Florida Governor Signs Bill Requiring Actual Criminal Charges Before Seizing Property
1st April 2016
Some great news in asset forfeiture reform is coming out of Florida. S.B. 1044, approved by the legislature earlier in the month, was signed into law today by Gov. Rick Scott.
The big deal with this particular reform is that, in most cases, Florida police will actually have to arrest and charge a person with a crime before attempting to seize and keep their money and property under the state’s asset forfeiture laws. One of the major ways asset forfeiture gets abused is that it is frequently a “civil”, not criminal, process where police and prosecutors are able to take property without even charging somebody with a crime, let alone convicting them. This is how police are, for example, able to snatch cash from cars they’ve pulled over and claim they suspect the money was going to be used for drug trafficking without actually finding any drugs.
So-called ‘civil asset forfeiture’ is one of the most oppressive (and, I think, unconstitutional) tricks in the bag of police (and police agencies such as the FBI) in this country. It is inherently corrupt, placing with police every incentive to steal people’s property under color of law without respect to due process and basic Constitutional safeguards. This is a very big step in the right direction.