aren’t necessary for a vehicle or other property.
Here is a recent, eye opening article in the New Yorker on the use and abuse of civil forfeiture. In one, documented case (by the DA!) it was basically give us your money or we take the kids to CPS - and this was an un-ticketed traffic stop…
