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Title: TX Supreme Court: Illegal Search Can Be Used For Civil Asset Forfeiture Case
Source:
The Liberty Conservative
URL Source: http://www.thelibertyconservative.c ... d-civil-asset-forfeiture-case/
Published: Jun 15, 2016
Author: Jeff LeBlanc
Post Date: 2016-06-16 07:40:04 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 443
Comments: 6
Last week, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that evidence from illegal searches may still be seized in civil asset forfeiture cases. The case the Supreme Court ruled on involved an illegal search, according to a trial court. Law Enforcement seized a vehicle they had searched, but the defendant argued that since the arrest was unlawful, the officers should not be able to seize the vehicle. The Court pointed out in their opinion that the legislature neglected to offer for a way in the relevant statute to exclude property such as the vehicle in the case from being seized. Effectively, the ruling means that while evidence obtained improperly (without a warrant or probable cause) can’t be used to prosecute you, it can certainly be seized by Law Enforcement regardless of the legality of a stop or a search. Previous efforts to pass legislation to fix problems with the asset forfeiture system in Texas have been blocked by lobbyists for Law Enforcement agencies, who stand to lose financially should they be forced to meet a higher burden of proof. Clearly, the state should not be able to take your property without a good reason, and proof that you are doing something illegal. As it is, to seize property civilly, the state files a case against your property, not you; then you have to fight the state to get it back. A higher burden of proof than ‘the preponderance of evidence’ should be met before Law Enforcement may permanently lay claim to your property via seizure and forfeiture. Accordingly, the Texas Legislature must act as soon as possible to raise the burden of proof for civil asset forfeiture. As it stands, LEO agencies that gain from seizing assets may perform illegal searches all they like. Indeed, they have every incentive to do so. While they might not obtain convictions against the property owners, they would be – they ARE – able to seize property at will, and force innocent citizens to jump through exhausting, expensive, and unnecessary hoops in order to have a chance at retrieving some of their property. What a sad day for Texans! Texans should contact their state representatives and senators and ask them to support Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform in Texas. As the 2017 legislative session approaches, the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas, a group I chair currently, will be sharing examples of legislation in other states to help guide the Texas Legislature in crafting better protections for citizens regarding asset forfeiture cases. Encourage your legislators to address the flaws in the civil asset forfeiture system and offer a more fair process for those whose assets have been seized. The Court opinion can be found here.
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
The "exclusionary rule" is a remedy created by the courts to discourage unconstitutional behavior by law enforcement in criminal cases. It is NOT a constitutional right. According to Texas law, as written, illegally obtained evidence in a criminal case must, as remedy, be excluded. But Texas law proposes no such remedy on illegally obtained evidence in a civil case. The law does acknowledge that the evidence was illegally obtained, but the law does NOT say that the remedy is exclusion if the prosecution pursues a civil case.
*THIS* is the problem. Whoever invented this fiction truly has no love of America and what it supposed to stand for.
That would have gone without saying back when this was the Land of the Free. A government strong enough to impose your standards is strong enough to ban them. The exclusionary rule only is a judge-made rule that only applies to criminal trials. Forfeiture proceedings are civil in nature. If you get busted with 10 keys of cocaine in your Lincoln Navigator, and have the search judicially determined to have been unlawful, that would not mean you get your 10 keys of cocaine back. With the forfeiture laws, you don't get back the Lincoln Navigator either if the government can show the vehicle was used or intended to be used in the commission of a felony under the Controlled Substances Act, as it is then considered contraband. Texas v. Lincoln Navigator Texas law permits the state to obtain by seizure and forfeiture certain property qualifying as “contraband.” See CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 59.02(a). To exercise its forfeiture power, the state must commence a forfeiture proceeding under the Code of Criminal Procedure. See id. art. 59.04. Though found in the criminal-procedure code, such forfeiture proceedings are distinctly civil in nature: “parties must comply with the rules of pleading as required in civil suits,” id. art. 59.05(a), cases “proceed to trial in the same manner as in other civil cases,” and “[t]he state has the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that property is subject to forfeiture,” id. art. 59.05(b). If the state carries its burden and “the court finds that all or any part of the property is subject to forfeiture, the judge shall forfeit the property to the state.” Id. art. 59.05(e). Yet while forfeiture proceedings are civil in nature, they frequently arise out of criminal proceedings in which property was seized. At first glance, therefore, they often appear to implicate the constitutional right against unreasonable searches and seizures. See U.S. CONST. amend. IV; TEX. CONST. art. I, § 9. In the criminal-law context, this right is generally vindicated by the “exclusionary rule,” which provides for suppression of evidence obtained in an unconstitutional search or seizure. But the application of this judge-made rule is usually confined by its rationale to the criminal-law context—“[t]he criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.” See People v. Defore, 242 N.Y. 13, 21, 150 N.E. 585, 587 (1926) (Cardozo, J.). It does not normally apply in civil cases. At 8-9: “Recognizing these costs, [the Supreme Court] ha[s] repeatedly declined to extend the exclusionary rule to proceedings other than criminal trials.” See Scott, 524 U.S. at 363 (declining to apply rule in parole-revocation hearing); INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032, 1050 (1984) (declining to apply rule in civil-deportation proceeding); Janis, 428 U.S. at 454 (declining to apply rule in civil-tax proceeding); Calandra, 414 U.S. at 351–52 (declining to apply rule in grand-jury proceeding). In this case, as in those, the exclusion of admittedly relevant evidence imposes a substantial social cost. Here, the vehicle and the evidence found within it are indisputably relevant—if the state shows by a preponderance of the evidence that the vehicle was “used or intended to be used in the commission of” a felony under the Controlled Substances Act, then it is “contraband.” See CODE CRIM. PROC. arts. 59.01(2)(B)(i) & 59.05(b). If it qualifies as contraband under Chapter 59, then it “is subject to seizure and forfeiture.” See id. art. 59.02(a). Here, therefore, the “evidence sought to be excluded is . . . reliable and . . . the most probative information bearing” on the case; it “in no way [has] been rendered untrustworthy by the means of its seizure.” See Powell, 428 U.S. at 490 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, application of the exclusionary rule in this context would result in exclusion of evidence central to “the truth-finding functions of judge and jury.” See Payner, 447 U.S. at 734.
If you can read a case name like this one and neither laugh nor cry, you're a statist. A government strong enough to impose your standards is strong enough to ban them. That's because "civil" cases require a LESSOR standard for a guilty verdict. You know that... but you'll paint everything yella. I'm the infidel... Allah warned you about. كافر المسلح
#2. To: Deckard (#0)
the state files a case against your property, not you;
#3. To: Deckard (#0)
Clearly, the state should not be able to take your property without a good reason, and proof that you are doing something illegal.
#4. To: Deckard (#0)
Clearly, the state should not be able to take your property without a good reason, and proof that you are doing something illegal. As it is, to seize property civilly, the state files a case against your property, not you; then you have to fight the state to get it back. A higher burden of proof than ‘the preponderance of evidence’ should be met before Law Enforcement may permanently lay claim to your property via seizure and forfeiture.
At 2-3:
#5. To: nolu chan (#4)
Texas v. Lincoln Navigator
#6. To: Deckard (#0)
Last week, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that evidence from illegal searches may still be seized in civil asset forfeiture cases.
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