I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The Detroit News has a very important article about the use of asset forfeiture laws by law enforcement as a means of raising revenue. The law allows the police to seize any property (including cash) that was used in the commission of a crime or was purchased or gained through the commission of a crime. And once they seize your property, the burden of proof is on to justify getting it back – even if you’re never even charged with a crime, much less convicted of one.
The Detroit News article includes this appalling statement:
“Police departments right now are looking for ways to generate revenue, and forfeiture is a way to offset the costs of doing business,” said Sgt. Dave Schreiner, who runs Canton Township’s forfeiture unit, which raised $343,699 in 2008. “You’ll find that departments are doing more forfeitures than they used to because they’ve got to — they’re running out of money and they’ve got to find it somewhere.”
But the police department is not a business and citizens are not their clients. The police are doing little more than acting as shakedown artists, taking property and then requiring the owners of the property to prove that they didn’t buy it with the proceeds of a crime and then requiring them to pay the cost of getting it back even if they can prove it.
The principle here should be quite obvious. If the government can’t put you in jail or fine you for a criminal offense without proving you guilty of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, then they should not be able to take your property on the premise that you procured it through that crime without proving the same thing. Anything less than that is a clear violation of due process and the constitutional presumption of innocence.
Unfortunately, the courts have failed to do their job on this issue, upholding such laws on the dubious grounds that asset forfeitures are a civil matter rather than a criminal one and therefore subject to a lower standard of proof. But if the government is alleging that you have committed a crime as the basis for that forfeiture, the burden of proof should be on the government, not on the individual.
If the government can take your property from you without ever charging and convicting you of a crime, it is the government who is acting like a criminal. A thief who wears a badge is still a thief.
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