Liberty For All

by Jessi Winchester, author of From Bordello to Ballot Box

“Whenever legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.”

- John Locke, 1690

Society has no problem with law enforcement fighting crime or even confiscating property used in a criminal enterprise but, as with any law, the good intent for which the law was created, has been immensely abused to the point that innocent citizens are losing everything they ever worked for without even being charged or convicted of a crime.  Clearly, states need to pass laws to safeguard the rights of the innocent from zealot law enforcement agencies run amuck from the smell of greed.

An agency that was once designed to “protect and serve” has now become a very lucrative business of profit.  And not just from the drug lords for whom the seizure law was originally intended.  A majority of today’s innocent victims are every day people who can’t afford the costly legal battles involved in recovering their property, which was stolen from them by agents of their own government without benefit of due process.

Forfeiture laws were passed in the 1980s to fight drug traffickers.  In the early 1990s, they were fine-tuned to expand and include many other non-drug situations.  Since then, the law enforcement and legal communities have figured a way to circumvent the U.S. Constitution - specifically, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.  Now they simply take the property to civil court where Administrative Law places the burden of proof on the victim rather than take a potential suspect to criminal court where Constitutional Law prevails and it is incumbent upon law enforcement to prove there actually was a crime.  By going to civil court where the Constitution does not apply, cops can simply keep the booty without even charging a citizen with a crime - let alone convicting them.

Since confiscation occurs under a civil procedure separate from the criminal law process, it is now easier for the government to seize property than to convict a person of a crime.  This out-of-control policy has finally caused a few states such as Nevada, Oregon, Utah, New Mexico and Missouri to modify their statutes to place the burden of proof where it was originally intended - on the government - and to clearly implement due process.  Oregon and Utah even took the issue to the voters and passed a state constitutional amendment to that effect.  Currently, Colorado intends to place the same issue before the legislature and if the lawmakers don’t pass the requested changes, they plan on taking the issue directly to the voters.  Citizens are finally waking up and realizing the Fourth and Fifth Amendments have been trampled by law enforcement for government’s greedy gain and are demanding the protection promised them under the U.S. Constitution.

Requiring that a property owner be convicted of a crime prior to forfeiture is not only the right thing to do . . . it is our birthright as citizens.  The sooner the rest of the states join those who have already spoken up for liberty, the stronger individual liberty will be for each American and the sooner we can put a stop to “bandits with badges.”