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0 pointslazide1y ago0 comments

Maybe, but they’d need a really high bar if you had the paperwork with you to not have to pay out. It’s true though that it would require some fighting. But that’s true of any cop misbehavior, unfortunately.

Civil penalties for this behavior means if you prevail (and it’s an egregious case), you can more than make up for it. Many attorneys will take such cases on contingency, as the odds are pretty good.

Here is the federal manual on asset seizure btw [https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-afmls/file/839521/...]

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paranoidrobot1y ago

You've got it backwards.

Civil Asset Forfeiture in the US is so widespread, and so egregious because it's so difficult to fight.

You can't recover your expenses in fighting it, so it's only services like IJ that will take this on without you paying for it yourself.

adgjlsfhk11y ago

> Many attorneys will take such cases on contingency, as the odds are pretty good.

what this means is that the government steals your money and then the lawyer gets half of it if you win and get it back.

lazideOP1y ago

Damages are on top of return of the money.

adgjlsfhk11y ago

and damages are basically never awarded for this (for real, see if you can find a case where they were)

lazideOP1y ago

That’s because the moment someone lawyers up and appears to have a case, they give the funds back to avoid creating bad precedent. So it doesn’t go to court.

(See https://ij.org/press-release/federal-government-will-return-...)

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paranoidrobot1y ago

You've got it backwards.

Civil Asset Forfeiture in the US is so widespread, and so egregious because it's so difficult to fight.

You can't recover your expenses in fighting it, so it's only services like IJ that will take this on without you paying for it yourself.

adgjlsfhk11y ago

> Many attorneys will take such cases on contingency, as the odds are pretty good.

what this means is that the government steals your money and then the lawyer gets half of it if you win and get it back.

lazideOP1y ago

Damages are on top of return of the money.

adgjlsfhk11y ago

and damages are basically never awarded for this (for real, see if you can find a case where they were)

lazideOP1y ago

That’s because the moment someone lawyers up and appears to have a case, they give the funds back to avoid creating bad precedent. So it doesn’t go to court.

(See https://ij.org/press-release/federal-government-will-return-...)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse