Wyoming Governor Vetoes Asset Forfeiture Reform Bill

[Luddly Neddite]

Sure, fight it in court but you'll never get your property back.

This law is an abomination and completely misused and abused.

Got busted, huh????

This is happening to a lot of innocent people out there. That is the problem. If you really think that this is only drug dealers getting their comeuppance then you are a truly ignorant individual.

There was recently a news story about a guy who was traveling cross-country with cash to buy a car. He was pulled over, the money taken from him (the excuse was that he was using it to buy drugs) and last I knew, he didn't get it back.

 

[westwall]

Sounds like more of that "small" government Republicans always claim they believe in, yet we never seem to see it.

Of course, it's appealable in court if there is no conviction, right???? Standard forfeiture law.

Sure, after they've already confiscated all of your property. A lot of people don't have the financial resources to fight it out in court afterward. We're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, remember?

Like when they raid a dope dealer's house and let him keep his cash????

Read post #5.

Find where, in the Constitution, it says "except ... "

Seizures are allow under certain circumstances.

Indeed they are and law enforcement regularly takes money from poor people, who have been saving all their lives and for whatever reason don't trust banks so they keep the cash. The cops come across it and for whatever reason confiscate it and because these people truly are poor they can't afford an attorney to get their money back. Add to that the people who have been killed so that law enforcement can steal their property (most famously as occurred in the Santa Monica hills a couple of decades ago) and you have a law that is over broad, and is used in a corrupt manner, and which clearly violates the COTUS.

 

[Darkwind]

Both parties are full of corruption and lies, but one is worse then the other, from my take on it over the past couple of decades.. Yeah, usually the "small government" message consists of: Don't legalize drugs/keep the drug war going, invade other countries with false intel, increase the military, control women's bodies, reinforce the police state, etc, etc..

Your entire list is made up of other peoples fantasies and desires to demonize those they oppose. None of that is true.

 

[tinydancer]

Sure, fight it in court but you'll never get your property back.

This law is an abomination and completely misused and abused.

Got busted, huh????

Obiwan with all due respect this law is so far out of line it's insane. This law represents everything AMERICA stands against.

Check out just this one easy to find abuse. It's jaw dropping how the law is abused.

Philadelphia family s home seized after son s arrested selling drugs under profits of crime rules Daily Mail Online

 

[tinydancer]

This isn't about "keeping the streets safe". It's a money making deal for prosecutors and lawdog officials.

"The Phildelphia Inquirer reported that the civil forfeiture law was meant to punish drug dealers, and that 'Philadelphia has brought in more than $64 million in seized property during the last decade.'

'Proceeds make up almost 20 percent of the annual budget of the District Attorney's Office. Forty percent pays for prosecutor salaries, including those of the lawyers involved in forfeiture proceedings,' the newspaper pointed out."

Philadelphia family s home seized after son s arrested selling drugs under profits of crime rules Daily Mail Online

 

[jon_berzerk]

Sure, fight it in court but you'll never get your property back.

This law is an abomination and completely misused and abused.

you are a nut job

but i tend to agree with you on this one

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Both parties are full of corruption and lies, but one is worse then the other, from my take on it over the past couple of decades.. Yeah, usually the "small government" message consists of: Don't legalize drugs/keep the drug war going, invade other countries with false intel, increase the military, control women's bodies, reinforce the police state, etc, etc..

Your entire list is made up of other peoples fantasies and desires to demonize those they oppose. None of that is true.

"...Don't legalize drugs/keep the drug war going, invade other countries with false intel, increase the military, control women's bodies, reinforce the police state, etc, ..."

Actually, that's a very accurate, if partial, list of the GOP platform.

 

[Kondor3]

What are the conditions under which personal assets can be seized by the State in Wyoming?

Are we basically talking about taking the Pinky Rings and Bank Accounts and Lexus owned by pimps and drug-dealers, or is there more?

 

[Pogo]

What are the conditions under which personal assets can be seized by the State in Wyoming?

Are we basically talking about taking the Pinky Rings and Bank Accounts and Lexus owned by pimps and drug-dealers, or is there more?

You uh, do realize that, Wyoming or Wherever, the police do not judge who a pimp and drug dealer is --- right?

 

[Pogo]

Here's a comprehensive story: "Taken"

Snippets

>> The [Shelby, Tex] county’s district attorney, a fifty-seven-year-old woman with feathered Charlie’s Angels hair named Lynda K. Russell, arrived an hour later. Russell, who moonlighted locally as a country singer, told Henderson and Boatright that they had two options. They could face felony charges for “money laundering” and “child endangerment,” in which case they would go to jail and their children would be handed over to foster care. Or they could sign over their cash to the city of Tenaha, and get back on the road. “No criminal charges shall be filed,” a waiver she drafted read, “and our children shall not be turned over to CPS,” or Child Protective Services. <<

____​

>> In September, 2007, he and his fiancée had had their infant son taken from them hours after Barry Washington pulled them over for “traveling in left lane marked for passing only,” according to the police report. No evidence of drugs or other contraband was found, and neither parent had a criminal record. Even so, Washington seized a large sum of cash that Agostini, who has family in the area, said he’d brought with him to buy restaurant equipment at a local auction. Lynda Russell, the district attorney, then arrived at the scene, sending Agostini and his fiancée, a nursing student at the University of Maryland, to jail for the night.

In police surveillance footage, Agostini can be heard pleading with Russell, “Can I kiss my son goodbye?”

Afterward, Russell dryly recounted to a colleague, “I said no, kiss me.” <<

____​

>> She was left struggling to make her car payments each month as her Honda sat in a city lot [impounded while her son was driving it], unused and unsheltered from the elements. The bond, the loans, and the public-transportation costs added up. “There were days I didn’t have a good meal,” she told me in February, sitting beneath her daughter’s quinceañera portrait in her narrow fuchsia-painted row house.

... At a public hearing on July 11th, D.C.’s attorney general, Irvin Nathan, acknowledged “very real problems” relating to due-process rights. But he warned that millions of dollars raised by forfeiture “could very easily be lost” and “an unreasonable burden” placed on his office if the reforms supported by the Public Defender Service were enacted. He proposed more modest changes that would leave the current burden of proof untouched. <<

Get that? He says, "yeah it's wrong but if we do the right thing and honor citizens' Constitutional rights we won't make as much money as we do now, so .... fuck it".

____​

>> ...police pulled Morrow over for “driving too close to the white line,” and took thirty-nine hundred dollars from him. Morrow told Guillory that he was on his way to get dental work done at a Houston mall. (The arresting officers said that his “stories of travel” were inconsistent, as was his account of how much money he had; they also said they detected the “odor of burned marijuana,” although no contraband was found in the car.) Morrow, who is black, was taken to jail, where he pleaded with authorities to call his bank to see proof of his recent cash withdrawal. They declined.

“They impounded my car, and they impounded me, too,” Morrow told me, recalling the night he spent in jail. When he finally agreed to sign away his property, he was released on the side of the road with no money, no vehicle, and no phone. “I had to go to Wal-Mart and borrow someone’s phone to call my mama,” he recounted. “She had to take out a rental car to come pick me up. <<

____​

>> In West Philadelphia last August, an elderly couple named Mary and Leon Adams were finishing breakfast when several vans filled with heavily armed police pulled up to their red brick home. An officer announced, “We’ll give you ten minutes to get your things and vacate the property.” The men surrounding their home had been authorized to enter, seize, and seal the premises, without any prior notice.

“I was almost numb,” Mary Adams, a 68-year-old grandmother with warm brown eyes and wavy russet hair, recalled. When I visited her this spring, she sat beside her 70-year-old husband, who was being treated for pancreatic cancer, and was slumped with exhaustion. A little earlier, he had struggled to put on his embroidered blue-and-yellow guayabera shirt; his wife, looking fit for church in a green jacket, tank top, and slacks, watched him attentively as he shuffled over on a carved-wood cane to greet me. Leon explained his attachment to their home in numerical terms. “1966,” he said. “It’s been our home since 1966.”

The police returned about a month after the raid. Owing to the allegations against Leon, Jr., [for a $20 marijuana sale] the state was now seeking to take the Adams’ home and to sell it at a biannual city auction, with the proceeds split between the district attorney’s office and the police department. All of this could occur even if Leon, Jr., was acquitted in criminal court; in fact, the process could be completed even before he stood trial.

Mary Adams was at a loss. She and her husband were accused of no crime. Instead, the civil case was titled Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. The Real Property and Improvements Known as [their address]. For years, Mary had volunteered for the Philadelphia More Beautiful Committee, and as a block captain she always thought that civil forfeiture was reserved for crack houses and abandoned eyesores. Now her own carefully maintained residence was the target. <<

____​

The story goes into the particularly egregious Tehana practices and the class action suit brought against it:

>> >> Garrigan was particularly struck by the contents of the unmarked manila envelope. It included chain e-mails that Russell had forwarded. “Be proud to be white! It’s not a crime YET . . . but getting very close!” one read. A second joked, “Danger: you are entering a no Obama Zone. Mention his name and I’ll drop you where you stand!” More revelatory was a nine-page spreadsheet listing items funded by Tenaha’s roadside seizures. Among them were Halloween costumes, Doo Dah Parade decorations, “Have a Nice Day” banners, credit-card late fees, poultry-festival supplies, a popcorn machine, and a thousand-dollar donation to a Baptist congregation that was said to be important to Lynda Russell’s reëlection. <<
​

Your tax (read: 'civil forfeiture') dollars at work.

"Civil forfeiture" my ass. Let's call it what it is, since we already have a name for it: Piracy.
Legalized piracy, a collusion between the corrupt übermilitarized police-state that sees itself as an autonomous occupying army, corrupt local DAs and a corrupt justice system, all working to line its own pockets under the pretense of "the war on drugs". Which was complete bullshit from its beginning.

>> In the Colonial period, the English Crown issued “writs of assistance” that permitted customs officials to enter homes or vessels and seize whatever they deemed contraband. As the legal scholars Eric Blumenson and Eva Nilsen have noted, these writs were “among the key grievances that triggered the American Revolution.” The new nation’s Bill of Rights would expressly forbid “unreasonable searches and seizures” and promise that no one would be deprived of “life, liberty, or property, without due process.” Nonetheless, Congress soon authorized the use of civil-forfeiture actions against pirates and smugglers. It was easier to prosecute a vessel and seize its cargo than to try to prosecute its owner, who might be an ocean away. In the ensuing decades, the practice fell into disuse and, aside from a few brief revivals, remained mostly dormant for the next two centuries. <<

​

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

​

 

[tinydancer]

Piracy is THE PERFECT NAME for this action. Thanks Pogo!

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Sounds like more of that "small" government Republicans always claim they believe in, yet we never seem to see it.

Earlier this year, Wyoming's legislature overwhelmingly passed asset forfeiture reform that would have required an actual conviction before law enforcement officials within the state could take and keep its citizens' belongings.

Unfortunately, the legislation was vetoed by Republican Gov. Matt Mead, who insisted that law enforcement officers in his state were not abusing the law. Though the new law was passed with a veto-proof majority, some legislators subsequently switched their votes and let the law die. Legislators promised to revisit potential reforms to its current, very loose, civil forfeiture regulations.

After Veto Wyoming Considers Milder Asset Forfeiture Reform - Hit Run Reason.com

Of course, it's appealable in court if there is no conviction, right???? Standard forfeiture law.

Actually most of the laws in question require the victim to pony up money to even have the option to challenge it in Court.

 

[bripat9643]

Sounds like more of that "small" government Republicans always claim they believe in, yet we never seem to see it.

Earlier this year, Wyoming's legislature overwhelmingly passed asset forfeiture reform that would have required an actual conviction before law enforcement officials within the state could take and keep its citizens' belongings.

Unfortunately, the legislation was vetoed by Republican Gov. Matt Mead, who insisted that law enforcement officers in his state were not abusing the law. Though the new law was passed with a veto-proof majority, some legislators subsequently switched their votes and let the law die. Legislators promised to revisit potential reforms to its current, very loose, civil forfeiture regulations.

After Veto Wyoming Considers Milder Asset Forfeiture Reform - Hit Run Reason.com

Of course, it's appealable in court if there is no conviction, right???? Standard forfeiture law.

The Constitution says you are innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.

 

[hazlnut]

Sounds like more of that "small" government Republicans always claim they believe in, yet we never seem to see it.

Earlier this year, Wyoming's legislature overwhelmingly passed asset forfeiture reform that would have required an actual conviction before law enforcement officials within the state could take and keep its citizens' belongings.

Unfortunately, the legislation was vetoed by Republican Gov. Matt Mead, who insisted that law enforcement officers in his state were not abusing the law. Though the new law was passed with a veto-proof majority, some legislators subsequently switched their votes and let the law die. Legislators promised to revisit potential reforms to its current, very loose, civil forfeiture regulations.

After Veto Wyoming Considers Milder Asset Forfeiture Reform - Hit Run Reason.com

There is no abuse in asset forfeiture. If you really understand how it works and how it is used.

 

[hazlnut]

Sounds like more of that "small" government Republicans always claim they believe in, yet we never seem to see it.

Earlier this year, Wyoming's legislature overwhelmingly passed asset forfeiture reform that would have required an actual conviction before law enforcement officials within the state could take and keep its citizens' belongings.

Unfortunately, the legislation was vetoed by Republican Gov. Matt Mead, who insisted that law enforcement officers in his state were not abusing the law. Though the new law was passed with a veto-proof majority, some legislators subsequently switched their votes and let the law die. Legislators promised to revisit potential reforms to its current, very loose, civil forfeiture regulations.

After Veto Wyoming Considers Milder Asset Forfeiture Reform - Hit Run Reason.com

Of course, it's appealable in court if there is no conviction, right???? Standard forfeiture law.

Actually most of the laws in question require the victim to pony up money to even have the option to challenge it in Court.

That's a myth, completely untrue.

 

[bripat9643]

Sounds like more of that "small" government Republicans always claim they believe in, yet we never seem to see it.

Earlier this year, Wyoming's legislature overwhelmingly passed asset forfeiture reform that would have required an actual conviction before law enforcement officials within the state could take and keep its citizens' belongings.

Unfortunately, the legislation was vetoed by Republican Gov. Matt Mead, who insisted that law enforcement officers in his state were not abusing the law. Though the new law was passed with a veto-proof majority, some legislators subsequently switched their votes and let the law die. Legislators promised to revisit potential reforms to its current, very loose, civil forfeiture regulations.

After Veto Wyoming Considers Milder Asset Forfeiture Reform - Hit Run Reason.com

There is no abuse in asset forfeiture. If you really understand how it works and how it is used.

Everything about asset forfeiture is an abuse, and I know exactly how it works.

 

[danielpalos]

Sounds like more of that "small" government Republicans always claim they believe in, yet we never seem to see it.

Earlier this year, Wyoming's legislature overwhelmingly passed asset forfeiture reform that would have required an actual conviction before law enforcement officials within the state could take and keep its citizens' belongings.

Unfortunately, the legislation was vetoed by Republican Gov. Matt Mead, who insisted that law enforcement officers in his state were not abusing the law. Though the new law was passed with a veto-proof majority, some legislators subsequently switched their votes and let the law die. Legislators promised to revisit potential reforms to its current, very loose, civil forfeiture regulations.

After Veto Wyoming Considers Milder Asset Forfeiture Reform - Hit Run Reason.com

There is no appeal to ignorance of a Commerce Clause whether implied as a traditional power of a State or explicit as in our federal Constitution.

And, an public policy constitutes an public use sufficient to trigger eminent domain not theft under color of authority.

 

[Pogo]

Sounds like more of that "small" government Republicans always claim they believe in, yet we never seem to see it.

Earlier this year, Wyoming's legislature overwhelmingly passed asset forfeiture reform that would have required an actual conviction before law enforcement officials within the state could take and keep its citizens' belongings.

Unfortunately, the legislation was vetoed by Republican Gov. Matt Mead, who insisted that law enforcement officers in his state were not abusing the law. Though the new law was passed with a veto-proof majority, some legislators subsequently switched their votes and let the law die. Legislators promised to revisit potential reforms to its current, very loose, civil forfeiture regulations.

After Veto Wyoming Considers Milder Asset Forfeiture Reform - Hit Run Reason.com

There is no abuse in asset forfeiture. If you really understand how it works and how it is used.

Horse. Shit.
I just posted a story listing scores of them. And it only scratches the surface.

 

[Kondor3]

What are the conditions under which personal assets can be seized by the State in Wyoming?

Are we basically talking about taking the Pinky Rings and Bank Accounts and Lexus owned by pimps and drug-dealers, or is there more?

You uh, do realize that, Wyoming or Wherever, the police do not judge who a pimp and drug dealer is --- right?

Hmmmmm...

Are not the police merely the Physical Enforcement Arm of The Law?

It's not like the cops are seizing assets for their own enrichment, but putting seized assets into Impound Centers and Warehouses, for subsequent disposal, right?

Are we talking about the assets being disposed-of without a conviction, or are we talking about mere seizure and temporary impoundment, until convicted?

I would imagine that anyone's assets that have been seized - who are subsequently exonerated - would receive those assets back quickly.

Is this not what is happening?

Police officers make Impound or Seizure judgment-calls all the time, in a great many jurisdictions.

If your vehicle is involved in a drug-bust, it gets impounded, pending disposition of your case.

But, if local or state law calls for such impounding or seizure, and such law is deemed sufficient due process against illegal seizures, then, the cops merely enforce the law, yes?

Perhaps I"m overlooking something here.

 

[Pogo]

It's not like the cops are seizing assets for their own enrichment, but putting seized assets into Impound Centers and Warehouses, for subsequent disposal, right?

Nope. It very much IS seizing assets for either their own enrichment, or that of the local "justice" system, which loyally kicks back to them in bonuses.

Are we talking about the assets being disposed-of without a conviction, or are we talking about mere seizure and temporary impoundment, until convicted?

The former.

I would imagine that anyone's assets that have been seized - who are subsequently exonerated - would receive those assets back quickly.

Imagination's a wonderful thing. Would that the real world reflected it, especially since we have the Fourth Amendment. You'd think that would be the case. One would expect it, given the protections of the Constitution. Unfortunately the realities are at variance with that.

Perhaps I"m overlooking something here.

Honorably stated.
Please check out the link in post 30. It's pretty comprehensive. And eye-opening.