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Government Property Is Sacred. Your Property? Not So Much.


Muda69

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https://mises.org/wire/government-property-sacred-your-property-not-so-much

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In light of the government’s response to the January 6 storming of the Capitol, anyone with a sense of political sanity can no longer argue that the war on terror is separate from American domestic affairs.

US imperialism came full circle on January 20, 2021, when Washington, DC, was subject to military occupation during Joe Biden’s inaugural address in order to secure the Capitol from alleged domestic extremist threats. When the right-wing violence that DC talking heads were squawking about never came to pass, their focus shifted toward trying to deradicalize right-leaning individuals who hold heretical views that collide with the managerial regime’s gospel.

Former CIA director John Brennan was among the most vocal of the national security analysts who started listing off all sorts of problematic groups that potentially pose a threat to the dystopian political order crystallizing before our very eyes. The very act of a mob entering the holiest of the holy sites was enough to make the entire American political establishment have a mental breakdown.

The message the ruling class sent to those who protested against it on its own turf was quite clear: tread your muddy boots on our cathedral and you will be met with a firm response from the state.

So far, there have been over 380 people charged for participating in the January 6 incident. Rest assured, the politicians who are still shaken from January 6 are thirsting for more people to persecute. Words like coup, insurrection, riot, sedition, and treason were tossed around liberally to describe the January 6ers’ actions. Only a regime insecure of its legitimacy would throw a hysterical fit over the Capitol storming that looked more like a live-action role-play than a rebellion that threatened the sovereignty of the DC occupational regime.

Pace the gatekeepers of political opinion, launching a coup requires strong organizational capacity. Rag-tag groups of disgruntled, working-class Americans, disenchanted soccer moms, and extremely online Trump supporters aren’t going to be pulling off a coup against the most powerful government in human history. The only venues the January 6 demonstrators were capable of taking over were online chat rooms.

Government Property Is Sacred. Your Property? Not So Much. 

The double standards the legacy media is using to rationalize its ongoing crusade against the specter of extremism are farcical, to say the least. Over the course of a year when small business owners had their livelihoods destroyed by arbitrary lockdowns and widespread rioting, the ruling class tipped their glasses to the rioters and scoffed at those who had to put up with last summer’s mayhem. These same media mouthpieces would likely be cheering on color revolutions and lively protests in the Middle East and post-Soviet countries as the maximal expression of democracy. But when a rowdy group of Trump supporters took it upon themselves to stand up to their overlords, that was simply a bridge too far.

Any attempt to try to point out the inconsistency of the media’s hyperventilation with regard to the January 6 incident was met with instant pushback. On Morning Joe, TV host Joe Scarborough did not pull any punches:

I know there are idiots on other cable news channels that will say, "Well, this mom-and-pop store that was vandalized during the summer riots and that's just as bad as the United States Capitol being vandalized.

He then had some colorful language for those who hazarded to question the prevailing narrative:

No jackass it’s not. It’s the center of American democracy. No, jackass…. I'm not going to confuse a taco stand with the United States Capitol.

Only a detached member of the ruling class whose livelihood is sustained by some of America’s most powerful corporations can have the gall to downplay the trials and tribulations untold numbers of small business owners had to endure during last summer’s mayhem. Scarborough and his coterie would have us believe that paying respect to the hallowed institutions of mass democracy is the highest virtue while trying to defend the fundamental property rights of the common man is the province of buffoons and country bumpkins.

Private Property Is Critical for Civilization

For the adherents of the present political order, symbols of the state have a religious aura. Private property, on the other hand, is a sacrificial animal to be slaughtered as an offering to the state, though the whole conversation would likely change if the property of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, Big Tech, or politically connected corporations were defiled. The media would instantly become situational capitalists and vigorously defend the sanctity of their fellow peers’ property. 

Heck, they might just throw some radical free market defenses here and there. But this is out of pure self-interest, not because political leaders and their corporate patrons hold private property in high esteem at a holistic level. As for the rest of the rubes in Middle America, they must put up with whatever political violence befalls them and their property. Simply raising their voices in opposition will have the legacy media branding them as “reactionary,” “racist,” or “bigoted.”

On the other hand, Ludwig von Mises championed private property not just for the sake of sloganeering but to impart to others the necessity property rights as a means of fostering social harmony. As he observed in Omnipotent Government, “If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.”

Mises’s vision for a social order predicated on respect for property rights has not disappeared from the intellectual consciousness. Successors of the Misesian tradition such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe have continued making the case for the respect of private property as a civilizing force. Unlike the public sector worshippers, Hoppe understood the bigger picture of why private property, not public property, should be treated as sacred. In fact, he views the modern-day state as one of the principal drivers of the erosion of property rights throughout the West.

As Hoppe argued in Democracy, The God That Failed,

the more the state has increased its expenditures on social security and public safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth.

As a consequence of being accustomed to having mandarins in distant government agencies lord over them, Americans have gradually come to disrespect or at least take for granted the concept of property rights. Hence their relative indifference toward the wanton destruction of the property of many small business owners’ establishments during last summer’s riots and toward the devastation government-promoted lockdowns inflicted on these small business operations.

The sign of a healthy society is one where private property is respected, and not just the private property of social media whales or parasitic defense contractors, but that of everyday business owners. By the same token, a society with a modicum of sanity would laud acts of self-defense against criminals who wish to harm the property and persons of lawful individuals.

Many of the shibboleths that Americans have been so inured to accept are now imploding. Millions of Americans took it upon themselves to buy firearms at record levels during a time when police services could be relied on to uphold their end of the proverbial social contract. Moreover, a number of Americans responded by forming community defense groups to protect their neighborhoods when police were standing down left and right as cities nationwide burned.

Even the idea of privatized policing is starting to gain traction in certain parts of America. Occasionally, moments of crisis force people to rethink many political premises they’ve stubbornly held. There’s something to be said about how operating outside of one’s comfort zone can compel one to look at things differently.

All things considered, the past year should all but dispel the notion that America is “exceptional.” It’s a country with a myriad of problems that have dotted empires in decay throughout world history—a corrupt ruling class, an overstretched military presence, an unstable monetary system, and declining public order.

Reassuring ourselves of empty bromides that it “can’t happen here” because America is exceptional is a pathetic cope that ignores the iron laws of politics and economics, which the US is not exempt from. The only thing exceptional is the level of befuddlement that many experts will find themselves in once the US inevitably careens into the abyss of social and economic decadence if the country’s leaders don’t get their act together.

Yes, America is slowly failing.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Government Seized This Innocent Man's Car Without Due Process. SCOTUS Won't Hear the Case.

https://reason.com/2021/04/19/civil-forfeiture-supreme-court-gerardo-serrano-truck-customs-border-protection/

Quote

When Gerardo Serrano stopped in Eagle Pass, Texas, to snap some pictures of the U.S.-Mexico border, he thought the photos would be free. He paid with his vehicle.

In September 2015, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized the brand-new F-250 truck via civil forfeiture, which allows the government to take property from people merely suspected of committing a crime. Serrano's error: After agents pulled him over for the pictures, and after Serrano refused to surrender the password to his phone, they located five loose bullets in his vehicle (without a gun), and deemed them "munitions of war." He was detained for several hours and told to walk home.

For years, the government refused to properly adjudicate the matter. Not only was Serrano never charged with a crime, but CBP never filed a formal forfeiture complaint: It just took Serrano's property and sat on it while his pleas fell on deaf ears. He eventually shelled out $3,800 to challenge the move in federal court, and still heard nothing—until he filed a lawsuit against the agency for violation of due process.

At that point, CBP suddenly came around and returned the property. "The upshot is that Serrano lost his property for two years based on nothing more than a probable cause determination by CBP agents who were clearly irritated by his refusal to provide his iPhone password," wrote Reason's Jacob Sullum last year. "Such delays are built into modern forfeiture procedures, which include an 'administrative' phase during which a property owner can plead for mercy from the same agency that took his stuff and would receive the proceeds from selling it."

On Monday the Supreme Court declined to hear his case. That demurral reinforces the position taken by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals: that the government does not violate someone's due process when they take their property without a hearing. Other circuits have ruled to the contrary.

"When the agents seized my truck, I couldn't believe it was happening to me," said Serrano in a statement. "And now I'm back in the Twilight Zone, thinking this can't be real. How can the courts just ignore this? And how can an ordinary person afford to wait years after the government takes their car?"

Serrano was given several options immediately following the seizure, from doing nothing to paying the vehicle's full market value to get it back. Noticeably absent from the list: a hearing. Given what happened today, that unfortunately won't change anytime soon.

An incorrect decision by the SCOTUS on this matter.

 

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25 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

The Government Seized This Innocent Man's Car Without Due Process. SCOTUS Won't Hear the Case.

https://reason.com/2021/04/19/civil-forfeiture-supreme-court-gerardo-serrano-truck-customs-border-protection/

An incorrect decision by the SCOTUS on this matter.

 

The decision to grant or deny certiorari depends on many factors, the least of which is the merits of a particular case.

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30 minutes ago, Bobref said:

The decision to grant or deny certiorari depends on many factors, the least of which is the merits of a particular case.

Can you please enumerate some of the most common factors, for those of us without a formal legal education?

 

 

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17 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Can you please enumerate some of the most common factors, for those of us without a formal legal education?

Writs of Certiorari

Parties who are not satisfied with the decision of a lower court must petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case. The primary means to petition the court for review is to ask it to grant a writ of certiorari. This is a request that the Supreme Court order a lower court to send up the record of the case for review. The Court usually is not under any obligation to hear these cases, and it usually only does so if the case could have national significance, might harmonize conflicting decisions in the federal Circuit courts, and/or could have precedential value. In fact, the Court accepts 100-150 of the more than 7,000 cases that it is asked to review each year. Typically, the Court hears cases that have been decided in either an appropriate U.S. Court of Appeals or the highest Court in a given state (if the state court decided a Constitutional issue).

The Supreme Court has its own set of rules. According to these rules, four of the nine Justices must vote to accept a case. Five of the nine Justices must vote in order to grant a stay, e.g., a stay of execution in a death penalty case. Under certain instances, one Justice may grant a stay pending review by the entire Court. 

https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/supreme-1

 

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1 minute ago, Bobref said:

Writs of Certiorari

Parties who are not satisfied with the decision of a lower court must petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case. The primary means to petition the court for review is to ask it to grant a writ of certiorari. This is a request that the Supreme Court order a lower court to send up the record of the case for review. The Court usually is not under any obligation to hear these cases, and it usually only does so if the case could have national significance, might harmonize conflicting decisions in the federal Circuit courts, and/or could have precedential value. In fact, the Court accepts 100-150 of the more than 7,000 cases that it is asked to review each year. Typically, the Court hears cases that have been decided in either an appropriate U.S. Court of Appeals or the highest Court in a given state (if the state court decided a Constitutional issue).

The Supreme Court has its own set of rules. According to these rules, four of the nine Justices must vote to accept a case. Five of the nine Justices must vote in order to grant a stay, e.g., a stay of execution in a death penalty case. Under certain instances, one Justice may grant a stay pending review by the entire Court. 

https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/supreme-1

 

Thank you.  Well IMHO this is a case of national significance, highlighting the unconstitutional scourge of asset forfeiture occurring across this great nation by federal authorities all the way down to local police departments. 

 

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1 minute ago, Muda69 said:

Thank you.  Well IMHO this is a case of national significance, highlighting the unconstitutional scourge of asset forfeiture occurring across this great nation by federal authorities all the way down to local police departments. 

I guess not everyone thinks it’s a “scourge.” Anyway, SCOTUS handed down a pretty comprehensive opinion in the Indiana asset forfeiture case, Timbs v. Indiana, barely 2 years ago. Apparently, they don’t feel the need to revisit the issue so soon.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The FBI Seized Heirlooms, Coins, and Cash From Hundreds of Safe Deposit Boxes in Beverly Hills, Despite Knowing 'Some' Belonged to 'Honest Citizens'

https://reason.com/2021/05/10/the-fbi-seized-heirlooms-coins-and-cash-from-hundreds-of-safe-deposit-boxes-in-beverly-hills-despite-knowing-some-belonged-to-honest-citizens/

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Dagny discovered that the FBI had seized the contents of her safe deposit box—about $100,000 in gold and silver coins, some family heirlooms like a diamond necklace inherited from her late grandmother, and an engagement ring she'd promised to pass down to her daughter—almost by accident.

She'd been asked by a friend to recommend a convenient and secure location for keeping some valuables. Dagny searched Yelp to find the phone number for U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills facility where she'd rented a safe deposit box since 2017. That's when she saw the bad news.

"Permanently closed."

After a brief moment of panic, some phone calls, and several days, Dagny and her husband Howard (pseudonyms used at their request to maintain privacy during ongoing legal proceedings) figured out what happened. On March 22, the FBI had raided U.S. Private Vaults. The federal agents were armed with a warrant allowing them to seize property belonging to the company as part of a criminal investigation—and even though the warrant explicitly exempted the safe deposit boxes in the company's vaults, they were taken too. More than 800 were seized.

Howard tells Reason there was no attempt made by the FBI to contact him, his wife, or their heirs—despite the fact that contact information was taped to the top of their box. Six weeks later, the couple is still waiting for their property to be returned. (Both individuals are supporters of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website.)

The FBI and federal prosecutors have "no authority to continue holding the possessions of some 800 bystanders who are not alleged to have been involved in whatever USPV may have done wrong," Benjamin Gluck, a California attorney who is representing several of the people caught up in the FBI's raid of U.S. Private Vaults, tells Reason.

Legal efforts to force the FBI to return the items seized during the March 22 raid have so far been unsuccessful, but at least five lawsuits are pending in federal court.

A federal grand jury indicted U.S. Private Vaults (USPV) on counts of conspiracy to distribute drugs, launder money, and avoid mandatory deposit reporting requirements.

In legal filings, federal prosecutors have admitted that "some" of the company's customers were "honest citizens," but contend that "the majority of the box-holders are criminals who used USPV's anonymity to hide their ill-gotten wealth."

Whatever the original motivation for the raid, the FBI's seizure of hundreds of safe deposit boxes held by U.S. Private Vaults raises serious Fourth and Fifth Amendment issues. In order to have the contents of their boxes returned, federal authorities are asking owners to come forward, identify themselves, and describe their possessions. Some owners may be unwilling to do that—U.S. Private Vaults allowed anonymous rentals of safe-deposit boxes—while others may rightfully object to being subjected to the scrutiny of federal law enforcement when they have done nothing wrong.

"The constitution does not abide guilt by association," argues Robert Frommer, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, in an op-ed published by The Orange County Register.

"What the government has done here is completely backward," writes Frommer. "The government cannot search every apartment in a building because the landlord is involved in a crime. After all, when somebody rents an apartment, that apartment is theirs."

Indeed, the unsealed warrant authorizing the raid of U.S. Private Vaults granted the FBI permission to seize the business's computers, money counters, security cameras, and "nests" of safe deposit boxes—the large steel frames that effectively act as bookshelves for the boxes themselves.

Importantly, the warrant "does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safe-deposit boxes," according to a copy of the warrant contained in court filings. The warrant also states that it "authorize[s] the seizure of the nests of the boxes themselves, not their contents."

But the FBI's own policies seem to have allowed a roundabout legal rationale for seizing the boxes as well. Agents are required to take into custody any property that could otherwise be stolen or left "in a dangerous manner" after carrying out a warrant. To put it in the context of a simpler situation: If the FBI seized a truck carrying cargo, it would not simply dump the cargo on the side of the road. Instead, there is a specific procedure for law enforcement to follow, which involves identifying and notifying rightful property owners, as well as securing the property.

In court filings, however, Gluck and other attorneys representing anonymous plaintiffs argue that the seizure of the nests "does not appear to be the government's true purpose here."

"A reasonable person could easily conclude that taking and searching the contents of the boxes was the true purpose of the USPV seizure, not just an unintended but unavoidable byproduct as the government seeks to portray and justify it," they write.

Now that the FBI has nearly 1,000 safe deposit boxes in its custody, anyone who comes forward to identify themselves and claim their possessions risks becoming the target of a criminal investigation. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California told the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal industry publication, last month that "each box is being considered on a case-by-case basis, and we will investigate the boxes, or claims made on them" to determine if "the contents are related to criminal activity."

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argue that this amounts to an admission that prosecutors intend "to use any information gleaned in the claims process in order to conduct criminal investigations." U.S. Private Vaults had assured its customers that their anonymity would be protected, and people could have valid, non-criminal reasons for wanting to keep their identities a secret.

The rights violations are bad enough, but the FBI raid seems to have had serious procedural shortcomings as well. One 80-year-old woman represented by Gluck—and identified in court documents only as "Linda R."—may have lost a significant portion of her life savings due to what legal filings say are shoddy inventories of the safe deposit boxes' contents.

In a lawsuit filed on April 26, Linda R.'s attorneys argue that the FBI "failed to account for or return" 40 gold coins worth an estimated $75,000 that had been stored in a safe deposit box housed at U.S. Private Vaults. Department of Justice documentation detailing the contents of Linda's box makes note of "miscellaneous coins" without any specific amounts or other identification of the coins—Linda's attorneys note that the description could apply to everything from a pair of pennies to a box full of 1933 double eagle gold coins, some of the rarest and most valuable coins ever minted. For now, it remains unclear whether the government even possesses an accurate accounting of what was in her safe deposit box when it was seized.

Despite the broad claims of criminality from prosecutors, Linda has been charged with no crimes but may have lost tens of thousands of dollars of her retirement savings anyway. Even if the FBI's raid of U.S. Private Vaults eventually uncovers criminal activity relating to some of the safe-deposit boxes stored there, that hardly seems to justify the potential losses incurred by innocent bystanders like Linda, who kept her retirement savings there because she distrusted the banking system, according to court filings.

"It was improper that the government seized these possessions in the first place, unconscionable that they are using them as hostages to pressure owners to divulge private information, and outrageous that they apparently treated the possessions so carelessly that they seem to have lost at least some of them," Gluck tells Reason.

Jeffrey B. Isaacs, an attorney for another anonymous customer of U.S. Private Vaults—identified in court records as "James Poe"—tells the Los Angeles Times that the FBI's raid is "as illegal a search and seizure as I've ever seen."

For Dagny and Howard, the situation seems particularly cruel. They'd rented the box at U.S. Private Vaults after having their home burgled several years ago. They have the key and rental agreement for the box—and, Howard notes, they paid for the box with a credit card, hardly the sort of thing you'd do if you were trying to hide your identity from the feds or engage in criminal conduct. None of that has made a difference so far.

Because this time, the burglars wore badges.

This was nothing more than a heinous crime perpetrated by the FBI. And they will get away with it.

  

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  • 1 month later...

Indiana Said the Government Should Be Able To Take Everything You Own if You Commit a Drug Crime. The State Supreme Court Wasn't Having It.

https://reason.com/2021/06/10/indiana-said-the-government-should-be-able-to-take-everything-you-own-if-you-commit-a-drug-crime-the-state-supreme-court-wasnt-having-it/

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In February of 2021, almost eight years after the state of Indiana seized Tyson Timbs' brand-new Land Rover over a drug crime, prosecutors argued that there should be no proportionality when it comes to such offenses—in other words, that the government should essentially be free to take everything you're worth.

Today, the state's highest court categorically rejected that.

The conclusion is not only good for Timbs—who will get to keep his vehicle, once and for all—but for others who would have fallen victim to Indiana prosecutors' extremely broad definition of what constitutes a legal and proportional civil forfeiture. The practice allows the government to take your property and pocket it, sometimes if you're only suspected of committing a crime. In Indiana, prosecutors must merely meet the "preponderance of the evidence" standard, which requires less than evidence than is needed to get a criminal conviction.

After unsuccessfully making his way through the state courts, Timbs' case was the subject of a 2019 landmark Supreme Court ruling, which dictated that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against excessive fines and fees applies to state governments. His case then returned to Indiana's high court, whose judges sent it back to the trial court and back up again.

In other words, this was the third time the Indiana Supreme Court was tasked with deciding who owned Tyson Timb's car: Timbs, or the state.

Timbs—and those who might find themselves in a similar position—finally won.

"Today's ruling is an important victory for property rights across Indiana," says Timbs' attorney, Sam Gedge of the Institute for Justice. "We're thrilled that the Indiana Supreme Court recognized the government's overreach in Tyson's case, and we think it's going to be a key precedent in combatting civil forfeiture going forward."

Chief Justice Loretta Rush likened the government's chutzpah to "Captain Ahab's chase of the white whale Moby Dick." Timbs, she concluded, "met his high burden to show that the harshness of his Land Rover's forfeiture was grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the underlying dealing offense and his culpability for the vehicle's misuse."

She added that "addiction is not a categorical means to inflate the seriousness of a predicate offense"—a rebuke of the government's quest to set no limit on what they can take from people who struggle with drug issues.

Indiana prosecutors' position may sound extreme, but it fits right in with the state's general attitude toward legalized theft. Also in February of this year, the Indiana Senate passed a bill to seize assets from people suspected of "unlawful assembly," a vague crime often used to break up protests.

"The attorney general's 'anything goes' approach to civil forfeiture has definitely hit a setback with today's decision," says Gedge.

Justice has been served for Mr. Timbs.  Too bad the overzealous prosecutors and members of law enforcement won't be disciplined for their overrreach.

  

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  • 1 month later...

FBI Seized $900,000 From Safe Deposit Box on 'Pure Conjecture,' Federal Judge Says

https://reason.com/2021/07/29/fbi-seized-900000-from-safe-deposit-box-on-pure-conjecture-federal-judge-says/

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A federal judge issued a sharp rebuke to the FBI's attempt to expose the identity of one of the anonymous victims of a March raid that seized more than $86 million in cash, jewelry, and other valuables from safe deposit boxes in Beverly Hills, California. Now a new legal effort is seeking to force the government to explain its own still-secret justification for the raid.

In a ruling issued last week, U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner rejected prosecutors' request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the owner of Box 904, one of more than 600 safe deposit boxes seized by the FBI during the March 22 raid of U.S. Private Vaults. The box-holder, identified in court documents under the pseudonym "Charles Coe," claims to have lost more than $900,000 in cash and other valuables. In trying to get the lawsuit dismissed, prosecutors also asked Klausner to force Coe to identify himself publicly before returning the seized property.

"If the government believes that plaintiff did not lawfully possess the contents of box number 904, the government can, of course, defend this suit on that basis," Klausner wrote. "But the government has made no showing that plaintiff possessed the items seized from box number 904 unlawfully."

Later, he added that the government's case against Coe has not been based on "anything more than pure conjecture that plaintiff might have unlawfully possessed the items seized from box number 904."

That's been true for much of the government's case against the hundreds of safe deposit boxes seized from U.S. Private Vaults. When the FBI raided the facility on March 22, agents were armed with a warrant that explicitly forbade them from seizing the contents of the safe deposit boxes kept there. But the FBI took them into custody anyway. In May, the FBI filed administrative forfeiture proceedings against 369 of the nearly 800 boxes seized—including more than $85 million in cash and other valuables.

A federal grand jury indicted U.S. Private Vaults on a number of charges, including conspiracy to launder money and sell drugs. Michael Poliak, one of the co-owners of U.S. Private Vaults, has a lengthy criminal history that includes money laundering and may have used "dirty" money to purchase a stake in the company, according to an affidavit filed by an undercover police officer and published earlier this week by The Daily Beast. 

As Reason has previously reported, prosecutors have tried to argue that the alleged misdeeds of the company's owners should turn their customers into suspects, too. In court filings, prosecutors have said "some" of U.S. Private Vaults' customers were "honest citizens," but contended that "the majority of the box-holders are criminals who used USPV's anonymity to hide their ill-gotten wealth."

But all that conjecture, as Klausner noted, has not yet added up to much in the way of actual prosecutions against U.S. Private Vaults' customers who had their valuables swept up in the raid. Poliak is not facing criminal charges either.

Lawyers representing some of the raid's victims say the FBI's sweeping seizure of the safe deposit boxes was a serious violation of the Fourth Amendment—akin to searching every unit in an apartment building because the management company stands accused of some crime. Meanwhile, prosecutors' insistence that U.S. Private Vaults' anonymous clients identify themselves before being able to seek a legal remedy runs afoul of the Fifth Amendment's protections against self-incrimination.

The FBI has returned the contents from some of the seized safe deposit boxes, but only after brazenly rifling through private documents and potentially misplacing some box-holders' valuables in an apparent attempt to find evidence of criminal activity.

A major piece of the U.S. Private Vaults saga remains hidden, as the government has unsealed only one of the two warrants that it claims were used to justify the raid in the first place.

Michelle Friedman Gerlis, one of the box-holders whose property was seized as part of the March 22 raid at U.S. Private Vaults, filed a motion in federal district court this week requesting that all warrants and supporting affidavits be made public.

"There is no question that Ms. Gerlis is entitled to copies of the documents that the government purported to rely on when it searched and seized the contents of her safety deposit boxes," Benjamin Gluck, the California attorney representing Gerlis (and other victims of the raid) wrote in court filings. "Indeed, the law is clear that she has a constitutional right of access to them under the Fourth Amendment."

The legal issues surrounding the still-secret warrant go beyond the acute legal issues facing Gerlis and the other plaintiffs in the U.S. Private Vaults saga. Those documents should be made public because of what they could reveal about how the FBI constructed a rationale for its brazen raid that resulted in hundreds of Americans potentially losing money and valuable assets despite not being charged with a crime.

To that end, Reason has joined Gerlis' lawsuit seeking to unseal the warrant.

"Reason intends to continue reporting on the Government's seizure of property from customers of U.S. Private Vaults and asserts a First Amendment right to review and inform the public about the content of the warrant material," writes Mike Alissi, Reason's publisher, in court filings this week.

Prosecutors seem to have approached the U.S. Private Vaults under the assumption that they can force innocent safe deposit box owners to disclose their identities in order to secure the return of their property—all without providing claims of wrongdoing. And that they can do that while keeping their own legal justifications secret. Federal courts should continue to eye those arguments with a healthy degree of skepticism.

Good to see the side of personal freedom prevail against the feds.

 

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  • 9 months later...

Michigan Couple Says Town Seized Their Building and Offered To Return It if They Bought Two Cars for Police

https://reason.com/2022/05/19/michigan-couple-says-town-seized-their-building-and-offered-to-return-it-if-they-bought-two-cars-for-police/

Quote

A Michigan couple says their town seized a building they owned and then demanded that they buy two cars for the police department to get their own property back.

The case, first reported by WXYZ Detroit, began in December of 2020 when the mayor of Highland Park and the police chief dropped by a 13,000-square-foot building owned by Justyna and Matt Kozbial for an impromptu fire code inspection.

The city officials found a marijuana grow operation inside. The Kozbials, immigrants from Poland, say they had a state license to grow medical marijuana, but the city seized the building anyway and held on to it for 17 months without charging them with a crime.

Under civil asset forfeiture laws, police can legally seize property—cash, cars, and even houses—suspected of being connected to criminal activity like drug trafficking, whether or not the owner has been charged with a crime. But not only were the Kozbials never charged with a crime, police never alleged there was any major criminal activity.

 

In a response to an interrogatory filed in the Kozbials' subsequent lawsuit against Highland Park, a city police officer answered "none" when asked to identify any predicate felony offenses justifying the seizure.

Things then took a highly unusual turn when the Kozbials say they received a settlement offer from the town: Stop growing marijuana and buy two vehicles for the local police department.

A February 24, 2021, email provided to Reason by the Kozbials' attorney, Marc Deldin, shows that a Highland Park police officer, ferrying a message from city attorney Terry Ford, sent the Kozbials quotes for two cars from a local Ford dealership, totaling about $70,000.

Civil liberties groups often criticize civil forfeiture for creating a perverse profit incentive for police and local governments, since forfeiture revenues often go straight into their budgets, but it's practically unheard of to see such an overt shakedown put into emails and court documents.

 

"Extortion, there's no other way to explain it," Deldin says.

"This is really policing for profit, because instead of finding a crime, pressing charges, and allowing the forfeiture process to work out, they just went and seized the building and said, 'Give us two cop cars,'" Deldin tells Reason. "There was no crime, and there was no forfeiture process. The goal was never to forfeit this property because Highland Park wouldn't receive anything. The goal was to extort my client into providing squad cars."

Law enforcement groups say civil forfeiture is an essential tool to disrupt organized drug trafficking. However, civil liberties groups say the practice is unfairly tilted against owners, who often bear the burden of proving their innocence and fighting in court for months, sometimes years, to try and win back their own property.

Wayne County, where Highland Park is located, has an aggressive asset forfeiture program, particularly for cars. It seized more than 2,600 vehicles between 2017 and 2019, raking in more than $1.2 million in asset forfeiture revenues, according to public records obtained by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free market Michigan think tank.

 

Of those, 473 were not accompanied by a criminal conviction, and in 438 of those cases, no one was even charged with a crime. In 10 cases, the cars were seized under suspicion of a drug violation, even though the records say police didn't find any drugs.

Wayne County prosecutors typically offer to settle such forfeiture cases and return the owner's car for a $900 payment, plus towing and storage fees. (You can see one such forfeiture notice here.)

Deldin says, though, that the Kozbials' forfeiture case was never properly routed through the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office.

The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office did not immediately return a request for comment. In a statement to WXYZ Detroit, a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office said it was not aware that the city was negotiating its own settlement.

Today, a day after WXYZ Detroit reported on the fiasco, Highland Park informed the Kozbials that it would be giving them back their building. Their lawsuit is still ongoing.

"How many other people in Highland Park have they done this to?" Deldin wonders. "My clients are fortunate enough to have their resources to come and hire me. They're paying me to fight for their rights, but this is expensive. How many people in Highland Park didn't put up a fight?

Highland Park city attorney Terry Ford did not immediately return a request for comment.

The evil of civil asset forfeiture rears its ugly head again.  I used to live in western Wayne County,  glad I got the hell out of there.

 

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  • 4 months later...

Michigan Rolls Back Reforms of Civil Asset Forfeiture

https://reason.com/2022/09/22/michigan-rolls-back-asset-forfeiture-reform/

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From 2015 to 2019, in response to complaints that greedy cops were indiscriminately grabbing property they claimed was connected to criminal activity, Michigan legislators repeatedly amended the state's civil asset forfeiture laws. This year they partly reversed those reforms, making it easier to confiscate travelers' cash in the name of cracking down on drug trafficking.

Michigan previously required a criminal conviction prior to completion of forfeitures involving cash or other property worth $50,000 or less. A pair of bills that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law on May 26 lowered that ceiling to $20,000 for assets seized at airports. "Drug trafficking will not be tolerated in Michigan," declared state Rep. Graham Filler (R–DeWitt), who sponsored one of the bills. "The men and women who keep our airports secure need to have the proper authority to keep drugs and drug money out of our state—and this reform gives them the tools they need." Rep. Alex Garza (D–Taylor) claimed his related bill made Michigan "a safer place," because "drug traffickers will now think twice before trying to profit off the lives of our residents."

Whitmer, a Democrat, was equally enthusiastic. By removing barriers to forfeiture of property "seized in association with a drug crime," she said, the two bills "empower airport authorities to crack down on drug crimes at airports."

Far from being "a safer place" thanks to "this reform," Michigan is now a more dangerous place for anyone who flies with large amounts of cash. Whitmer assures us there is no cause for alarm, because this money is "seized in association with a drug crime." But that's an allegation the government should have to prove, not a presumption that travelers should have to rebut after armed agents of the state have already robbed them.

Forfeiture affidavits routinely employ vague boilerplate that falls far short of establishing a criminal nexus. Michigan law enforcement agencies have a strong incentive to assume that money they come across is drug-related, because they generally get to keep 90 percent of the proceeds from forfeitures they initiate.

"Traveling with cash is not a crime," notes Institute for Justice senior attorney Dan Alban, whose organization has represented many innocent people whose allegedly drug-tainted money was seized at airports. "People regularly fly with large amounts of cash for a wide variety of completely legitimate reasons related to their business or personal finances. Allowing authorities to take air travelers' cash without a criminal conviction, simply because they have a large sum of money, is a blatant violation of their rights."

A big step backwards in personal rights.

 

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  • 9 months later...

Police Seized Innocent People's Property and Kept It for Years. What Will the Supreme Court Do?

https://reason.com/2023/07/11/police-seized-innocent-peoples-property-and-kept-it-for-years-what-will-the-supreme-court-do/

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Gerardo Serrano and Stephanie Wilson may have little in common. But there is at least one major tie that binds them: The government seized their vehicles, never charged either of them with a crime, and, most pertinently, made them wait years before resolving their cases.

It is not uncommon for victims of civil forfeiture—the practice that allows law enforcement to take people's assets without having to prove the owner was guilty of a crime—to endure protracted delays before they have the opportunity to even step foot in a courtroom and defend themselves. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear Culley v. Attorney General of Alabama and decide if those who find themselves in that situation are entitled to a probable cause hearing after the seizure and, if so, how speedily it must happen.

That the highest court in the country has to rule on whether people get such a hearing is an apt indictment of how unaccountable civil forfeiture has become.

 

Serrano's case is instructive. In September 2015, while traveling to Mexico, he stopped at the border in Eagle Pass, Texas, to take pictures. That upset some Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, who demanded he surrender the password to his cellphone. Serrano refused. The agents then searched his new Ford F-250 truck, found five stray bullets, and accused him of smuggling "munitions of war." Serrano had a concealed carry permit, and there was no firearm in his vehicle. The officers confiscated his car anyway.

But the fragile nature of the allegation didn't matter, because it would never be subject to scrutiny. The government didn't press charges. They did, however, keep his vehicle for two years, without holding a hearing where he could contest the seizure—or without ever filing a formal forfeiture complaint. 

The dearth of due process protections was devastating. Serrano paid the government $3,800—10 percent of the car's value—as a requirement to fight the move in federal court; he was met with more radio silence, even after the feds cashed the check. A Kentucky resident, he subsequently spent thousands of dollars on rental cars while his vehicle sat halfway across the country, locked in a Texas parking lot.

Serrano never got that hearing, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled was fine. The federal government mysteriously changed its tune after two years went by—only when Serrano filed a lawsuit, represented by the Institute for Justice (I.J.), the libertarian-leaning public interest law firm. But as I.J., Serrano, and Wilson write in a recent amicus brief to the Supreme Court, the majority of innocent property owners do not have the resources to file a major class-action suit in order to coerce the government into returning their assets.

It is almost always the government, in fact, that has the leverage to do the coercing, which they use to deter property owners from reclaiming what is theirs. One important tool at its disposal: delaying any hearings.

 

Wilson knows first-hand. In 2019, over the span of less than six months, police in Detroit seized two of her cars after alleging that her ex-boyfriend and the father of her child was a petty drug offender. Wilson, a nursing student, was not suspected of wrongdoing, no arrests were made, and cops did not find drugs or guns in either of her vehicles. 

They proceeded forthwith. In the first instance, Wilson attempted three times, unsuccessfully, to fight the seizure: She was initially told she was too early to file a claim of interest on the car; on the second try, the government couldn't locate her paperwork; by the third try, she had missed a deadline, precluding her from further fighting for her car.

After the second seizure, almost two years went by before Wilson was permitted to go before a judge, who sided with her. The government would not get to keep another one of her vehicles. 

It was not for lack of trying.

Detroit is a fitting case study of how byzantine the process of contesting a forfeiture has become. Before any victim is allowed to state their case, and only after they have successfully filed that claim of interest on their property, they must attend four in-person "pre-trial" conferences where prosecutors put a "deal" on the table: The owner may have their property back if they pay the government a fixed fee. In Wilson's case, she would have to buy her own car back for $1,800, not including storage and towing fees, an offer she declined at every conference. She couldn't afford it. Those meetings happen during the workday; if victims are unable to skirt professional commitments that conflict with any of the conferences, the government lays claim to their property, and the victim can no longer contest the seizure. 

Wilson is named in a suit challenging those practices, which was argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in May. The court's decision is yet to be released. But in her case, and in similar cases across the country, the government has a considerable stake in upholding the status quo.

You don't have to look very far to figure out what it is. Law enforcement agencies typically pocket the majority of the proceeds from civil forfeiture seizures. As of 2020, Wilson's home state, Michigan, along with 24 others—Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming—direct 95 percent to 100 percent of the funds extracted from seizures toward law enforcement, according to the I.J. report Policing for Profit. The federal government, which targeted Serrano, is also in that category, funneling money to either the Department of Justice or the Department of the Treasury.

An additional seven states—Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Washington—send 80 percent to 95 percent of the proceeds to law enforcement. Several more fall below that threshold but still benefit handsomely from forfeitures, which in part explains why governments are loath to change course. 

Law enforcement agencies bolster their budgets with forfeiture funds in interesting ways. A 2017 report from the Philadelphia Weekly found that police used the money to purchase, among other things, submachine guns, uniform embroidery, web design services, and a lawn mower, along with tens of thousands of dollars in cash withdrawals. (Forfeiture money also went toward satisfying someone's parking ticket.) In 2021, law enforcement in Georgia were revealed to have spent the money illegally on furniture, Fitbits, gym paraphernalia, and vehicles. In police seminars a few years back, session leaders offered suggestions for what sort of property to target based on cops' wishlists, which included flat-screen televisions—those "are very popular with the police departments," one government employee said on video—along with cash and cars (the nicer the better).

Indeed, governments across the U.S. collectively take billions of dollars each year in forfeitures. Between 2002 and 2018, according to the I.J. report, people forfeited at least $63 billion. That stratospheric figure woefully undercounts the actual total, as only 20 states and the feds provided data for that time frame.

So it's not surprising, then, that the government opposes even modest measures of accountability and due process—something as simple as a hearing—when they come across people like Serrano and Wilson. Deprived of the ability to formally and publicly air the cases against them, which are often less than flimsy, the government can pressure victims into giving up their assets entirely or accepting a "deal" like the $1,800 offer Wilson received.

Such settlements are common. Consider the case of Carl Nelson and Amy Sterner Nelson, from whom the FBI seized almost $1 million in May 2020 after alleging Carl, who formerly worked as a real estate transaction manager for Amazon, had participated in an illegal kickback scheme with developers. (He was never charged with a crime.) Following the seizure, the family sold their car and their West Seattle house, liquidated their retirement, and temporarily moved with their four daughters into Amy's sister's basement. 

In February 2022, the FBI and the Nelsons agreed to settle: Out of the $892,000 the government took, it would give back $525,000. Carl and Amy would forfeit $109,000, with the rest of the sum eaten by court fees. Getting $525,000 back is certainly better than nothing, but losing about $367,000 can hardly be called a bargain.

Serrano, Wilson, and the Nelsons all saw around two years go by before their forfeiture cases were resolved. But even that is not exhaustive. In 2013, police in Indiana seized Tyson Timbs' Land Rover after arresting him for selling drugs to undercover cops. His car—which he had purchased a few months prior for about $42,000—was not connected with drug money. He bought it with his father's life insurance payout. 

Perhaps more importantly, Timbs, who has a history of drug addiction and relapsed after his dad died, turned his life around post-arrest. But law enforcement would still spend the next eight years fighting for the right to keep his car—a reminder that civil forfeiture has little to do with crippling crime and more to do with making the government richer. 

Timbs' case provides a particularly vivid illustration of that motive. In the struggle to keep his Land Rover, the state of Indiana argued multiple times that it should be able to take ownership of someone's car for going five mph over the speed limit. That is not parody, although when the solicitor general made that argument in 2018 in front of the Supreme Court, it was reportedly met with laughter from some of the justices. 

The state also submitted that law enforcement should be able to seize everything you own if you're suspected of committing a drug offense; that there should be no proportionality. The Indiana Supreme Court rejected that in 2021.

Many people, however, do not have the time and financial resources to fight their cases for months or years on end as they hope for, say, a hearing—which is evident in the billions of dollars the government successfully pockets each year via civil forfeiture. And if a victim is able to wade through the bureaucracy and finally get his or her day in court, it is not guaranteed they will be able to find representation.

In April 2015, cops in Indiana seized about $10,000 cash from Terry Abbott after he sold drugs to a confidential informant. A little more than three years passed, and in July 2018, the government moved for summary judgment in the case. Abbott intended to fight the seizure, but he had a problem: The government had taken his money, which he needed to pay an attorney.

While defendants are constitutionally entitled to a lawyer in criminal proceedings, civil forfeiture is a civil proceeding, as its name suggests, and thus that constitutional protection no longer applies—despite that the practice is used when police suspect someone of a crime, and that its stated purpose is hamstringing criminal activity. 

So Abbott had to represent himself. It's a quandary many civil forfeiture defendants confront. "If you can't afford to defend yourself, let alone feed yourself, it becomes complicated," Amy Nelson told me last year, which captures just how coercive the forfeiture process is and how few options people have.

But the first step is getting before a judge at all. When the Supreme Court hears Culley next term, they will consider the facts of two cases, both centered around innocent people whose cars were confiscated in Alabama. In one, police seized Halima Culley's vehicle after they arrested her son—who had borrowed the car—for marijuana possession and drug paraphernalia. In the other, cops took Lena Sutton's vehicle after she let a friend, who was found with methamphetamine, use it to run an errand. Sutton would go on to wait over a year before her car was returned; Culley was barred from reclaiming her property for 20 months.

No matter the Court's ruling, the government will still have the upper hand in civil forfeiture proceedings. But the justices have an opportunity to blow over one of the many cards stacked against the people and to send the government a reminder: that due process is a right, not a privilege.

This is basically legalized theft perpetrated by law enforcement against the people they are sworn to protect and serve.   The SCOTUS should strike down the whole sordid business.

 

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