[fergbrain]

I wonder if this ruling could also force the courts to start addressing unconstitutional civil forfeiture

[GavinMcG]

The Supreme Court has said it isn’t unconstitutional as a general matter, so a lower court’s ruling won’t force that to change. And because the practice is a holdover from English law and isn’t understood (as a historical matter) to be something the constitution was meant to alter, there isn’t much basis for thinking the Supreme Court would reverse its earlier decisions.

[edub]

This seems like a strong candidate for a Constitutional amendment. Twelve amendments were ratified in the 20th century—about once a decade since the end of the Civil War. However, if you exclude the 27th Amendment[1], we haven't ratified an amendment in 53 years. My favorite type of amendment is one that extends rights to people, and in this case, also to their property.

[1] The 27th Amendment took a different path compared to the other 16 amendments ratified since the Bill of Rights. It was originally proposed as part of the first 12 amendments but took 202 years to be ratified. This was largely due to the efforts of a University of Texas student in the 1980s, who, motivated by a C grade on a paper, embarked on a mission to see it finally adopted.

[alistairSH]

How do they align that reasoning with the 4th? Particularly the conservative wing of the bench, as they seem most likely to be literalists (when it suits, at least).

[hinkley]

But we didn’t treat it this way until Ron and Nancy’s War on Drugs.

So while this might be a very old bug in the Rule of Law, it got much worse during the 20th Century.

[qingcharles]

I spent hundreds of hours hanging out in forfeiture court, it's wild. The court I was in eventually got a new judge and she took the two DAs aside and said to them "This bullshit you have going here, the 90% of cases you win because people don't even know how to fill out the paperwork. That ends today. That will not fly in my courtroom."

I remember that same day a dad came in. The State had his new $60K SUV they were trying to sell. His son had swiped the keys, taken it, got caught drunk-driving. The DAs were like "well, tough shit, it's the law" and that judge said "Did this man know his son took the car? Does he have valid insurance? Give this man his damned car back. And I want you to pay all his towing and storage fees too." "His towing fee too?" "Yes" "We don't even know how to refund that, the city has that money." "Well, you have an hour to find out. See you in an hour." LOL

If you are ever caught up in a civil forfeiture, make sure to stay on top of the paperwork. Most people lose their stuff by not doing the very simple paperwork. If you get to the first court hearing the State often gives up if it's not much value.

[LorenPechtel]

Was she promptly removed from the courtroom? We certainly can't have a judge that won't kowtow to system on the bench!!

[threatofrain]

I wonder if judicial solutions can ever be adequate as police can simply say that an investigation is ongoing for years. And determining whether ongoing possession of seized property is legitimate involves disclosing investigation details.

[tshaddox]

How is that different than, say, indefinite detention? It’s obviously not implemented perfectly, but habeas corpus is uncontroversial at least in principle. I don’t see anything mechanistically unique about property seizure that would make this tricky to solve.

[debacle]

The problem is it eventually becomes government civil lawfare against citizens. Taxpayer foot the bill to screw other taxpayers.

[zdw]

There was a proposal back in the discussion of extending copyright to be "forever minus one day" by the maximalist camp which included Sonny Bono, so there are hacks around "indefinitely".

[undersuit]

Hmm, does my money have the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed?

(6th Amendment)

[Etheryte]

I mean, the US is the only first world country that I know of where this is an issue, clearly there are ways to address this, no?