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Jtsummers 2 days ago

It may be preferable to lose your property in exchange for not getting arrested, but that's like saying I'd rather get pickpocketed than beaten and robbed. Most people would rather their legal property remain their legal property.

esbranson 2 days ago | parent [-]

Obviously. Hence the purpose of civil forfeiture, to discourage violations of the law. Civil forfeiture is a potential consequence of doing pickpocketing, beatings, and robbery, to keep to your example. Criminal fines are meant for after all the illicit money has been seized, they're meant to come out of their McDonalds paycheck not their robbery proceeds. Otherwise fines are useless against criminals who profit from their crimes.

Jtsummers 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Obviously. Hence the purpose of civil forfeiture, to discourage violations of the law. Civil forfeiture is a potential consequence of doing pickpocketing, beatings, and robbery, to keep to your example. Criminal fines are meant for after all the illicit money has been seized, they're meant to come out of their McDonalds paycheck not their robbery proceeds. Otherwise fines are useless against criminals who profit from their crimes.

Are you really conflating civil asset forfeiture, where no person is convicted of a crime but their property is seized and not returned, with criminal fines which are imposed after a conviction?

Are you ignorant or a troll? This isn't an either/or situation of course. You could also be an ignorant troll.

esbranson 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Are you ignorant or a troll? … You could also be an ignorant troll.

I'm a significant Wikipedian, so maybe.

> Are you really conflating civil asset forfeiture, where no person is convicted of a crime but their property is seized and not returned, with criminal fines which are imposed after a conviction?

No. They are independent and serve different purposes. Criminal fines are meant to be taken against legally possessed assets. When someone steals $10 million dollars, the $10 million dollars is seized via civil asset forfeiture. Hence when National Propaganda Radio reports some white collar criminal was fined $10,000 dollars for stealing $10 million dollars, what they're not telling you is that the $10 million dollars is going to be seized via a civil judicial process, regardless of any criminal judicial process. Otherwise it's easy to be confused when white collar criminals almost always get fines less than they stole. All criminals would have to do is steal more than the maximum fine, and NPR happily lets massive amounts of leftists think so.

Sohcahtoa82 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Okay, and what if I pull out $10,000 cash from my bank, hop on a flight somewhere to buy a car from someone a few states over with the plan of driving my newly-purchased car home, but the TSA accuses the cash of being drug money and turns it over to the police?

esbranson 2 days ago | parent [-]

If they give you a notice of seizure, then you must file an administrative claim for the assets, and if need be join the subsequent court case as a claimant. (You will be using what Americans would consider reduced rights compared to a criminal trial, but what the rest of the world considers normal rights.) If they don't give notice, file a civil action and Rule 41(g) motion, and probably make a pretty penny from quite a few people. This is not rocket science, it's well worn and has been developed over hundreds of years. ChatGPT can provide all the paperwork for the entire case in a few minutes. If you don't have any money, the judge will assign a lawyer not because you will have a right to it but because they really, really don't want to talk to plebs.

Jtsummers 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> National Propaganda Radio

Anyone who writes things like that reveals that they are, in fact, just an ignorant troll. Thanks for confirming, I'll try to remember to ignore your comments in the future.

esbranson 2 days ago | parent [-]

Well I guess that means you're not a Hoax News habitue. But you might as well add Wikipedia government and law articles to your ignore list. (In my defense, I wrote a lot of them a long time ago.)

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