It's funny how far we've come from what our founders sought to protect us from. Did you know the fourth amendment was written in response to the prevailing asset forfeiture laws of the time period. Yet here we see it having to be spelled out explicitly in law yet again. Good for him. Hope it passes.
This article[1] points to some of the worst, systematic abuses of forfeiture. Most frustrating is that any amount of cash holdings on your person in excess of a hundred dollars or so is often twisted as evidence that you MUST have committed some crime.
In fact, forfeiture is often used as bribery - let us keep your stuff and we won't make your life even harder, which even short-time readers of HN know, if the law wants to get after you, it will find something to charge you with. Often, taking away your kids is threatened if you don't let us keep your car.
I'm not going to toss myself out there as Rand Paul's biggest supporter, but he gets my absolute support (and my phoning of my representatives urging their support) of this bill.
Remember, under the common law, mens rea, criminal intent, was a standard requirement for criminal prosecution but today that is typically no longer the case especially under federal criminal law.
Everyone intuitively knows that you shouldn't hit, kill, or rob someone else, but there are now innumerable nominal "crimes" that are neither obvious nor intuitive.
"Three Felonies a Day" is a recent book which addresses this issue, and how the average adult in the United States commits three crimes which carry at least the possibility of jail time per day (on average).[1] There are tens of thousands of these offenses, and it is impossible to know all which may apply to you; even if a citizen makes an affirmative action to learn, there is no comprehensive list. Even more troubling is that many of these vague, and hard-to-find crimes do not require mens rea.
TL;DR: the examples available in the Amazon excerpts from that book are all felonies which the "average adult" would not be involved in, certainly not multiple times a day. (Unless you lead a very eventful life.)
Most frustrating is that any amount of cash holdings on your person in excess of a hundred dollars or so is often twisted as evidence that you MUST have committed some crime.
In a day and age when ATMs routinely dispense $300/day this is quite absurd.
I'm opposed to the scope of civil asset forfeiture as its applied in many cases. That said, the "parade of horribles" is overblown, and contraband has always been subject to forfeiture.
Because the pattern of Rayiners interaction is to post something misleading by omission and then get cute about asking other people to complete the picture. Screw that.
