Pubdate: Thu, 29 Oct 2015
Source: Reno News & Review (NV)
Copyright: 2015, Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsreview.com/issues/reno/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2524
Author: Brendan Trainor

DRUG WAR THIEVERY

Civil asset forfeiture (CAF) goes back to our Revolutionary period. 
Government licensed privateers who raided British merchant ships. 
Privateers were not pirates.

Privateers were licensed by the state to attack and seize enemy assets.

Pirates are non-state outlaws who band together to seize any assets 
they want. There is a lot to like in pirate culture, as any fan of 
Starz' series Black Sails will attest. But there is even more to like 
about privateers. Privateers had to follow strict rules that limited 
collateral damage.

They had to report their booty to federal courts under maritime law. 
Anyone who believed his assets were unlawfully seized had a realistic 
opportunity to contest the seizure in the courts.

Privateers who inflicted unnecessary collateral damage could even be 
sued by the victims!

Privateers seized hundreds of British merchant ships, with minimum 
loss of life. These assets usually belonged to crony corporations 
like the British West Indies Company who were exploiting the 
Caribbean colonies.

The object of privateers was to get the money, not to run up kill 
counts like government armies do. In fact, privateers were so 
effective in crippling enemy economies that a few decades after the 
American Revolution the practice was banned by European nations who 
would rather lose armies than so much property.

But there is no ban on using privateers against non-state actors.

The power is still in the U.S. Constitution authorizing letters of 
marque and reprisal.

After September 11, then-U.S. Rep. Ron Paul spoke out against 
invading Afghanistan and proposed the modern use of privateers to 
capture Osama Bin Laden with minimum expense and collateral damage.

As usual, no one listened to the libertarians, and the result has 
been the last 14 years of expensive, fruitless wars that have 
inflamed the entire region.

Perhaps the real object was never to get Bin Laden but is part of a 
senseless Game of Thrones the U.S. is playing with Russia, China and 
Iran for control of Central Asia.

CAF is no longer a private war against a declared enemy.

Now it is run by state and federal police agencies against the U.S. 
public, primarily under the pretense of the drug war. They can seize 
your assets by merely alleging they came from criminal profits.

The burden of proof then falls on you to prove your innocence in 
order to get your property back. In many instances legal maneuvers 
make a mockery of due process.

Litigation costs are often more than the value of the seized property.

If you do get to court, you see strange looking cases like U.S. vs 
$100,000. That is a maritime law case, but without the reasonable due 
process of the old privateer era.

The most significant due process reforms are to require a conviction 
in court before property can be seized, and to require that CAF 
proceeds are deposited in the general fund, not to the budget of the 
seizing agency.

New Mexico has passed the best reforms so far and other states like 
Nevada passed watered-down but still significant new reforms.

A third major reform is to forbid state policing agencies from 
partnering with the U.S. Justice Department, a practice often used to 
evade state regulations. Former U.S. Attorney General Holder 
eliminated one such program to great fanfare but left several others intact.

The new Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, racked up hundreds of 
millions of CAF as a U.S. Attorney in New York. She will likely talk 
about reform but enact very little.

I hope the constitutional conservatives in the 2017 Nevada 
legislature will take up the issue again.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom