Totally baffling to most non-Americans.
Just horrible! I believe this started during the Reagan years as a way to neutralize the vast assets of some cocaine dealers. Of course it snowballed and was officially set to stop by the last administration.
It’s just unthinkable that seized assets would not be returned to innocent people. Unlike the French Revolution, the American revolution was at least partly about protecting private property from unjust seizure, taxation, etc. Even our AG should understand that.
Yes it is a disgrace.
Yes, it has gone on too long and too far. And it is one of the few issues both parties can agree on, so Congress needs to act.
The last administration had eight years to end it. Instead, the amount of asset forfeiture seizures skyrocketed to the point where they surpassed criminal theft. This is sickening and something that has made me crazy for a long time. Honestly, if I had my own tv station, this would be at the top of the news cycle every single day. And the poorest among us get affected by it more than anyone. It’s what you’d expect from a third world country.
Some vocal activists in both parties have been saying for many years that asset forfeiture without a conviction (or even a charge) of a crime goes to far. But many others in both parties either do not care or favor aggressive asset forfeiture (e.g. the current US attorney general, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/19/jeff-sessions-defense-of-civil-asset-forfeiture-annotated/ ), and many states have laws that allow asset forfeiture without a conviction while offering police financial incentives to do it (see http://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/grading-state-federal-civil-forfeiture-laws/ ).
The attorney general is one person, not many, and he is dead wrong.
However, the attorney general is in a powerful position to influence the use of asset forfeiture.
“Many people” includes those in the state and national governments who have enacted laws allowing for aggressive asset forfeiture, as well as the US Supreme Court. United States v. Ursery and Bennis v. Michigan are two 1996 US Supreme Court decisions that are friendly to asset forfeiture.
There can be no disputing the fact presented in post 4, that the last administration had 8 years to try to fix it, and they took no action. But the problem started sooner and continues today.
I would chalk this up as an idea well-intended, but that the actual practice of it has gone too far.
@busdriver11 the last administration was the only one that tried to limit seizures, actually making illegal without a search warrant. Unfortunately the new AG has tried to roll that back.
This seems so simple to solve yet it is still happening and it’s unbelievable.
“Asset Forfeiture”, aka, “Asset Theft by Government” is always too far if the persons who have assets that have been taken have not been tried and convicted of a crime related to the assets taken. It might be legal but shouldn’t be.
It’$ hard to $ee why thi$ continue$
This guy sounds like a great plaintiff for a SCOTUS case. Hard working farmer who did not do anything wrong other than forget a few bullets in his truck - based on the facts of the article. Very likable. On the one hand, I hope he gets his truck back quickly. On the other hand, I hope that the case reaches the Supreme Courts and forever ends this sort of abuse of due process.
I don’t think he’s ever getting his truck back. Poor guy will probably have to pay the buyout for it at the end of the lease too. Too bad he can’t report it as stolen, which it essentially was.
Given past US Supreme Court cases *United States v. Ursery/i and *Bennis v. Michigan/i, it is far from certain that the US Supreme Court will significantly limit asset forfeiture.
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1995/95-345
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1995/94-8729
The seized truck was not leased. He has to lease a truck while still making payments on the one that was seized. He is suing. If he wins in the lower court, he could get the truck back. At least in theory. But if there is no appeal of any kind, the case will not have a chance of going all the way up to the SCOTUS.
“…it is far from certain that the US Supreme Court will significantly limit asset forfeiture.”
Nothing is certain. But where there is a will, there is always a way.
It may be ideologically unfathomable to consider that this grew into a monster under the last administration, and it seems better to only credit them for an attempt to control the monster, but the reality is, they fed the monster and allowed it to grow. I will give credit to any administration that manages to slay it. This should be investigated massively, there should be light shed upon whom exactly were recipients and victims of the stolen money. I hope this doesn’t disappear from sight during the next news cycle.
It went too far a long time ago.
It’s going to get a lot worse given the views of our AG. Buckle up, everyone.
It looks like the last administration had some spike years (FY2012 and FY2014) involving large cases (e.g. Madoff), but the asset forfeiture amounts from small cases remained approximately level from FY2007 to FY2016: https://www.justice.gov/afp/file/10-yr_summary_of_reporting.pdf/download linked from https://www.justice.gov/afp . It looks like the number of asset forfeitures actually declined from FY2012 to FY2016: https://www.justice.gov/afp/file/5-yr_forfeiture_trends.pdf/download , presumably meaning that the average size increased.
Of course, this is at the national government level. It may be a lot harder to collect the data from state level asset forfeitures to see if there is any pattern there.