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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
A bizarre case comes out of the Texas court system -- landing squarely in the middle of a legal Bermuda Triangle where illegal searches meet civil asset forfeiture... and everything is still somehow perfectly legal. (via FourthAmendment.com)
[...] The Supreme Court of Texas examines the facts of the case, along with the applicable statutes, and -- after discarding a US Supreme Court decision that would have found in Herrera's favor -- decides there's nothing he can do to challenge the seizure. He can't even move to suppress the evidence uncovered following the illegal stop -- the same search that led to the state seizing his vehicle under civil forfeiture statutes.
[...] First, the court decides that the deterrent effect of suppressing the evidence is outweighed by the cost to society.
[...] The court moves on to dismiss the Supreme Court's 1965 decision (One 1958 Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania), suggesting not only that things have changed too much over the past 50 years to consider it relevant, but also -- unbelievably -- that the seizure of a person's assets via civil forfeiture is not a form of punishment.
[...] By finding no remedy workable or worthwhile in the face of societal cost, the Texas Supreme Court has given law enforcement another way to salvage evidence obtained by illegal searches: simply seize the "container" (house, car, boat, etc.) the evidence was discovered in.
As defense attorney John Wesley Hall notes in his post on the case, this decision will also encourage more questionable asset forfeitures because the court here has declared it's unwilling to entertain notions of deterrence when dealing with "non-punitive" civil seizures.
Source: TechDirt
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday July 22 2016, @11:50AM
let's say you had one of those citizen militias with a few hundred people that are trained and are organized enough to take orders. So they get together, and try and take something over to defend themselves from the government, the US drops one bomb on that and the rebellion is over.
Some would say that's why the citizen militia needs bombs too, a right the widely disregarded Second Amendment should guarantee.
But we don't need to go to war. (yet?) Bullies are usually cowards. An occasional reminder that if people get mad enough, they can strike back, gets the attention of thousands who would otherwise abuse their positions of authority.