Civil asset forfeiture: where due process goes to die
And who is speaking out against this?
Justice Clarence Thomas.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448942/civil-asset-forfeiture-police-abuse-clarence-thomas
Police can take your money or property and keep it, even if no charges are filed.
Clarence Thomas is famously taciturn on the bench. But his few words carry a great deal of weight. Though the matter has not yet come before the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas is very much at the center of a federal case with a name that sounds like it ought to have come from a William Gaddis novel: United States v. Seventeen Thousand Nine Hundred Dollars in United States Currency. The case has the potential to help rein in one of the most abused powers enjoyed by American government: asset forfeiture.
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The case involves a New York couple, Angela Rodriguez and Joyce Copeland, who lost the above-mentioned $17,900 to police in a case in which no charges were ever filed against them. They sued for recovery of their money, and — incredibly — a federal court found that they lacked standing to sue for possession of their own assets. The D.C. Circuit Court sees things differently and has ruled in favor of allowing Rodriguez and Copeland to at least have their day in court and attempt to reclaim their money.
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Justice Thomas wrote:
This system — where police can seize property with limited judicial oversight and retain it for their own use — has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses. According to one nationally publicized report, for example, police in the town of Tenaha, Texas, regularly seized the property of out-of-town drivers passing through and collaborated with the district attorney to coerce them into signing waivers of their property rights. In one case, local officials threatened to file unsubstantiated felony charges against a Latino driver and his girlfriend and to place their children in foster care unless they signed a waiver. In another, they seized a black plant worker’s car and all his property (including cash he planned to use for dental work), jailed him for a night, forced him to sign away his property, and then released him on the side of the road without a phone or money. He was forced to walk to a Wal-Mart, where he borrowed a stranger’s phone to call his mother, who had to rent a car to pick him up. These forfeiture operations frequently target the poor and other groups least able to defend their interests in forfeiture proceedings. Perversely, these same groups are often the most burdened by forfeiture. They are more likely to use cash than alternative forms of payment, like credit cards, which may be less susceptible to forfeiture. And they are more likely to suffer in their daily lives while they litigate for the return of a critical item of property, such as a car or a home.
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