this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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The institute for justice FIRE and a couple other major civil rights organizations have been working working on getting civil forfeiture over turned and made unconstitutional for decades now
When obvious criminal activity requires decades to solve you should kind of take the hint...
I take it you have never been involved in the legal system
Yea it's taking too long
Conservatives love civil asset forfeiture. They will fight like hell to keep it.
IIRC, New Mexico banned civil forfeiture. But the cops kept doing it anyway. So a law change is not enough... enforcement is also needed. Yes, against the police, sadly enough.
They can still perform asset forfeiture if they believe there is criminal probability. So they only need to have weak evidence criminal activity is at issue, to search, and confiscate things. Since this is the majority of what they did already, it didn't do too much. This was mostly an attempt, by the state DA, to get ahead of the movement against asset forfeiture. A way for them to keep doing what they are doing, while paying lip service to civil rights. However their argument didn't work as all forms of asset forfeiture are in the sights. They hoped having more cause, and a stricter documentation, would give them the leeway needed, but the case being brought is that if the item isn't specifically evidence, it can't be seized, if it is evidence it can't kept, or there are other laws determining what is to be done when a conviction is had. So FIRE has said while it is nice it is a little more strict there, it is in no way outside of the scope of their lawsuits.