carguy123 wrote:
How are they able to sell his goods when he's innocent until proven guilty?
From Wikipedia:
"There are two types of forfeiture cases, criminal and civil. Almost all forfeiture cases today are civil. In civil forfeiture cases, the US Government sues the item of property, not the person; the owner is effectively a third party claimant. Once the government establishes probable cause that the property is subject to forfeiture, the owner must prove on a "preponderance of the evidence" that it is not. The owner need not be judged guilty of any crime. In contrast, criminal forfeiture is usually carried out in a sentence following a conviction and is a punitive act against the offender. Since the government can choose the type of case, a civil case is almost always chosen. The costs of such cases is high for the owner, usually totaling around $10,000 and can take up to three years."
Basically, the guy had to prove, in civil court, beyond a reasonable doubt that he was innocent, rather than the prosecutor proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the guy is guilty.
So the 18 year old guy driving the Escalade on 24's who has no job gets his truck confiscated. The prosectur says "this guy's driving a $60,000 truck but has no pay stubs, no income tax return, no trust fund, no inheritance, he didn't win the lottery, this truck was obviously bought with money obtained illegally." To get the truck back, the guy has to prove conclusively that he got it legally. Even if the guy has never broken a law in his life, and he found $60,000 in the street and used that money to buy the truck, if he can't prove he found that money, he's SOL.
Bob
Edited because wikipedia says it better than I did.