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  1. #1
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    Institute for Justice Files Suit to Stop Philly’s Civil Forfeiture Abuse



    Institute for Justice Files Suit to Stop Philly’s Civil Forfeiture Abuse

    Scott Shackford|Aug. 12, 2014 11:05 am
    Credit: Institute for JusticeThe Institute for Justice (IJ) recently announced a big push to attempt to force reforms to the various broken civil asset forfeiture systems that law enforcement agencies and prosecutors’ offices used to strip citizens of their money and property to keep for themselves. At the time, IJ Senior Attorney Scott Bullock told Reason to expect a “whole string” of new cases coming over the next year.
    This week, IJ sets its sights on Philadelphia, filing a class action suit with the assistance of law firm Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg. Here’s how IJ describes Philadelphia’s terrible system, clearly weighted against its own citizenry:
    Property owners who find out that Philadelphia is threatening to take their cash, cars and even homes must go to Courtroom 478 in City Hall. But Courtroom 478 isn’t a courtroom at all: there is no judge or jury, just the prosecutors who run the show. Owners who ask if they need a lawyer are frequently told that one isn’t necessary, only to then be given a stack of complicated legal documents they must fill out under oath. Time and time again, property owners must return to Courtroom 478—up to ten or more times in some cases— to answer questions and prove their property was never involved in a crime. If they miss a single appearance, they can lose their property forever.


    Making matters worse, Philadelphia’s police and prosecutors get to keep and use everything that the machine snatches up. Philadelphia’s population is smaller than Brooklyn, New York’s and Los Angeles County’s, but Philadelphia brings in twice as much forfeiture revenue as the two—combined. Forfeiture revenue equals almost 20 percent of the District Attorney’s Office’s annual budget and the city spends nearly 40 percent of those proceeds on salaries, including the salaries of the very police and prosecutors doing the seizing. ‪


    “Philadelphia’s forfeiture scheme is especially outrageous. It allows the District Attorneys to pad their budget with millions of dollars in unaccountable funds by stripping innocent residents of their rights and property,” said IJ attorney and lead counsel on the case, Darpana Sheth. “Over a ten-year period police and prosecutors took in over $64 million in forfeiture proceeds—with $25 million going toward their salaries. The city’s residents are not ATMs.” ‪
    IJ is starting off the case by representing the family of Christos Sourovelis, who have had their home threatened by authorities because his son was caught selling $40 worth of drugs outside their house.
    Read more about the case here.



    UPDATE: Here's the video IJ put together about Philly:




    Scott Shackford is an associate editor at Reason 24/7.
    Follow Scott Shackford on Twitter

    http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/12/in...s-suit-to-stop



  2. #2
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    Feds Steal Old Lady's Money Because She Hid It in Her Girdle

    Jacob Sullum|Aug. 11, 2014 5:29 pm




    According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), "There is no limit on the amount of money that can be taken out of or brought into the United States." But Victoria Faren, a 78-year-old retiree who lives in Clearwater, Florida, thought there might be. So just to be safe, Faren hid the $40,700 in cash she was carrying with her to the Philippines—money from the recent sale of her home—in her underwear and carry-on bag. When a CBP officer asked how much money she was carrying, she initially said $200, then revised her answer to $1,200 after her daughter, who was traveling with her, mentioned that figure. The inconsistency led to a series of questions and increasingly intrusive searches that turned up more and more money, all of which the government confiscated. Carrying lots of money out of the country is perfectly legal, you see, but failing to report amounts of $10,000 or more is not, and any currency involved in such a violation is subject to forfeiture.
    This incident, which occurred last April at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, came to light as a result of a complaint filed on Friday by Barbara McQuade, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. To justify keeping Faren's money, McQuade cites 31 USC 5316, which requires people entering or leaving the country with $10,000 or more in cash to report that fact; 31 USC 5332, which makes it a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, to evade the reporting requirement by concealing money on one's person or in one's luggage; and two other provisions, 31 USC 5317 and 31 USC 5332, that authorize civil forfeiture of such unreported or concealed money. McQuade does not allege that Faren's money came from an illegal source—only that it was used to violate the reporting requirement and the ban on hiding money to avoid the reporting requirement.
    Judging from the narrative laid out in McQuade's complaint, according to which Faren repeatedly assured CBP officers that they had found all of the money before tearfully confessing to the full amount, she was afraid of exactly what happened: that the government would take every dollar it could find. The upside: According to The Detroit News, which reported the story on Friday, McQuade so far has not charged Faren with the concealment that is the basis of the forfeiture. Maybe the government will be satisfied to steal an old lady's savings and stop short of sending her to prison for the crime of keeping her business to herself.
    [Thanks to Joseph N. for the tip.]

    http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/11/fe...-because-she-h


    If it is her money what is the stealing and confiscating for?????


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    IJ Announces Big Push, New Site for Asset Forfeiture Reform

    Scott Shackford|Jul. 30, 2014 4:00 pm
    Credit: Chris Yarzab / photo on flickrThe liberty-loving Institute for Justice (IJ) has put together a new one-stop shop for info explaining all the terrible problems with and government abuse of civil asset forfeiture laws for you to share with any friends or family who don't quite get it. And there's more to come.
    Check out the easy-to-remember endforfeiture.com. Scroll down the site and you'll hit every piece of information you need to illustrate the abuse problems and twisted incentives that come from the government's ability to seize assets from citizens through civil processes without ever having to prove they committed a crime. The site includes IJ's videos and report about "Policing for Profit," as well as details about a handful of specific cases, some of which will be familiar to regular Reason readers. And there will be more cases.
    "We're going to have a whole string of them coming out in the next year," says IJ Senior Attorney Scott Bullock. He is leading the institute's eight-member "forfeiture initiative team."
    The site, though, is not just about what IJ is doing to fight asset forfeitures. It highlights the two recently introduced congressional bills to try to scale back the power on the federal level to take citizens' property without real due process. It also offers some model legislation language that could be used on the state level to reform the rules and reporting requirements for asset forfeiture. The model legislation could be used, for example, for citizens to craft a ballot initiative in their states for an "end run" around government interests, Bullock said.
    "When Americans hear you can lose your property without committing a crime, they can't believe it," Bullock said. "But there are powerful interest groups on the other side that fight tooth and nail to fight reform," like the prosecutors and law enforcement agencies who get the money from the forfeitures. Such efforts have succeeded in Oregon and Utah, though unfortunately Utah's reforms were gutted last year.
    IJ has had a string of successes lately, fighting licensing regulations meant to hamstring everybody from coffin-crafting monks to hair-braiders to taxi drivers. May the new push produce more victories.


    Scott Shackford is an associate editor at Reason 24/7.


    http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/30/ij...site-for-asset

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    Rand Paul Tries to Limit the State's License to Steal

    The Kentucky senator's forfeiture reform bill would curtail legal theft.


    Jacob Sullum | July 30, 2014


    In 2003 a Nebraska state trooper stopped Emiliano Gonzolez for speeding on Interstate 80 and found $124,700 inside a cooler on the back seat of the rented Ford Taurus he was driving. Gonzolez said the money was intended to buy a refrigerated truck for a produce business, but the cops figured all that cash must have something to do with illegal drugs.

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    In 2003 a Nebraska state trooper stopped Emiliano Gonzolez for speeding on Interstate 80 and found $124,700 inside a cooler on the back seat of the rented Ford Taurus he was driving. Gonzolez said the money was intended to buy a refrigerated truck for a produce business, but the cops figured all that cash must have something to do with illegal drugs.

    Although there was not much evidence to support that theory, under federal forfeiture law the government managed to keep Gonzolez's money based on little more than a hunch. A bill introduced last week by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) would make that sort of highway robbery harder to pull off.


    Civil forfeiture allows the government to take property from people who are never charged with a crime, let alone convicted, based on the fiction that the property itself is guilty. Gonzolez's case, for instance, is known as U.S. v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency.

    A federal judge initially rejected that forfeiture. But in 2006 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit concluded that the government had "demonstrate[d] by a preponderance of the evidence that there was a substantial connection between the currency and a drug trafficking offense."

    Preponderance of the evidence, which requires showing that the government's theory is more likely than not to be true, is a much lower hurdle than proof "beyond a reasonable doubt," the standard used in criminal cases. In between is "clear and convincing evidence," the standard that Paul's bill, the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, would require for federal forfeiture.

    Nebraska, where Gonzolez was pulled over, actually requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt to complete a forfeiture under state law. But police can avoid that requirement, as they did in his case, through the Justice Department's Equitable Sharing Program, which allows them to take advantage of looser federal standards and keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds.

    A 2010 study by the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that defends property rights and other civil liberties, found that "equitable sharing" is especially common in states with relatively strict forfeiture rules—strong evidence of what I.J. calls "policing for profit." The FAIR Act would abolish equitable sharing, thereby preventing police and prosecutors from evading state reforms aimed at reducing forfeiture abuse.
    Those reforms include channeling forfeiture revenue to functions other than law enforcement, a change designed to eliminate the profit motive that warps police priorities. Similiarly, the FAIR Act would assign federal forfeiture proceeds, which last fiscal year totaled more than $2 billion, to the general fund instead of the Justice Department.

    The FAIR Act also beefs up protections for innocent owners. It requires the government to prove that the owner of an asset allegedly used to facilitate a crime either himself used the property for illegal purposes, consented to that use, or was "willfully blind" to it.
    Current law puts the burden on innocent owners to show they did not know about the illegal use or "did all that reasonably could be expected under the circumstances to terminate such use." In other words, property owners are guilty until proven innocent, turning an ancient principle of justice on its head.

    These reforms should not only make it harder for the government to take innocent people's property but also discourage it from trying. The latter effect is important because fighting a forfeiture is arduous and expensive—so expensive that it typically costs less simply to let the government keep its ill-gotten gains.

    Last year, after Russell Caswell succeeded in blocking the federal government's forfeiture of his Massachusetts motel based on drug offenses committed by a tiny fraction of his guests, he said he could not have done it without the pro bono help of the Institute for Justice. As Caswell noted, "The government goes after people they think can't afford to fight." The FAIR Act promises to make such contests less lopsided and less common.

    http://reason.com/archives/2014/07/3...rotection-plan


    All this is about is trying to make it legal for these people to steal from any one they want to. This practice needs to be stopped. It is wrong taking people belongings with out proof, innocent till proven guilty....
    Last edited by kathyet2; 08-12-2014 at 12:40 PM.

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