I think the point to make is that no system is perfect. If it were, we wouldn't be talking about it. I am not saying that terrible things don't happen. It shouldn't be this way, but it is. We have to try am make it better.
The business about people willing to give up some of there rights is scarey. I know that some will always be so afraid of (insert appropraite scarey thing here) that they will give up their rights for feeling safe, but they would give up our rights too! Which is why it is sooo important to get out and vote!
The only thing I know about the Property Forefiture Laws is what I have read in a Dean Koontz interview for the book "Dark Rivers of the Heart". Anyway, Timber Loftis could probably let me know if any of this is true of if it was just hyperboli from Koontz. As I understand it from that....
You don't have to know that your property was used for the illegal act.
You receive a hearing 10 days after the siezure, but the Feds usually pick the Judge. Otherwise you have to be found Not-Guity at the trial to get the forefiture overturned.
They don't have to charge you with a crime. Just link a crime to your property.
If you aren't charged with a crime you can't prove you are innocent and therefore will never get your property back unless you sue the government. Which would take years and cost more than the property you lost most likely.
The scariest thing is that these laws were intended to be used less that a thousand times a year. Bush sr used them somewhere around 50,000 times and Clinton even more. The laws have been expanded to more than 250 different crimes
and are being expanded to cover more and more crimes.
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