Stranger
That’s pretty much exactly what happened to a guy who testified when I served on a grand jury investigating allegations of police corruption in the 30th precinct. In his case, the car was accused of carrying a joint. He wasn’t absolutely certain the car was innocent, because he had picked up a hitchiker he knew only slightly. The police planted that joint (per one of the police who plea-bargained in exchange for tattling.)
I think the civil forfeiture laws are deeply corrupt.
And they foster greater corruption by encouraging police to set up checkpoints and virtual dragnets find ‘offenses’ for which there is no evidence and that they don’t have to prove in order to justify acquiring ‘assets’. And if you look at the statistics (where they are reported, because often municipalities and states do not make this information readily available to the public) it disproportionally affects minorities because ‘War on Drugs”, of course.
Stranger
Yes, the only thing the guy was guilty of in the case I’m familiar with was driving while Black.
But he lost his car.
Did he get it back after the corruption case you wrote about? If yes: how long did it take, and in which condition was the car afterwards?
@Stranger_On_A_Train Those are illustrating videos, thank you very much! And quite a lot of them too.
I don’t know. We, the jury, speculated about that, but had no information. One member claimed that the police had almost certainly sold it already, which seems plausible. But he might have gotten some financial compensation.
To be clear, the police who took his car were acting illegally. We indicted them on several charges, and while i didn’t follow each charge, the overall case was big news and there were a lot of guilty verdicts.
But the existence of the corrupt law gave them motive and opportunity.
In the Washington Post article I posted, another driving while black victim did get his money back, eventually.
“Mandrel Stuart, a 35-year-old African American owner of a small barbecue restaurant in Staunton, Va., was stunned when police took $17,550 from him during a stop in 2012 for a minor traffic infraction on Interstate 66 in Fairfax. He rejected a settlement with the government for half of his money and demanded a jury trial. He eventually got his money back but lost his business because he didn’t have the cash to pay his overhead.”
As you can see, the problem is more serious than just $10 per year for every American,
I’ve represented civil forfeiture clients before. One was a guy who was flying from Tennessee to California. He had luggage full of mismatched clothes and some $20,000 in cash. It was seized during a layover in Arizona.
There was some sketchy stuff on his phone (relating to the costs of marijuana in California), and he didn’t want to disclose who he had met with when he traveled to Tennessee. He also has a criminal history relating to drug selling.
That’s usually about the nexus between these seizures and the legal justification for what the police are doing. But, other than innuendo there was nothing criminal in this case.
People should be allowed to travel around the country without having to disclose where and why. And they should be allowed to have large amounts of cash if they so choose.
But thats not reality. Another case involved a man who decided to drive his car 5 states over, and then return. He didn’t like credit cards, so he kept all his money in cash. And since he went for a drive, he was worried that his girlfriend might clean out his safe, so he took the tens of thousands of dollars that he had with him.
What’s the basis for the seizure? Just that he’s weird and eccentric? The police, of course, are arguing that he’s a drug dealer. But they have no evidence to prove that. So instead they take his money and tell him to prove he has a legitimate source.
It’s strike me as a perversion of the expected obligation that the government prove their case against the accused.