The War on (Some Classes of People) Who Use (Some) Drugs: The Gift That Keeps On Giving
By Ugh:
The idea is that when they break up the drug ring, the dealers forfeit the suitcases full of money found in their closet next to the kilo of coke. The standard for forfeiture is that the government must establish a ‘substantial connection’ between the money and a controlled substance offense.
It turns out that ‘substantial connection’ doesn’t mean a lot in the Eighth Circuit. The linked opinion tells the story of Emiliano Gonzolez, a guy with limited English fluency. He got stopped for speeding, and the police asked for, and received (insert tone of scepticism here) permission to search the car. They found $125K in cash in the car, and a police dog ‘alerted’ to the cash. Nothing else related to criminal activity was found in the car, and Gonzolez has no criminal history beyond a drunk driving arrest.
[…]
The government’s story is that having that much cash, and giving some inaccurate answers to initial questioning by the police (Gonzolez denied having a criminal record, later saying that he didn’t think drunk driving counted as such, and gave the wrong name for the person who rented the car for him), combined with the dog’s alerting to the money, together were sufficient evidence of a ‘substantial connection’ to a drug crime. That’s it. That’s all they’ve got. Absolutely no direct evidence of any, you know, crime. And the Eighth Circuit agrees with them, and is letting them take 125K from these people.
It’s not just that TWoSCoPWUSD is problematic in many respects in itself; it also acts as a sort of solvent where civil liberties go to die. (The de facto legalization of no-knock searches being the most recent example.)