The hardships deodands often imposed seem more than faintly familiar, too. Deodands required forfeiture regardless of the fault of the owner, himself sometimes the deceased. Not infrequently, the practice left impoverished families without the means to support themselves, faced not only with the loss of a loved one but also with the loss of a horse or perhaps a cart essential to their livelihoods. Sometimes grieving families could persuade authorities or juries to forgo a deodand, but often not, and generally the burden to avoid a deodand was on them.
As time went on, too, curiously familiar financial incentives wormed their way into the system. Originally, the Crown was supposed to pass the deodand (literally, a thing given to God) onto the church 'as an expiation for the sou[l]' of the deceased. Over time, though, the Crown increasingly chose instead to sell off its rights to deodands to local lords and others. These recipients inevitably wound up with a strong interest in the perpetuation of the enterprise. Ultimately, the deodand’s appeal faded in England, and this Court has held that it 'did not become part of the common-law tradition of this country.' But has something not wholly unlike it gradually reemerged in our own lifetimes? [1]"
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-585_k5fm.pdf Gorsuch's concurrence, beginning on page 18
We'll assume for a second this was purely state to state (ie no customs involved) since that seems to be the case.
Even then, they generally don't get involved unless a package smells funny, is leaking, or making noise.
But if it does, it may get opened or dog sniffed or inspected (fedex itself generally does not open packages, they would set them aside. Chain of custody and all that. While they probably reserve the right to open whatever, the in-practice exceptions mostly about trying to find a receiver when the label/other identifying info is destroyed somehow.).
There are also some amount of random checks.
But to put this in perspective (and again, i think civil forfeiture is nutso), thi is is a fedex site that processes about 100k packages an hour.
The state seized 134 packages in the past year.
If they were inspecting any meaningful percent of packages, this would probably be 100x greater.
Minor correction, but the article says they can process up to 99k packages per hour.
1. If property is confiscated as part of punishment for a crime (e.g. places that make you forfeit your car if you get a DUI), then it is subject to the 8th amendment.
2. If the property itself is suspected of being a criminal tool (e.g. money earned illegally), then it is not.
3. Since in #2, it is a civil case against property (rather than a criminal case against a person), the property has no right to an attorney, and the burden of proof is merely "preponderance of the evidence" (i.e. neither side is privileged for evidence). There are also other more lenient due-process rules compared to a criminal case.
So, for example, in a criminal case if the government's entire case is "this looks suspicious" then the defense can be "you haven't proved anything" but in a civil case, the defense would have to offer enough evidence to outweigh the suspicion. And since there is no right to representation, the defendant has to find and pay for their own lawyer.
The IJ does some amazing work. Highly recommend supporting them if their mission resonates with you. I always find something refreshing and uplifting in the bimonthly print magazine.
EDIT: I cannot reply to metabagel's comment (due to it being flagged?) about IJ being "right wing" but here is a smattering of recent cases[2]:
Institute for Justice Files Lawsuit Challenging Florida’s Ban on Cultivated Meat https://ij.org/case/florida-cultivated-meat-ban/
Courts Say City Owes Her Over $200,000; But Now She Has to Sue Again to Get Paid https://ij.org/case/oklahoma-takings/
New petition asks Supreme Court to let woman’s suit against her abuser’s enabler move forward after nearly a decade in court. https://ij.org/case/martinez-v-high/
Lawsuit Seeks Accountability for Unconstitutional Raid of a Political Opponent’s Home. https://ij.org/case/marion-kansas-retaliation/
Virginia Woman Challenges Permanent Punishment Preventing Her from Working as a Substance Abuse Counselor https://ij.org/case/virginia-fresh-start-2/
Family seeks to hold officer accountable after he led SWAT raid at wrong house https://ij.org/case/texas-wrong-house-raid/
[1] https://ij.org/
Agreed. IJ (Institute for Justice) [0] and FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) [1] are my two favorite organizations when it comes to doing the hard work to protect our constitutional rights as Americans!
[0]: https://ij.org
Their initial statement on pro-Palestine protests was disgraceful.
Their ranking of best colleges in the country for free speech are completely wrong (and just happen to align with the political views of their big donors).
For example one factor is how many newspaper articles get written about issues with free speech at a school. Tiny private colleges that explicitly say they don't support free speech do great on this metric.
University of Virginia is championed by them as the best school in the country for free speech, which simply isn't true.
Why is this downvoted and flagged? I didn’t say they are extreme right, but they clearly support conservative causes, including school vouchers. Am I wrong?
They oppose government licensing. They stand up for the little guy against the government, but not against big corporations.
I’m just saying, be aware what their agenda is before you sign on.
And yes, in this case I absolutely agree with them. But, I wouldn’t support a lot of what they do.
Because that's literally not their mission: https://ij.org/about-us/
"Our mission is to end widespread abuses of government power ..."
"IJ is the national civil liberties law firm that represents everyday people—free of charge—when the government violates their most important constitutional rights. ..."
The fact that they choose to deal with government abuse of power and not corporate abuse of power seems totally reasonable and unrelated to left or right or whatever. I would not call them right wing simply because they have chosen to focus - all successful non-profit civil liberties law firms do this. Anything else is insane/impossible.
I'm not sure why you are choosing to paint them with a left or right brush here, when it seems mainly complaining that their mission doesn't match what you seem to want.
Most of the civil rights orgs that spend time dealing with corporate abuse of power either ignore or don't take government abuse of power cases. I don't think that classifies them as "left wing" or "right wing" either. It's just pragmatic for what they can accomplish.
They usually define themselves as a libertarian organization which seems a much more accurate way of describing them.
>...they clearly support conservative causes,
"Liberals" don't support ending qualified immunity? Reforming laws that prevent convicts from being able to get a job is a "conservative" cause? etc. It wouldn't surprise me that some people who consider themselves conservative would disagree with and other cases that some people who consider themselves liberal would disagree with.
On their web site they say "Our mission is to end widespread abuses of government power and secure the constitutional rights that allow all Americans to pursue their dreams."
That description sounds more libertarian than right or left.
(Round 2, donating to candidates via cash the cops steal, is more tricky to set up since you'd need separate donor-candidate pairs across the partisan spectrum to make it work well.)
I use cash to do things I don't want traced to me, that's the point. Many communities live at the fringe or beyond of what society deems acceptable and cash is a great tool for those communities to do their thing.
Civil asset forfeiture is an attack on marginalized people.
You ever wondered why, you can't ship cape products through USPS for example due to an executive order, but UPS and FedEx also won't let you do it? Did you know that they created that rule the same moment the executive order was signed, independently? Strange world we live in.
We all should just be good Americans and let them “seize” whatever they want!
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Then it requires the feds themselves to interfere to open the package. Plus, Registered Mail has a full chain of custody as the item becomes a fully accountable item within the mail stream that is signed for at every single touch along the way.
People are quick to forget that the morality of any given action should always be judged by its legality in any random jurisdiction.
Why?
But that ends the moment someone says it's theirs, or there are records pointing to an owner who isn't actively hiding from you. This whole modern "prove where you got it from" bs is just theft.
There is a parallel situation with the No Fly List, which is clearly unconstitutional in many cases but the Federal government is adroit at making sure no case with standing makes it to the USSC to be adjudicated, lest they lose this particular weapon.
It's a state sanctioned violent gang that also happens to be completely immune from any sort of responsibility.
Totally different things.
But when I point that out I'm the delusional extremist.
"It's hard to empathize with the people engaging in homosexuality. It's an inherently careless and risky thing to do, and meeting up in gay-friendly districts is very obviously (and ironically) done to avoid public decency orders and legitimate family formation."
A man ahead of his time, if you ask me. We need to ensure that those who fail to lick the boot hard enough should be separated from their tongues.
Suspected of criminal activity due to "money existing".
It should be a very simple procedure.
I have no issue with the seizure itself. What should come next is the police ask the person or business to explain it. They show an invoice / receipt, and the money is logged and returned promptly.
There is so much weird hate for the government in the comments, but please provide a single sane scenario where you need to send cash instead of a bank transfer that is not about avoiding laws/taxes.
There are NONE. You send the cash because you did something against the law.
So by all means, the police should keep the money until you simple prove the non-existing totally legit reason why you could not use a bank transfer. I understand the problem with this, but you don´t prove that you are innocent; but large amounts of cash are usually connected to crime and it is your job to explain why not.
What if I really want this Chevy Suburban for $11,950 where the seller is strictly saying 'cash only'? Sure maybe buying that particular vehicle with a quarter million miles on it doesn't qualify as "sane", but it doesn't appear to be illegal.
https://austin.craigslist.org/cto/d/houston-2018-chevy-subur...
The United States is NOT every country. We have a Constitution that makes this behavior unacceptable.
> So by all means, the police should keep the money until you simple prove the non-existing totally legit reason why you could not use a bank transfer. I understand the problem with this, but you don´t prove that you are innocent; but large amounts of cash are usually connected to crime and it is your job to explain why not.
Once again, I’m not sure where you’re from, but here in America, we’re innocent until proven guilty, and that’s a pretty big deal. Also, the burden of proof is on law enforcement to prove that a citizen is guilty of a crime, not on the citizen to prove that they’re innocent.
Legally, it’s entirely irrelevant that you or anyone in law enforcement believe it to be strange that someone is either carrying large amounts of cash or sending cash via mail—it’s perfectly legal behavior.
My grandma has never ever put a single dollar in the bank, because she doesn’t trust them. I don’t have her experience, but she should be able to do as she pleases with her cash without law enforcement treating her as a criminal just so they can steal her money. It’s that simple.
> large amounts of cash are usually connected to crime
Do you have a source for that assertion?
According to whom? Most of us living in western (and purportedly freedom-respecting) countries are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent.
It's undemocratic and frankly vile to openly support violation of our constitutional rights like this, instead of campaigning for laws to be changed if you disagree with them.
Having said all that, sending cash through the mail just feels like a really obvious money laundering vector. You might claim that there's no distinction between that and, say, handing over a bunch of cash directly to a person, but in the world of money laundering each extra layer makes the operation safer!
I don't think that from this it follows that we should be opening envelopes all over, but there's a universe where the seller of jewelry is very aware that they are taken illicit cash, and in a a more just universe there's some sort of warrant.
I do not know how to square the privacy question with this, but I do like the idea of money laundering not being trivially doable.
The feds do quite a lot these days that isn't actually part of their enumerated powers.
Take what i'm about to say as a description of the process rather than any support for it :)
So, it's not quite that. Here, they are claiming it because a dog "alerted" on the package, so they then claim it's related to criminal activity. regardless of whether they find actual drugs in it.
This part: "Even though Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department dogs alerted handlers to the smell of drugs in the box, no contraband could be found once it was opened."
The first part is why they were involved and allowed to seize it.
The second is mostly irrelevant, legally (whether it should be or not). You don't have to prove it contained drugs to prove it was proceeds of a crime or otherwise part of criminal activity. This part is actually right, whether it gets used in an insane fashion or not. This is civil and not criminal, so the standard is not "proof beyond a reasonable doubt".
They file a suit against the money itself. It ends up with a funny case title like "United States v. An Article Consisting of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less, Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls," or "United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins"
(both real, but federal seizures. If a state seizes it, it's like State of Indiana v., and often less funny)
Even if the person is not charged with a crime, if they successfully argue the money itself is criminal proceeds or was involved in criminal activity, they can confiscate it.
So, it's not sending cash that enables them to seize it. It's whether the money is used in criminal activity. The thing that enables them to be involved is that the dog alerted to it.
Now, for as much bullshit as exists in dog alerts, in this case, fedex often goes through about 100k packages an hour in this site, and they have seized 100 of them in the past year.
That's a really really small percent of the packages.
The law, not the Constitution. Nothing in the Constitution would prevent the Congress from banning mailing cash.
