Wednesday, August 30, 2006

More on asset forfeiture

(thanks Dave Farber)

In the amusingly-titled "United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency," a man who was neither accused nor convicted of a crime was deprived of the above amount of cash, as it was in itself deemed "strong evidence" of connection to drug activity.

Once again a lone judge spoke out as the dissenting voice against the majority ruling: Judge Donald Lay:
There is no evidence claimants were ever convicted of any drug-related crime, nor is there any indication the manner in which the currency was bundled was indicative of
drug use or distribution.
Judge Lay has some very interesting things to say about the prison system in the US in the accurately-titled Dissenting Opinions series (along with a case of the missing millions).

Perhaps the courts are trying to help their brethren in the SS...er...Department of the Treasury's FinCEN to help guard against evil kiddy-fiddlers, or terrorists, or perhaps drug dealers, or (let's face it) people wanting to keep their deals off the books, in cash, and away from Big Brother's prying eyes...

Why bother with cash-transaction reporting limits? If people don't want to carry around easily-confiscatible cash, then perhaps they'll use more [in]secure methods.

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