Free Republic

Ninth Circuit panel unanimously orders FBI to destroy records it created during searches of US Private Vaults boxes.. PASADENA, Calif.—This morning, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled against the government in a long-running class action lawsuit from the Institute for Justice (IJ) on behalf of people who rented security deposit boxes at US Private Vaults. The decision slammed the FBI for overstepping its authority when it opened up hundreds of renters’ boxes, conducted criminal searches of them all, and attempted to permanently keep everything in the boxes worth more than $5,000, all without charging any box...

Civil rights attorneys argue FBI defied warrant by searching people's safe deposit boxes... FBI agents cataloged Cartier bracelets, Rolex watches and stacks of cash as they combed through safe deposit boxes seized from a Beverly Hills business accused of money laundering. But the owners of many of those boxes were not accused of any crimes. After hearing arguments from both sides Thursday, a panel of judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will decide whether the sweeping raid violated customers' Fourth Amendment rights. ... Agents took about $86 million in cash from the boxes, as well as a trove...

The decision provides important protection for property rights, and features a powerful concurring opinion by prominent conservative Judge Amal Thapar. In many states, asset forfeiture laws allow law enforcement agencies to seize valuable property based on mere suspicion that it was used in a crime, and then keep it even if the owner was never convicted of any crime. On top of that, some force owners to wait many months before they even have a chance to challenge the forfeiture in a hearing. Yesterday, in Ingram v. Wayne County, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a...

‘The government’s theory is that having cash makes you a presumptive criminal, and I think every American should be worried about that.’ There is no denying anymore that our federal agencies have weaponized their power against the political adversaries of the left. But if you think the feds’ abandonment of all standards only affects outspoken critics of the regime, think again. More allegations of FBI corruption and hubris are coming to light after a lawsuit last week revealed FBI agents misled a judge so they could illegally seize and withhold property from innocent American citizens. Agents took more than $86...

Paraphrased: Emergency Measures take precedence over the "Rule of Law"?

Q: Can the government take your property without a conviction? How is that legal? Civil forfeiture is when the government seizes the money, homes and cars of people engaged in criminal activity. The money is mostly used to boost the budget of law enforcement agencies. Historically, civil forfeiture was used infrequently until it was developed as a tool in the war on drugs in the 1980s. It expanded in use to seizing the cars of intoxicated drivers, or the proceeds from activities ranging from illegal gambling to securities fraud. The reason this is legal is that, while people have constitutional...

One of government’s most shocking powers is civil asset forfeiture or seizure. This power occurs when law enforcement confiscates private property with or without charging the owner with a crime. In Tennessee, the betting odds say it is more likely personal property will be taken by law enforcement than through a robbery. Scary, isn't it? Going back slightly more than a decade you will find Tennessee law enforcement has taken more than $150 million in cash and personal property – without criminal charges or legal accusations of criminal activity. The proceeds from these types of seizures are generally applied to...

Victims of the FBI's constitutionally dubious raid say they've been told to come forward and identify themselves if they want their stuff back. 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...

On April 15, Preident Biden signed an Executive Order on Blocking Property with Respect to Specified Harmful Foreign Activities of the Government of the Russian Federation. Contrary to its title, this EO is not about Russia. It is designed to allow the Biden administration to deprive American citizens and organizations of their rights and property by arbitrarily linking those persons to real, imagined, or vaguely defined activities of the Russian government. The Biden administration unilaterally makes the determination and requires neither criminal acts nor intent. The punishment is blocking assets and a prohibition on any dealing with the accused person....

Between July 2019 and June 2020, Nevada police reported seizing more than $4 million worth of personal property, ultimately holding on to more than $3 million worth of cash, vehicles and jewelry involved in criminal activity. Law enforcement agencies do this through a process called civil asset forfeiture, in which police take possession of ill-gotten money or property that may have been involved in a crime. The idea is to thwart criminal organizations and help fund police activity, but a broad range of interest groups have expressed concern in past years that the system easily leads to abuse and the...

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other Department of Homeland Security agents seized more than $2 billion in cash from travelers in U.S. airports between 2000 and 2016, according to a new report by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm. The institute's report is the first to comprehensively analyze the use of civil asset forfeiture by federal law enforcement in airports, where multiple news investigations have revealed horror stories of passengers having their money taken even though they weren't ever charged with a crime. Take a case that Reason covered: Rustem Kazazi, a U.S. citizen who...

When he heads to airports now, Samuel Haile thinks of that day at Buffalo's airport a few years ago. The government took $12,000 from his carry-on and wouldn't give it back. Haile was not charged with a crime ... Dozens of passengers have suffered such a loss in recent years in Buffalo. With an X-ray machine, a screener spots a dense mass in a piece of luggage. If it's an unusually large sum of cash, the government takes it on the suspicion that it's drug money. At Buffalo and every other airport in the country, the TSA screens bags and...

It’s all about the revenue. Civil forfeiture brings in money, and lawmakers are more worried about their budgets than residents’ due process and property rights. An Arizona bill requiring police and prosecutors to get a criminal conviction before they could attempt to force defendants to forfeit their assets died Thursday at the hands of a bloc of mostly Democrat lawmakers. Civil asset forfeiture is a mechanism that lets law enforcement seize and keep the assets of people believed to have committed crimes. Many states do not require defendants to actually be convicted — or sometimes even charged — with a...

Neither Terry Rolin or his daughter were ever charged with a crime, but that didn't stop the DEA from trying to seize more than $82,000 from them through civil asset forfeiture.The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will return more than $82,000 that it seized from an elderly Pittsburgh man and his daughter after a federal class-action lawsuit was filed on their behalf last month. The Institute for Justice, the libertarian-leaning public interest law firm that filed the lawsuit, announced today that the DEA will return $82,373 that it seized from Rebecca Brown six months ago at a Pittsburgh airport. The money...

If you regularly read my columns, you have probably figured out by now that I am a strong advocate of law and order. That brings me to three items I would like to discuss related to law enforcement that I believe should be changed or abolished. The first is civil asset forfeiture or civil judicial forfeiture, and it is a procedure in which police agencies and the government can legally confiscate property from a person they suspect of criminal or illegal activity without charging them with a crime. This can be in the form of cash, or a house, or...

New requirements will apply to local enforcement authorities in seizing cars and other property of criminals under long-awaited asset forfeiture rules issued by the Hawaii attorney general on Dec. 31. The rules take effect Jan. 17 and require county prosecutors to describe the crimes that justify the seizure of private property under state statutes and to petition the attorney general for approval. The seizure program, known as civil asset forfeiture, is used in all 50 states to confiscate financial and other property of criminals. Some states require a criminal conviction before the property can be taken but most jurisdictions, including...

SOUTH FAYETTE TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A local man’s life savings of more than $82,000 was seized at Pittsburgh International Airport in August, and now he and his daughter are suing, Channel 11’s news exchange partners at TribLIVE reported. Rebecca Brown, 54, of Lowell, Mass., told TribLIVE her 79-year-old retired father, Terry Rolin, of South Fayette Township, asked her to help manage the cash he and his late parents had hidden in hiding spots throughout the family home. “It was late Saturday night after the banks closed when he gave me the money, and I had an early (Monday) morning flight...

Governor Phil Murphy today signed legislation (S1963) mandating comprehensive disclosure and transparency requirements for the system of civil asset forfeiture. “New Jersey law enforcement agencies currently have no permanent statutory requirement to disclose civil asset forfeitures,” said Governor Murphy. “This legislation would boost confidence in our justice system by requiring county prosecutors to track and report data on this practice. Allowing the public to understand how assets are being seized, where seized funds go, and where forfeited property is going is a huge step forward for transparency and accountability.” Under the bill, county prosecutors would submit quarterly reports to the...

When police arrested Luis Melendez on drug charges, they found $2,928 in cash alongside drugs and weapons in his bedroom. The drugs and weapons became evidence in his criminal case, but prosecutors also went after the money in civil court using a common but little-understood practice called civil asset forfeiture. When Melendez fought to keep the money, they used his statements against him in his criminal case. New Jersey’s highest court on Wednesday declared this practice an abuse of power, though the ruling upheld Melendez’s conviction based on the other evidence against him. The decision places additional limits on New...

While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC). The focus on AntAC — whose youthful street activists famously wore “Ukraine F*&k Corruption” T-shirts — was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted. The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy...