The New Yorker has an interesting article on asset forfeiture abuse, describing how law enforcement authorities routinely use it to seize property from people who have never been convicted of any crime, and often have not even been charged: On a bright Thursday afternoon in 2007, Jennifer Boatright, a waitress at a Houston bar-and-grill, drove […]
Archive | Asset Forfeiture
Court Ruling Forces Nebraska Police to Return $1 Million Seized from a Former Exotic Dancer by Asset Forfeiture
A federal judge recently ordered the return of $1 million seized from a former exotic dancer by asset forfeiture [HT: VC reader Tom Kamenick]: A federal judge has ruled that Nebraska cops must return over $1 million confiscated at a traffic stop from a woman who saved the money $1 at a time during her […]
Sex, Drugs, Alcohol, Gambling, and Guns: The Synergistic Constitutional Effects
By David Kopel on March 16, 2013 4:21 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Federalism, Guns, Supreme Court, Symposia, Tenth Amendment, War on Drugs
That’s the title of a new article by Trevor Burrus (Cato) and me, forthcoming in a symposium issue on drug policy, from the Albany Government Law Review. The symposium title is “Overdose: The Failure of the US Drug War and Attempts at Legalization.” Here is an excerpt from the introduction: In this Article we discuss the synergistic […]
US Attorney Carmen Ortiz May Appeal Carswell Forfeiture Case
The Boston Herald reports that controversial US Attorney Carmen Ortiz may be planning to appeal her trial court defeat in United States v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, the highly abusive asset forfeiture case I blogged about on Friday: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said her office is weighing an appeal against a Tewksbury motel owner who […]
Property Owners Prevail in Important Asset Forfeiture Case
By Ilya Somin on January 25, 2013 3:02 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights
A federal district court in Massachusetts has ruled in favor of the property owners in United States v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, an important asset forfeiture case. This is the case where the federal government sought the forfeiture of a motel on the grounds that a few of the motel’s customers had bought or sold […]
Asset Forfeiture Abuse Revisited
By Ilya Somin on January 21, 2013 6:47 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights
John Ross of Reason has a nice article summarizing the problem of asset forfeiture abuse, as exemplified by dubious practices in the nation’s capital: Jerrie Brathwaite was not in her car when Washington, D.C. police seized it in January 2012. She had lent her 2000 Nissan Maxima to a friend, and that friend was pulled […]
Throwing Civil Liberties to the Dogs?
Radley Balko has an interesting column noting the troubling implications of some of the arguments being made in the drug-sniffing dog cases currently before the Supreme Court. He points out that these dogs’ drug alerts are often unreliable because, in many cases, dogs seek to please their handlers rather than search out the truth. Thus, […]
Attorney General Holder grants BATFE expanded forfeiture powers
Details here, from Americans for Forfeiture Reform. In short, BATFE becomes another federal agency which gets to seize large sums of cash, based on presumption that a large sum of cash must be related to an illegal transaction in controlled substances. And notwithstanding the fact that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is […]
The Rise of Asset Forfeiture Abuse
By Ilya Somin on August 23, 2012 4:55 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights
Co-blogger Orin Kerr describes a planned effort by one local government to raise revenue by increasing asset forfeitures through the use of drug-sniffing dogs. Unfortunately, this is just one example of a growing trend of using asset forfeiture as a fundraising tool for law enforcement agencies. In this recent post, I rounded up many sources […]
Adventures in Asset Forfeiture
By Ilya Somin on May 21, 2012 12:43 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights
Asset forfeiture laws in many states allow the police to seize property that has supposedly been used to commit a crime, and then keep the proceeds for themselves. Often, these laws victimize people who have not been convicted of any crime, and indeed did not even know that their property might have been misused. They […]
Asset Forfeiture Abuse
Radley Balko reports on fairly severe asset forfeiture abuse in Wisconsin. In short, after a woman’s son was arrested, the police told her she had to pay for his bail in cash (which was untrue). Then, when she showed up with the money, most of which she had just withdrawn from ATMs, the police seized […]
“Opinion on Void Seizure”
Scott Johnson (PowerLine) reports on this very interesting case (United States v. $35,131.00 in United States Currency (S.D. Tex. Apr. 2, 2012)). I’m not sure whether the opinion is legally sound — this is far from my area of expertise — but I thought I’d pass it along, and I’d love to hear what others […]
How the War on Drugs Creates Perverse Incentives for Police
By Ilya Somin on November 25, 2011 10:59 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Criminal Law, Property Rights, War on Drugs
Radley Balko has an interesting piece at Huffington Post on the ways in which the War on Drugs creates perverse incentives for police departments: Arresting people for assaults, beatings and robberies doesn’t bring money back to police departments, but drug cases do in a couple of ways. First, police departments across the country compete for […]
New Institute for Justice Report on Asset Forfeiture
By Ilya Somin on April 6, 2010 11:10 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights
The Institute for Justice, a prominent libertarian public interest law firm, has an important new report detailing the many abuses of property rights in the asset forfeiture system. Here are a few of the key findings: In most states and under federal law, law enforcement can keep some or all of the proceeds from civil […]