Sessions greenlights police to seize cash, property from people suspected of crimes but not charged

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-greenlights-police-to-increase-seizures-of-cash-and-property-from-suspected-criminals/2017/07/19/3522a9ba-6c99-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html?utm_term=.c0eeed88455d

Police state is exactly the agenda of those who fear brown and black people gaining political power.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/512864/

Surveillance, indefinite detention, counterterrorism, and torture have emerged as prominent issues during the Senate hearings about Donald Trump’s administration picks. It is not yet clear what Trump’s policies on these issues will be, although his comments on the campaign trail suggest he supports the use of torture, keeping Guantanamo Bay open, and surveilling mosques and certain American citizens, among other things.

But anything Trump does will be built on legal “infrastructure” created by the Obama administration, argues Jameel Jaffer, the former deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. It may be true that Obama worked to create a sound legal basis for his administration’s national-security and surveillance policies, Jaffer said. But in doing so, he also gave his policies, many of which were extensions of the Bush era, a sense of permanence and legitimacy. Now, Trump will inherit the “firm legal footing” Obama helped created.

During his time at the ACLU, Jaffer led litigation against the Obama administration on a number of national-security and transparency issues, and he recently wrote a book on the legal memos that enabled the administration’s policy on drone strikes. Jaffer currently leads the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and is an executive editor for the blog Just Security.

PkrBum wrote:https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/512864/

Surveillance, indefinite detention, counterterrorism, and torture have emerged as prominent issues during the Senate hearings about Donald Trump’s administration picks. It is not yet clear what Trump’s policies on these issues will be, although his comments on the campaign trail suggest he supports the use of torture, keeping Guantanamo Bay open, and surveilling mosques and certain American citizens, among other things.

But anything Trump does will be built on legal “infrastructure” created by the Obama administration, argues Jameel Jaffer, the former deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. It may be true that Obama worked to create a sound legal basis for his administration’s national-security and surveillance policies, Jaffer said. But in doing so, he also gave his policies, many of which were extensions of the Bush era, a sense of permanence and legitimacy. Now, Trump will inherit the “firm legal footing” Obama helped created.

During his time at the ACLU, Jaffer led litigation against the Obama administration on a number of national-security and transparency issues, and he recently wrote a book on the legal memos that enabled the administration’s policy on drone strikes. Jaffer currently leads the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and is an executive editor for the blog Just Security.

A S S E T F O R F E I T U R E ! Dumbass.

There is hope to combat "big government" little troll Sessions:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/04/the_supreme_court_finally_found_an_issue_that_unites_them.html

Common High Court Ground

The Supreme Court is looking for cases to curb abusive law enforcement seizures.

By Perry Grossman

"It’s been a rough year for the Supreme Court. While the court tried to avoid controversial cases and to reach consensus whenever possible, the Republican Senate blockade of Merrick Garland and the tense process around Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation made it look more partisan than any time since Bush v. Gore. Fortunately, though, the court appears to have found a new issue on which to find common ground and attempt to rebuild public confidence: curbing civil forfeiture abuses and other property seizures by police. That may not sound like the sexiest topic, but it’s one that is at the heart of one of the most controversial areas of law enforcement.

Last week, in a case called Nelson v. Colorado, the court laid a foundation for upcoming challenges to roll back law enforcement overreach. As a result of respective 2005 and 2006 convictions, Louis Alonzo Maddon and Shannon Nelson were required to pay a few thousand dollars in court costs, fees, and restitution to Colorado (on top of serving prison time). But Nelson and Maddon ultimately had those respective convictions invalidated. They both then asked for refunds on those paid costs. But the Colorado Supreme Court held that to obtain refunds, a state law called the Exoneration Act required them first to file separate civil court proceedings—where they would have to pay for their own lawyer or find one to represent them for free—and prove “by clear and convincing evidence” that they were “actually innocent.” The “actual innocence” standard would force them to bear the enormous burden of proving a negative, to demonstrate “by clear and convincing evidence” that they had not committed the crimes in question.

A succinct majority opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Kennedy, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan—reversed the Colorado Supreme Court, holding that Colorado’s demanding scheme for refunding money to exonerated defendants violated the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. (Justice Alito wrote a separate concurring opinion, while Justice Thomas dissented.) Ginsburg wrote: “once their convictions were erased, the presumption of innocence was restored. ... Colorado may not presume a person, adjudged guilty of no crime, nonetheless guilty enough for monetary exactions.” This makes sense to anyone who’s ever seen an episode of Law & Order and thus knows that a criminal defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. It follows that if a conviction is invalidated, the defendant hasn’t been proven guilty and he or she is once again presumed innocent..."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/04/the_supreme_court_finally_found_an_issue_that_unites_them.html

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