{"id":9307,"date":"2016-04-23T20:08:47","date_gmt":"2016-04-24T00:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=9307"},"modified":"2016-04-23T20:23:39","modified_gmt":"2016-04-24T00:23:39","slug":"2001-asset-forfeiture-outrages-bushs-reform-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/23\/2001-asset-forfeiture-outrages-bushs-reform-opportunity\/","title":{"rendered":"2001: Asset Forfeiture Outrages – Bush’s Reform Opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"aclu<\/a>

Art by ACLU Wisconsin<\/p><\/div>\n

The Justice Department has resumed racketeering with the “equitable sharing” racket <\/a>– helping local and state police agencies plunder innocent citizens who are stripped of their property.\u00a0\u00a0The Washington Post<\/strong> condemns the revival with an editorial aptly headlined: “The Feds Get Back in the Stealing Business<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

For over 20 years, reformers have exposed horrendous abuses; several times, it appeared that asset forfeiture thieving would be finally curbed.\u00a0 Below is\u00a0a piece I wrote in 2001 after an earlier betrayal of reform efforts.\u00a0 My final sentence was an exercise in pretended wishful thinking: “If the Bush\u00a0 administration wants to set a loftier tone in Washington, ending forfeiture abuses is one of the best places to start.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

American Spectator, April 2001<\/a><\/p>\n

An End to Federal Plundering?<\/b>
\nASSET FORFEITURE<\/b>: When the Feds arrest your property, innocence is no defense<\/h2>\n

BYLINE: James Bovard<\/p>\n

Seizure fever continues to infect law enforcement across the nation. Last
\nAugust, the Albuquerque City Council passed a new ordinance empowering the
\npolice to confiscate houses where they catch 20-year-olds drinking beer. Many
\nstates and localities already have laws authorizing police to confiscate the
\nautos of people accused of drunk driving-regardless of whether a person is
\nconvicted of the offense. In Minnesota, police confiscated a $ 40,000 sports
\nutility vehicle because the owner was sitting in the driveway testing the new
\nvehicle’s audio system after he got liquored up.<\/p>\n

Roughly 70 percent of all U.S. currency has sufficient cocaine or other
\nnarcotics residue to trigger a positive alert from a drug-sniffing dog,
\naccording to numerous federal court cases. Yet the Wayne County, Michigan police
\ndepartment confiscates the cash that people bring in to bail out friends or
\nrelatives after dogs predictably alert-thus making it easy for police to pad
\ntheir own coffers. Federal agents continue to use this pretext to seize cash
\ndespite numerous court rulings that the method is both unsound and unjust.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department confiscated 42,454 cars, boats, houses, stacks of
\ncash, and other items of private property in 1998-booty valued at $ 604,514,
\n733. Federal agents can seize a person’s house, car, boat, or other property by
\ninvoking more than two hundred different federal statutes involving everything
\nfrom wildlife to carrying cash out of the country to playing poker for cash with
\nfriends and relatives. The vast majority of people whose property is seized by
\nfederal agents are never formally charged with a crime. Some ninety percent
\nnever get their property back.<\/p>\n

How is that possible? Criminal charges against persons require proof beyond
\nreasonable doubt. But federal law, based on common law precedents reaching
\nback to medieval England, holds that when property suspected of use in a crime
\nis seized, the action amounts not to a criminal punishment of the owner- which
\nwould require a trial on the reasonable doubt standard-but to an arrest of the
\nproperty itself, which enjoys no such protection. The owner’s attempts to get
\nhis property back are then waged not under criminal rules, but under civil or
\neven administrative procedure dauntingly favorable to the government.<\/p>\n

With accelerating forfeiture cases a national scandal at least since the
\nearly 1990s, Congress last April finally passed a law purporting to curb some of
\nthe worst abuses. Authored by House Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Hyde
\n(R-Ill.), renowned for his tendency to kowtow to law enforcement, the new law in
\nsome ways tilts the playing field even further against innocent citizens.<\/p>\n

Under the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, federal agents continue to have
\nthe power to confiscate citizens’ assets without a court order and with no proof
\nof criminal wrongdoing. Federal agents merely need to claim ” probable
\ncause”-including rumor or hearsay evidence-before confiscating property. Only if
\nsome citizen challenges the seizure must the government show by a “preponderance
\nof evidence” that the seizure was justified. ” Preponderance of evidence,” the
\ncivil standard, means essentially that the government must show that there is a
\n51 percent chance that property was wrongfully used.<\/p>\n

Since the vast majority of seizures are not challenged-tangling with federal
\nprosecutors is costly and beyond the skills of the sorts of lawyers available to
\nmost victimized property owners-the new standard of evidence means little or
\nnothing to most forfeiture victims. The new law further intimidates challenges
\nby imposing a requirement that citizens who file suit to recover their property
\nmust swear their claim is not “frivolous.” Any citizen who files an allegedly
\nfrivolous suit can face three years in prison simply for filing it. Federal
\nagents suffer no penalties for frivolous seizures of private property; the
\n“punishment” for such behavior has in the past been outstanding performance
\nevaluations.<\/p>\n

Will the Bush administration make federal agencies obey the law on
\nforfeiture? A good place to start would be the Customs Service, which scorns a
\nSupreme Court ruling that sought to limit their power to plunder travelers. The
\n1970 Bank Secrecy Act made it a federal crime for anyone to exit or enter the
\nUnited States with more than $ 10,000 in cash without filing a report with the
\nU.S. Customs Service. Customs agents pick out individuals heading for
\ninternational flights or bus trips and ask them if they are carrying more than $
\n10,000 in cash. If the person does not answer honestly, the agents routinely
\nseize the person’s money. In addition, the person faces several years in federal
\nprison for lying to a federal agent. Customs officials use the threat of prison
\nto persuade many people to forgo challenges to the seizure.<\/p>\n

In 1998, Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for a 5-4 majority, struck down the
\nCustoms Service’s confiscation of $ 357,144 from a Syrian immigrant who was
\nsearched at Los Angeles International prior to heading back to Syria. The money
\nconsisted of profits from his two gas stations and loan repayments for Syrian
\nrelatives. Both a federal district court and an appeals court concluded that the
\nmoney had been honestly acquired and ordered most of it returned to the man.<\/p>\n

Thomas declared that “a punitive forfeiture violates the Excessive Fines
\nClause if it is grossly disproportional to the gravity of a defendant’s
\noffense.” The crime in question “was solely a reporting offense.” The maximum
\nfine under federal sentencing guidelines was $ 5,000. Thomas also noted that the
\nforfeiture of the cash “bears no correlation to any injury suffered by the
\ngovernment.”<\/p>\n

Customs’ response to the Court? It sharply escalated its efforts to
\nconfiscate travelers’ cash, launching a crackdown called Operation Buckstop. In
\nApril 1999, Customs Chief Ray Kelly bragged to Congress: “Outbound currency
\nseizures experienced a 59 percent increase in the amount of currency seized
\ncompared to the same time period in FY 1997.” At Houston International Airport,
\n100,813 passengers were searched in 1998, though customs inspectors were able to
\nfind pretexts to strip only eight people of their cash, including a Mexican
\nmother with a baby and $ 18,924.<\/p>\n

The Feds apparently took another blow in court on January 17 when federal
\njudge Charles Sifton ruled that the federal government could seize cash in a
\ncivil proceeding after it failed to challenge a finding by the court probation
\ndepartment that the money was lawfully acquired. The case involved Cesar Castro,
\nwho was arrested after he told a Customs agent at JFK International that he had
\n$ 2,000 with him; a search revealed that he actually had almost $ 120,000.
\nCastro was sentenced to two years probation and fined $ 2, 500.<\/p>\n

After Castro’s conviction and sentencing, the government undertook a civil
\naction to confiscate Castro’s cash, though no evidence had ever been offered
\nthat Castro’s money had any illegal taint. Castro had by then been through a
\nfull criminal trial and sentencing procedure. Steve Kessler, Castro’s lawyer and
\none of the nation’s foremost experts on forfeiture, told the New York Law
\nJournal that “the government has brought hundreds of forfeiture cases after
\nacquiescing to findings in pre-sentencing reports that the seized cash was
\nunconnected to any criminal activity.” In other words, after the government had
\nalready tacitly admitted there was no basis for the seizure.<\/p>\n

The greatest failing of last year’s forfeiture reform act was that it did
\nnothing to curb law-enforcement profiteering from forfeitures. Law enforcement
\nagencies routinely keep seized assets for their own uses-one of the most brazen
\nconflict-of-interests around. Forfeiture policies continue to be a grave blot
\non the integrity and credibility of the federal government. If the Bush
\nadministration wants to set a loftier tone in Washington, ending forfeiture
\nabuses is one of the best places to start.<\/p>\n

\"DEA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Justice Department has resumed racketeering with the “equitable sharing” racket – helping local and state police agencies plunder innocent citizens who are stripped of their property.\u00a0\u00a0The Washington Post condemns the revival with an editorial aptly headlined: “The Feds Get Back in the Stealing Business.” For over 20 years, reformers have exposed horrendous abuses; several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[539,836,27,486,837],"class_list":["post-9307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-asset-forfeiture","tag-betrayal","tag-lying","tag-reform","tag-theft"],"yoast_head":"\n2001: Asset Forfeiture Outrages - Bush's Reform Opportunity - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/23\/2001-asset-forfeiture-outrages-bushs-reform-opportunity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2001: Asset Forfeiture Outrages - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/www.jimbovard.com\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.facebook.com\\\/jim.bovard\",\"https:\\\/\\\/x.com\\\/jimbovard\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/author\\\/admin\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"2001: Asset Forfeiture Outrages - Bush's Reform Opportunity - James Bovard","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/23\/2001-asset-forfeiture-outrages-bushs-reform-opportunity\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"2001: Asset Forfeiture Outrages - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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