Judge Threatens to Jail Cops for Civil Asset Forfeiture Games - Ep. 7.301

welcome once again to lato's law here's steve lato i had a whole bunch of people send me the story out of north carolina because it hits several of the things that we talk about all the time on this channel and dan scott jerry howie and nick thank you very much guys uh it's a good story north carolina police department ordered to pay man back after forfeiting seized money through controversial process and this is from fox 46 out of charlotte and we talked before about civil asset forfeiture it's the kind of thing that's bothering more and more people to put it lightly to the point where i suspect that soon we're going to see it go away but civil asset forfeiture is the idea that if the police encounter you they encounter you and you've got cash on you for instance they can go where'd that cash come from and if they don't believe you or if they just pretend they don't believe you they can take the cash from you and force you to sue them to get it back and the standard for winning that is actually kind of difficult and it costs money so if you're going to spend money to get your money back you see what the problem is it's a math problem among other things so the idea of civil asset forfeiture has been riling more and more people lately so a district court judge in north carolina has given the town of mooresville and its police department one week to comply with a court order or go to jail the judge actually ordered them give that man his money back or i'm going to start jailing people very very rarely do you ever hear this with respect to municipality oftentimes judges will threaten to jail people who are in front of them and say if you don't do this you can go to jail but it's not often you hear them say regarding a city if the city doesn't do something someone's going to jail so here's what happened the mooresville police department was called out to a hotel in november of 2020 and they searched an unoccupied rental car now the question of course is did they have the right to search it and so on we don't know but while they were searching the car they found a small amount of marijuana as well as approximately 17 000 in cash belonging to a connecticut man whose daughter resides in that county so although he's not from the area his daughter is but he had seventeen thousand dollars in cash on him so on november 19th the mooresville police department was put on notice of a hearing to challenge the seizure of the money and most states have a process where you can go and say i i want to challenge the forfeiture of the money but the question is is it worth pursuing now seventeen thousand dollars means if it costs you less than 17 to get your money back then it's worth doing but they often bank on the fact that they make it as convoluted and complicated as possible so that people just say ah it's not worth it and go away from it it varies from state to state and also depends on whether you're dealing with a state or the feds and that's where this story gets weird it gets weird so the day before the hearing the police sent a check for seventeen thousand dollars to the federal government under the authority of the federal civil asset forfeiture law and so of course it looks like they did that on purpose so the local police seized the money they were going to keep it when they get notified that hey someone's going to come after that money they want their money back the police force said okay and they gave us the feds they're playing hot potato with it and the weird part is that the federal government often sees his money also through their agents it's not uncommon you hear about federal marshals or other federal agents who come into contact with money and they seize it and so here the feds didn't seize the money it was handed to them by the police who seized the money and the attorney says that timing was not accidental what they did was circumvent the system by giving it over the federal government because they anticipated coming into court and being able to say sorry we don't have that money anymore you're going to chase it down in the federal system so the attorney went on to explain how difficult it is for people to get their money back after it is in the federal government's possession so the consequence of that is people are forever without their money even if ultimately their case is dismissed or they're found not guilty or otherwise their case goes away the federal government can still keep that money so the question you have is this happened in north carolina the mooresville police department finds seventeen thousand dollars in someone's car they take it a court is going to hold a hearing on it and so they very quickly give it to the federal government why is the mooresville police department handing 17 000 that's not theirs to the federal government it's a problem so to get forfeited money back from the federal government is also a costly process one that most average people cannot afford the attorney considers these forfeiture actions highway robbery and feels that the judge deserves a medal of honor for her bravery threatening mooresville officials with incarceration next thursday is the deadline for the man to get his money back so fox 46 has reached out to the town of mooresville and the police department and has gotten no comment so in a nutshell the man's money was seized he hired a local attorney the local attorney set it for a hearing all the way it's supposed to happen the police department the day before the hearing takes the money and gives it to the feds so we don't have the money anymore the judge says i don't care that you haven't got the money anymore you got to give this man his money back and she gives him a drop dead date and she goes if it's not back in his possession by that point in time someone's going to jail now of course whether someone actually goes to jail i i don't know if i put money on that it's good this is calling attention to the problem and i'd like to see her throw someone in jail uh but the interesting thing is if you think about this from just a typical perspective let's pretend we're acting just normally and rationally as opposed to the law of civil asset forfeiture if you have some money you have some money and i walk up to you and i take the money away from you without your permission that would probably be some form of theft or robbery depends on exactly the circumstances but it's wrong that i take your money without your permission you want your money back i go i'm not going to give you your money back we're in america so you say okay i'll see you in court so you go to court you file proper paperwork you notify me of the hearing and the day before the hearing i take the money and i give it to somebody else and then i walk into court and go your honor i haven't got the money anymore haven't got the money anymore judge goes what happens in money i gave it to somebody else can you imagine that defense actually worked because criminals could do that all day long and people who are being sued could do that all day long that man stole my car gave him his car back i haven't got it anymore i gave it to somebody else um so that concept cannot work and one of the biggest problems that you have and and i've been fascinated by this the 30 years i've been an attorney the two years i was in law school and the years preparing to go to law school is how people's mindset gets affected by who the parties are so in other words if you hear that like a movie star has filed for this it sounds different than if your next door neighbor fought the exact same thing and likewise if it's the government filing an action it sounds different than if i file the action but if the action is a legal action it shouldn't matter who the parties are so if you're the judge down there in north carolina and two parties come before you and one party says they took my money i want it back you turn the other part and go where is their money don't have it anymore your honor we gave it away yesterday okay that's a problem now the fact that that's the police department for a city giving it to the federal government shouldn't make a difference because there's no law that says oh by the way we can steal your money but we'll be exonerated if we give it to the federal government there's no there's no law that says that there's no law that says that now there is a strange law that's you know swept across the nation that says that law enforcement they encounter you can take your stuff they can take your money through civil asset forfeiture that is weird and that of course is a scourge on our nation it's something that i've been railing about for years but the fact that there's a civil asset forfeiture at the heart of this mess doesn't excuse everything else these parties are doing so when they have the money and to play hot potato with it they give it to somebody else does that exonerate what they did in the first place no no so uh it would be very very nice if the mooresville police department or the city of marsville simply cut a check for 17 000 and handed it to this man i doubt they'll do that i'll doubt i doubt they'll do that the other thing i can tell you is that quite often in cases like this they'll often approach the person who lost their money and say if you drop your law so it'll give you half your money back so you can have seventeen thousand dollars maybe a couple years from now or you can have eight thousand five hundred dollars today what do you want or you can have what's behind door number two um this is crazy i know it's crazy and the the interesting thing is when i do videos about civil asset forfeiture i have several reactions a lot of people go steve thank you this is something we've been talking about i'm glad you're keeping it on the radar i also have people go this is crazy you've never heard of this before and i always have at least one person who goes this cannot be happening what you're describing is impossible in america it would be unconstitutional it'd be a violation of the fourth amendment the fifth amendment it would be but the supreme court has upheld it and by the way i'm just gonna say this now everyone loves to blame this and the people they don't like so i'm gonna get people in the comments going this is all this person's fault it's all this person's fault it's all this person's fault and they'll be naming people from the 20th century civil asset forfeiture goes back a long time it actually predates the united states of america as a country so how widespread it's been how active it's been how common it's been that's changed over time but a lot of the reason it's changed over time is that we're more aware of it because of modern media okay someone gets their money seized in north carolina at a motel and a couple weeks later we're hearing about it that wouldn't have happened in the 1800s okay so that's probably what's going on more than anything else so north carolina police department ordered to pay money back uh that they seized as forfeited through a controversial process and if they don't the judge says people might be going to jail which would be nice dan scott jerry howie nick thanks for sending it questions or comments put them below let's talk to later bye-bye thank you for watching leto's law stealing someone's coffee is called mugging you

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 493,652

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, http://www.lehtoslaw.com, steve lehto

Id: OKdlHtViW_Y

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2021