In an op-ed yesterday in the Huffington Post, Steph Sherer touts the Rohrabacher-Hinchey-Farr Amendment to the appropriations bill H.R. 5326 as a tool “to deny funding to DEA raids against dispensaries operating in accordance with state law”. While I agree that limiting Read more.....
I see the eminent domain argument against the Enhanced Economic Zone (EEZ) blight designation of most of Columbia, Missouri Enhanced Economic Zone as an important facet of the opposition to this plan, but here I want to flesh out what I see as a fundamental principle driving the vigorous opposition to this plan. It simply isn’t fair in the way it allocates economic opportunity and public investment to the rich and politically connected, and it is that failure that must be recognized first and foremost because it is the inequity and unfairness of government policy that underlies most of Read more.....
Several friends of mine are involved in a ballot initiative to place an interest rate cap on loans made in the state of Missouri. The legislation would bar interest rates of over 36%, and is expected to lead to the elimination of the Missouri payday lending industry as providers. While I am sympathetic to claims that payday lenders are often abusive, I am not sure that the proposed solution will be effective. Indeed, a prohibition on loans bearing high interest rates is sure to force consumers into markets for other short-term financial products, including those products that exist in black Read more.....
While Virginia lawmakers ponder a mediocre and possibly unconstitutional set of reforms to Virginia’s asset forfeiture law, two Virginia sheriffs face prosecution over their abuse of forfeiture funds. Yesterday in Halifax County, investigators served search warrants at a fourth bank, seeking records explaining howformer Halifax County Sheriff Stanley Noblin spent some Read more.....
John Ferro, the prosecuting attorney for Stark County, Ohio, gave the following presentation on asset forfeiture under Ohio law (Ohio Revised Code Title 2981) at the 2011 Law Enforcement Conference held by Ohio Attorney General Mike Dewine. The presentation is here (it downloads as a pdf of a Powerpoint presentation) and may be a useful resource for defense attorneys interested Read more.....
Continuing in the tradition of unelected bureaucrats who operate with virtual independence from the confines of democratic governance or even the boundaries of the law comes United States Attorney Ronald Machen of the US Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia (WaPO):
Federal prosecutors offered a hint Tuesday about a long-secret fiscal matter: the budget for the District’s U.S. Attorney’s Read more.....
My friend Siobhan Reynolds died this weekend in an Ohio plane crash, and I wanted to write about her life and her work. Siobhan needs some introduction, and you will get some from this post. But you should also first read Radley Balko’s tribute at The Agitator for background.
In Media Res?
In 2010, I started a nonprofit, Americans for Forfeiture Reform, to work on asset forfeiture issues in the United States. Asset forfeiture laws Read more.....
Normally, when we cover stories of unjust seizure and forfeiture in the United States, the guilty agency or agent is a law enforcement agent associated with the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, the access of law enforcement to vast seizure and forfeiture powers has led other public agencies in non-law enforcement sectors to obtain seizure and forfeiture powers. Of particular concern to me are the efforts by municipalities to endow municipal code enforcement task forces with broad powers (like the Cedar Falls (IA) municipal government or the Columbia (MO) Neighborhood Response Team).
Today’s story comes to us from Philadelphia, where a scandal is breaking involving officials with the Community Life Read more.....
February 2010, the Columbia Police Department in Columbia, Missouri, raided a Columbia residence on the basis of a confidential informant’s testimony and marijuana residue found through a trash pull. The confidential informant was never identified, and the SWAT raid occurred without any pre-raid intelligence or surveillance, 8 days after the search warrant had been signed. A video was made of the raid for training purposes, and released to the public in May 2010, sparking an international response as the video immediately went viral. The video shows Columbia SWAT entering the residence at night and immediately shooting the family pets, then manhandling the family inside as they cleared the house. Only a minuscule amount of marijuana was found, and the target of the raid, Jon Whitworth, was charged with felony child Read more.....
There are numerous stories of property seizure, law enforcement misconduct, and victimized Americans that break in the course of a given week. While we try to cover as much as we can through our Facebook page and this blog, it’s a near impossibility with the volume of other work that we do. So instead of commenting on any particular forfeiture story, today I decided to discuss some reasons why I believe asset forfeiture issues implicate fundamental issues of American governance and structure, and why I believe it is necessary to engage in a big-picture reform effort rather than attack these issues piecemeal.
Asset forfeiture and legislative abdication
In 1984, Congress allowed the Department of Justice the ability to directly keep forfeiture revenue to in an Asset Forfeiture Fund (AFF). On the state Read more.....
PUFFINGTON HOST SOCIAL NEWS
ADVERTISEMENT
Medical Marijuana 101
Follow The Puff
Sex Pot
