Get a Conviction Before Seizing Property - Granite Grok

Get a Conviction Before Seizing Property

Policing-for-Profit
Policing-for-Profit – Forbes.com

Telegraph Editorial: H/T Kevin Bloom – c/o Facebook

House Bill 636 would change the state’s civil forfeiture law to require a person to be convicted before the state could initiate forfeiture proceedings against a suspect. That strikes us as reasonable.

In fact, allowing law enforcement to seize property without a criminal conviction – or even a criminal charge – is an affront to the constitutional principle that people are innocent until proven guilty.

And yet that’s the law, and there are several other problems with it:

• It lowers the bar on the standard of proof law enforcement must meet to draw a connection between criminal activity and the property in question. In a criminal matter, police must prove their case “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Civil forfeiture uses the lower “preponderance of the evidence” standard, even though the penalty in a civil case could be harsher than what someone would face in criminal court.

• Current law shifts the burden of proof in civil cases from the state to the accused, and requires the defendant to prove that the property was not involved in drug activity. Requiring someone to prove that something didn’t happen runs counter to logic – not to mention the Constitution.

• State law also provides an incentive for law enforcement to bypass criminal proceedings altogether in those instances where they believe they can succeed in the civil arena, since an acquittal of the underlying crime in a criminal court – with its higher standard of proof – scuttles any civil forfeiture proceeding.

• Especially loathsome is the provision of the law that gives law enforcement agencies a financial incentive to go after a suspect’s property, as if justice alone were not its own reward. “Policing for profit,” critics of the practice call it, and it has come under increasing scrutiny nationally.

Listen to our most recent interview with Kevin Bloom and Kirk McNeil on this bill and this issue here and here.

Good story about how this gets abused in Forbes here or click the image above.

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