[HN Gopher] Police Cannot Seize Property Indefinitely After an A...
___________________________________________________________________
Police Cannot Seize Property Indefinitely After an Arrest, Federal
Court Rules
Author : throwup238
Score : 415 points
Date : 2024-08-18 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reason.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reason.com)
| fergbrain wrote:
| I wonder if this ruling could also force the courts to start
| addressing unconstitutional civil forfeiture
| threatofrain wrote:
| I wonder if judicial solutions can ever be adequate as police
| can simply say that an investigation is ongoing for years. And
| determining whether ongoing possession of seized property is
| legitimate involves disclosing investigation details.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I mean, the US is the only first world country that I know of
| where this is an issue, clearly there are ways to address
| this, no?
| ryandrake wrote:
| 'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This
| Regularly Happens
| tocs3 wrote:
| For reference:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37684624
| debacle wrote:
| The problem is it eventually becomes government civil lawfare
| against citizens. Taxpayer foot the bill to screw other
| taxpayers.
| frankharv wrote:
| I saw a local piece about Power Company taking land from
| black owned Funeral Home for onshore windfarm transmission
| towers.
|
| I thought to myself why would one business be able to seize
| anothers property?
|
| How does a private company deserve Eminent Domain powers?
|
| Is a Funeral Home not a Public Good too?
|
| Why would we allow emminent domain for a monolopy company.
|
| https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/local/mycity/virgini
| a...
| debacle wrote:
| Corruption is pretty much always the answer.
| frankharv wrote:
| Indeed. Between FERC and State bodies you don't stand a
| chance to win.
|
| They were offering the Funeral Home $20K for 'air
| rights'. No poles. Seems cheap if you feel you will need
| to shutdown the business.
|
| https://landownerattorneys.com/can-private-companies-use-
| emi...
| duskwuff wrote:
| Claiming that the owners will "need to shutdown the
| business" because there are now power lines running above
| it seems a bit hyperbolic.
| opo wrote:
| The most famous example of this kind of use of eminent
| domain was the Kelo case which went to the Supreme Court.
| By 5-4 the court rules it was permissible to use eminent
| domain to get the land to build a campus for Pfizer. (The
| majority was Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and
| Breyer.)
|
| As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote "The specter of
| condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to
| prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-
| Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with
| a factory."
|
| After all of this, the land didn't get built into a
| corporate campus:
|
| >...For nearly 20 years since the ruling, the entire Fort
| Trumbull neighborhood remained a vacant lot after being
| bulldozed by the city; a neighborhood once teeming with
| families who resided there for generations was home only
| to weeds and feral cats. The economic development the
| city promised the U.S. Supreme Court would materialize--
| if only the government could get its hands on the land--
| never materialized, even after spending more than $80
| million in taxpayer money.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
| https://ij.org/case/kelo/
| tshaddox wrote:
| How is that different than, say, indefinite detention? It's
| obviously not implemented perfectly, but habeas corpus is
| uncontroversial at least in principle. I don't see anything
| mechanistically unique about property seizure that would make
| this tricky to solve.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> I don't see anything mechanistically unique about
| property seizure that would make this tricky to solve._
|
| One of the mechanics at play is suing the property itself,
| which can't defend itself for rather obvious reasons. That
| side steps any property rights with jurisdiction _in rem_ :
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._%24124,700
| _...
|
| IANAL but it's as stupid as it sounds and it's been
| controversial (i.e. United States v. Approximately 64,695
| Pounds of Shark Fins)
| zdw wrote:
| There was a proposal back in the discussion of extending
| copyright to be "forever minus one day" by the maximalist
| camp which included Sonny Bono, so there are hacks around
| "indefinitely".
| undersuit wrote:
| Hmm, does my money have the right to a speedy and public
| trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein
| the crime shall have been committed?
|
| (6th Amendment)
| GavinMcG wrote:
| The Supreme Court has said it isn't unconstitutional as a
| general matter, so a lower court's ruling won't force that to
| change. And because the practice is a holdover from English law
| and isn't understood (as a historical matter) to be something
| the constitution was meant to alter, there isn't much basis for
| thinking the Supreme Court would reverse its earlier decisions.
| alistairSH wrote:
| How do they align that reasoning with the 4th? Particularly
| the conservative wing of the bench, as they seem most likely
| to be literalists (when it suits, at least).
| tocs3 wrote:
| I don;t think they are trying very hard. They make the
| claim that the property is involved in a crime (not the
| owner) and the property does not have rights.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/civil_forfeiture
| rolph wrote:
| property is also not a person.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| The conservatives tend to be literalists when interpreting
| statutes and regulations. There are judicial philosophy
| reasons for that, but also, statutes and regulations can be
| changed in response to court rulings. That said, the
| conservatives tend to be literalists from the perspective
| of the legislature or regulator at the time the law was
| enacted, though all the justices (conservative and liberal)
| recognize that it's a fiction to say Congress has a single
| point of view.
|
| When it comes to interpreting the constitution,
| conservatives likewise tend to be focused on the point of
| view at enactment. But it's even more of a fiction to say
| that the states had a single point of view, and in any
| case, the text of the constitution often isn't precise in
| the way contemporary statutes are. So the conservatives are
| guided more strongly by the historical evidence about what
| the sovereign states would have "understood" themselves to
| be giving up, in replacing the Articles of Confederation
| with a central federal government.
|
| Given that, they interpret the Fourth Amendment by
| reference to the historical evidence of what phenomena it
| was responding to. And as a historical matter, the aim of
| the amendment was to require warrants, not to narrow the
| scope of what could be searched or seized. So where there's
| probable cause that a crime has been committed, a warrant
| may issue, and it can be directed at the property that
| "committed" the crime, since that was a known practice in
| English law at the time.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Are these warrants issued retroactively? Some of the most
| egregious cases of civil forfeiture seem to be literal
| cash grabs on the side of the road.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > That said, the conservatives tend to be literalists
| from the perspective of the legislature or regulator at
| the time the law was enacted
|
| I find it ironic that they view the Constitution as "at
| the time the law was enacted" and continue to rule on
| literalism that way, even though those same people
| explicitly specified that laws and the Constitution
| should be reviewed, revised, and otherwise be interpreted
| as appropriate for that time, not the time of writing.
|
| There's never really an explanation as to why "we have to
| treat these things like infallible perfect works" when
| they're not, and even their authors told us they're not.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > There's never really an explanation as to why "we have
| to treat these things like infallible perfect works" when
| they're not, and even their authors told us they're not.
|
| They are not, though. The constitution can be changed and
| has been changed many times in the past. I assume they
| think (or justify their decisions by saying that at
| least) that it's not their job to pass legislation or
| enact constitutional amendments without any input from
| the states/congress which seems like a reasonable
| viewpoint.
| SllX wrote:
| https://reason.com/volokh/2024/05/09/supreme-court-issues-
| fl...
|
| Reason has a good analysis. This recent case was about
| preliminary hearings in civil asset forfeiture cases in
| which it was ruled 6-3 that preliminary hearings weren't
| required in such cases, but if you read into Gorsuch's
| concurring opinion, it looks a lot like he believes civil
| asset forfeiture is over applied and shouldn't be used
| outside of exigent circumstances like those covered under
| admiralty, customs and revenue law where a ship might leave
| American jurisdiction before a proper hearing could be held
| on the asset.
|
| So... with the right case brought before them, the current
| SCOTUS bench might be ready to gut civil asset forfeiture
| like a trout.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I spent hundreds of hours hanging out in forfeiture court, it's
| wild. The court I was in eventually got a new judge and she
| took the two DAs aside and said to them "This bullshit you have
| going here, the 90% of cases you win because people don't even
| know how to fill out the paperwork. That ends today. That will
| not fly in my courtroom."
|
| I remember that same day a dad came in. The State had his new
| $60K SUV they were trying to sell. His son had swiped the keys,
| taken it, got caught drunk-driving. The DAs were like "well,
| tough shit, it's the law" and that judge said "Did this man
| know his son took the car? Does he have valid insurance? Give
| this man his damned car back. And I want you to pay all his
| towing and storage fees too." "His towing fee too?" "Yes" "We
| don't even know how to refund that, the city has that money."
| "Well, you have an hour to find out. See you in an hour." LOL
|
| If you are ever caught up in a civil forfeiture, make sure to
| stay on top of the paperwork. Most people lose their stuff by
| not doing the very simple paperwork. If you get to the first
| court hearing the State often gives up if it's not much value.
| montroser wrote:
| The standard for arrest, probable cause, is far too weak to be
| any basis for indefinitely seizing property. A precedent ruling
| on this by the Supreme Court would be welcome, but it's hard to
| say which way it would go, given the current makeup of the court.
| shwaj wrote:
| Which half of the court would be likely to rule which way?
| gostsamo wrote:
| Does "tough on crime" answer your question?
| debacle wrote:
| No, because the tough on crime people are more libertarian
| as well.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Who do you think is just "tough on crime"?
|
| Ideologically, Justice Thomas obviously is the most opposed
| to asset forfeiture. Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson, and Gorsuch
| are all opposed to it too. I suppose that leaves Roberts,
| Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson as the tough on crime
| crowd?
| jahewson wrote:
| There's no "half". While the current court has a conservative
| majority the rulings only fall sharply along those lines
| around 10% of the time
| https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-
| co...
| sowbug wrote:
| I would expect public votes -- Congress, Supreme Court,
| etc. -- to frequently cluster around 50%-plus-one. The
| internal lobbying and horse trading can stop after the
| winning viewpoint has its majority of votes, so the
| minority viewpoint voters go on record with their original
| viewpoint.
| qingcharles wrote:
| With an issue like this? Roll the dice, honestly.
|
| I lose track of whether the conservative members of the court
| are pro-constitution, pro-defendant or pro-police in criminal
| justice issues like this.
|
| Over the last decade (realizing the court has changed a lot)
| they've made some pretty decent pro-rights decisions in
| criminal cases where people thought they would be pro-police.
|
| Their recent decisions are garbage fires, though.
| chaboud wrote:
| The simplest way to figure out the current court is to
| apply a "Republican Party" filter before any judgment is
| applied. Texas arguing against adhering to treaties? Texas
| wins. New York trying to give air passengers the right to
| not sit in a hot-boxed airplane for eight hours? Sorry
| blue-staters.
|
| The court tends to attempt to narrow the scope of these
| party-first decisions, but it's clear that they're playing
| for party above country or sanity.
|
| After that, the court is a mush-mash of deeply thoughtless
| polarized opinions, resulting in the senseless goat rodeo
| we presently have, but it's much easier to figure out who
| will tilt which way after you apply the party filter.
| Brett_Riverboat wrote:
| Good luck enforcing it.
| olliej wrote:
| While this is nice, it seems to only be addressing "I was
| arrested and the police seized my stuff".
|
| E.g it does nothing to stop "the police stopped me, stole my
| stuff, and then sent me on my way". E.g the case where there is
| not even the accusation of a crime has even less restrictions
| than when you are accused of a crime.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Certainly my anecdata from spending time with a lot of
| detainees in Chicago is that it was impressively common for the
| police to find something incriminating on you, and also find
| some cash, and just take everything and send you on your way.
|
| The last couple of years has made the police a lot more honest
| due to prevalence of bodycams.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| This is a well-intentioned but largely useless ruling because it
| fails to define the maximum duration for which property can be
| held. As such, it's up to the police as to what qualifies as
| indefinite. If the ruling had capped it to 14 or 30 days, that
| would be a useful ruling.
|
| A hard time cap is essential because one's life too has a cap.
| The amount of time for which one can go without earning a
| livelihood also has a cap. Imagine if prison sentences didn't
| have a time cap.
|
| This illustrates a common problem with our laws. They're very
| often vaguely defined, needlessly so, in a way that keeps
| attorneys and judges very rich, and the police abusive, to the
| detriment of the individual. In a sensible world, the laws would
| all be rewritten for clarity and consistency, starting with the
| Constitution.
| iwontberude wrote:
| It's not useless because indefinite means never. At least this
| will require police departments to define the time and
| therefore make it less likely the stuff walks off, which will
| encourage keeping it for shorter periods of time.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| How about thirty years (but only if the person is still
| alive)? It's not indefinite, and it complies with the ruling.
| tempest_ wrote:
| How about 300 years? anyone with half a brain can see the
| problem with that ruling.
|
| Likely someone with lawyers could get that lowered to
| nothing and as a layman that feels like a feature not a
| bug.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| > Likely someone with lawyers could get that lowered to
| nothing
|
| I wouldn't be so sure. Cops have implicit prosecutorial
| attorneys too that have a lot more experience with such
| cases than do defense attorneys.
|
| There is no substitute for clarity in law. All else opens
| the door to exploitation and selective application, both
| of which are a mockery of justice.
| iwontberude wrote:
| That means they have to be able to hold onto the property
| for 300 years and be able to verifiably return it to the
| estate beneficiaries. That costs a lot of money, better
| to just hold onto things for a short period of time while
| they are relevant and not steal them or throw them away.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > anyone with half a brain can see the problem with that
| ruling.
|
| If the definition of the word "reasonable" was left in
| the other half then sure.
|
| It's the job that of the court to define what is
| "reasonable" on a case by case basis and establish a
| precedent. They can't start coming up with laws
| themselves that clearly establish universal and specific
| limits.
| alpinisme wrote:
| It would not comply the with ruling unless they could
| provide "reasonable" grounds for holding it that long, and
| any precisely specified length of time would probably run
| afoul of the ruling, since that would by definition be
| specifying the length of time the police could hold it
| _without_ reason (they could well give it back because they
| have no continued use for it, but they choose to withhold
| it arbitrarily because they can, since the deadline for
| return hasn't arrived)
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| Indefinite does not mean never; that's what infinite means.
| An indefinite amount of time means not a definitive amount of
| time; i.e. "we don't know how long".
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| It is almost useless because (1) it does not specify a term
| that should be zero by default and (2) it still requires
| another court to decide what "reasonable" means in each case,
| with the time and cost associated with boing to court.
|
| A good ruling would be "by default zero time is allowed, ask
| a judge for exceptions when justified". If you release the
| person, release all their possessions at the same time. Need
| an exception? Make it the burden on police to convince a
| judge this is justified, not let it to the police to
| arbitrarily do whatever they want - like 14 months, now
| reduced to what, 13.9? (exaggeration for a good purpose).
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Sometimes vagueness is a necessary lubricant to get enough
| agreement on something, but I take your point.
|
| My personal "fun idea" is that laws should have two parts, an
| "intent" part and an "implementation" part and if a court
| decides at some future time that the law fails to accomplish
| the intent it should be struck down.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| > a necessary lubricant to get enough agreement
|
| It is unfortunate that our representatives are as such, that
| they don't strive for clarity, but I understand. To me, the
| lack of clarity is an "invalid state" that has no place in
| the rulebook.
|
| > if a court decides at some future time that the law fails
| to accomplish the intent it should be struck down.
|
| This would be very welcome, but it should require repeated
| testings in fibonacci years, not merely once. This means at
| 1, 2, 3, 5, ... years after the law was passed or updated.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Old laws are among the most likely to have deviated from
| their intended functionality. In my imaginary system,
| though, someone would have to raise the case to the courts,
| so it wouldn't be just happening all the time.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > laws should have two parts, an "intent" part and an
| "implementation"
|
| That's a common opinion between lawyers, the opposite opinion
| is that since the law was created by a large group of people,
| it can never have a clear intent. There are judges that
| assign to both of those.
|
| Anyway, IMO there's fundamentally inhumane and evil
| consequence to the idea that laws don't have intent. Even if
| it's objectively true. The entire dichotomy is broken.
| BartjeD wrote:
| Normally during the legislative process a record is kept
| about deliberations leading up to the proposals for texts,
| and amendments etc..
|
| In a 'normal' European democracy judges and lawyers use
| these deliberations to argue what the intent of the
| legislative branch was, when it created the law. And to
| interpret it in that light.
|
| I'd be surprised if there was no equivalent in the USA. I
| suppose therein lies the root of the Scalia doctrine
| though, which is too strictly 'originalist' for my taste.
| But in this instance I'd wager the rules of seizure were
| given a lot of legislative attention, similar as Habeas
| Corpus, because illegal seizure is an obvious tool of
| tyrants. It was often used by Roman Emperors and medieval
| Kings.
| c22 wrote:
| Laws already attempt to encode intent through technical word
| choices, scoped definitions, and careful construction. Judges
| and lawyers attempt to discern the intent by careful reading
| and logical deconstruction.
|
| When the lawmakers and judicial interpreters are good at
| their jobs this works great. Good lawmakers draft good laws
| that are clear in their intent. Good courts make good
| decisions by applying reasonable interpretations of the law.
|
| Bad lawmakers fail to make their intent clear. Bad lawyers
| take advantage of vague laws to argue for unreasonable
| intent. Bad judges let these bad arguments fly.
|
| How does encapsulating the "intent" into its own section of
| the law fix the problem? Bad lawmakers will still write vague
| intent sections as well as poorly defined implementations.
| Bad lawyers will abuse the vague intent sections to argue for
| exceptions and novel interpretations of the implementation
| section. Bad judges will let this fly and warp the system
| further through bad precedent.
| jfengel wrote:
| You kinda do get a separate intent section. It begins with
| a string of "whereas".
|
| As with code, adding more words rarely makes it clearer. In
| fact it usually introduces more discrepancies.
| jowea wrote:
| Interestingly some places give legal effect to those
| preambles it seems
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preamble#Legal_effect
| vkou wrote:
| I'll point out that bad judging can _always_ move the
| goalposts of what 'well-written intent' is.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Bad lawmakers fail to make their intent clear. Bad lawyers
| take advantage of vague laws to argue for unreasonable
| intent. Bad judges let these bad arguments fly."
|
| _Good_ lawyers and _good_ judges allow bad laws to be
| taken advantage of. If the law says it, it should be
| allowed (for leniency to the accused) or the law should be
| invalidated due to a lack of strict construction.
| ruined wrote:
| this intent/implementation duality was codified by the
| chevron precedent that was just overturned by the supreme
| court.
|
| the legislature was responsible for establishing intent, and
| the executive was responsible for implementation, and the
| judiciary branch was responsible for resolving disputes.
|
| but the supreme court ruled that the legislative intent has
| been too vague, and the executive has been too whimsical with
| implementation. so the legislature must be more specific, or
| leave it to the judiciary to establish details.
| torstenvl wrote:
| That is false. Please don't spread misinformation. Chevron
| had nothing to do with how legislatures write laws.
|
| The prevalence of extreme propaganda on this site is
| getting really tiresome.
|
| It is an objective, inarguable fact that neither _Chevron_
| nor _Loper_ had anything at all to do with the ability of
| Congress or state legislatures to distinguish between
| intent and implementation.
| ruined wrote:
| can you provide a correct interpretation of the ruling?
| nickff wrote:
| Not parent, but Chevron was about deference to agencies,
| not about whether courts should adhere to legislative
| intent. The original Chevron ruling was written by a
| well-known originalist, who usually didn't abide by
| legislative intent.
| torstenvl wrote:
| The ruling stands on its own. Have you read it?
|
| And in any case it is completely off-topic from this
| thread.
| solidsnack9000 wrote:
| The intent / implementation duality isn't related to
| _Chevron_ or _Loper Bright_. That is entirely about how to
| interpret the implementation: to what degree, when
| considering alternate interpretations, do we weight the
| agency 's own interpretation?
|
| The intent / implementation discussion comes up when
| considering statutes like this:
|
| _In order to maintain our beautiful forests and meadows,
| the city of Little Island hereby declares these acts
| governing the pollution of water: ... <enumeration of
| acts>..._
|
| Now many years pass and all the forests are cut down and
| the meadows are gravel lots, buildings, &c. Is the statute
| no longer operative? Generally, the way laws are
| interpreted, the courts would say it is still operative.
| The alternative would make the interpretation of law quite
| inconsistent, because it means we are asking courts to
| judge many things that are not really matters of law.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| That is how European Union directives and regulations are
| written, as it happens. The 'recitals' outline the general
| aims of the legislation, acting as a sort of preamble.
|
| > The recitals are legally non-binding. However, the recitals
| can be relevant. Courts often use the recitals to interpret a
| particular - legally binding - provision of EU legislation,
| especially if multiple interpretations of a certain provision
| are possible.
|
| From https://eulawanalysis.blogspot.com/p/how-to-read-eu-
| legislat...
| solidsnack9000 wrote:
| The recitals are non-binding, but nathan_compton's proposal
| is that the intent portion would be binding.
| jdasdf wrote:
| >Sometimes vagueness is a necessary lubricant to get enough
| agreement on something, but I take your point.
|
| Seems to me that a vague law is simply an invalid law. The
| rule of law requires the clear knowledge of what exactly is
| illegal, if that isn't clear then its simply a prospective
| law that doesn't meet the basic requires to be law.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There is no such thing as a law that isn't vague to a
| degree, because laws are expressed in words and concepts,
| and those are vague by their nature. Laws can, of course,
| be vague to a lesser or greater degree. We definitely don't
| want poetry-level vague laws, but we also don't want to (or
| can't) have laws expressed in code or as mathematical
| proofs, because this level of clarity is just
| computationally intractable wrt. anything relating to real
| world and real people. At this point, the practical optimum
| seems to be laws that mostly obvious in vast majority of
| scenarios, and leaving it to judges to opine on corner
| cases on an individual basis.
| solidsnack9000 wrote:
| It is much more difficult to establish standards of intent
| interpretation than it is to establish standards of statutory
| interpretation. One could imagine a law written as follows:
|
| _In order to facilitate the safe enjoyment of ice cream,
| puff pastry and pizzas of diverse origins, the health
| department shall regulate the minimum temperature of freezers
| in grocery stores, restaurants and other establishments. The
| minimum temperature shall not be greater than -18C._
|
| There are some gaps that a court needs to fill in order to
| apply this statute:
|
| - The health department and the area of effect are not
| specified but these can be assumed to be the health
| department and area connected to whatever legislature passed
| the statute. If there is no health department that is the
| obvious one -- if, for example, it was passed by a city
| legislature and the city has no health department -- this
| could introduce some difficulty.
|
| - The use of "minimum" and "shall not be greater" together in
| this statute are confused and confusing but since it pertains
| to freezers, the court can infer that freezers must be set to
| temperatures of -18C or below (-19C, &c).
|
| However, sorting out the true intent presents insoluble
| problems that would lead to inconsistent interpretation of
| the law. Perhaps an establishment only has frozen fish. Does
| this law apply to them? Generally, the rule is that clear
| intent clauses -- "In order to facilitate the safe enjoyment
| of ice cream, puff pastry and pizzas of diverse origins..."
| -- are ignored in statutory interpretation. The operative
| part of the statute is that "...the health department shall
| regulate the minimum temperature of freezers in grocery
| stores, restaurants and other establishments." and that the
| temperature established by the health department must be -18C
| or below.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| No standard ways of interpretation will make up for a
| poorly-written statute - and, with all due respect, that's
| what your hypothetical example is. In liberal democracies,
| we expect our representatives to pass only laws that have
| low ambiguity, and sometimes require third-party review to
| ensure this.
|
| Why would any legislature pass a law delegating
| responsibility to a non-existent agency? How could this
| legislature pass a law with clearly contradictory
| stipulations regarding temperature? Then, finally, for what
| reason would intent clauses be written if they were then be
| entirely ignored?
|
| In conclusion, I think that your hypothetical system of
| government has greater problems than any inherent
| difficulty in expressing legal intent that may exist.
| collingreen wrote:
| I love this and think about the same. Similarly, in a work
| setting, I used to decree that any subsequent decrees (eg:
| tooling, commit/lint rules, languages) must come with the
| intent, the desired results, and the expected costs. This
| made it much less political to suggest changes to our process
| while simultaneously eliminating some of the low effort
| "let's use <framework-of-the-week>" statements. I also want
| to believe it made it so ideas could come from anyone, not
| just people with titles or social capital, although I don't
| have any hard proof of that.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| As the article reports, the ruling actually states that the
| amount of time must be reasonable. Any gross or blatant
| violation would be picked up by any lawyer or judge.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Let's invent a new programming language that tells its users
| that the amount of time for which they hold memory should be
| "reasonable", without getting into specifics. This means the
| language can reclaim memory whenever it deems a violation has
| occurred. How well do you think would that work for the
| program? Not very well.
| lolinder wrote:
| As much as programmers like to draw analogies between law
| and code, they don't really work the same way at all.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| > they don't really work the same way
|
| Why not? It would seem that you're just used to a state
| of exploitation and selective application, both of which
| are a mockery of justice. Sometimes it helps to see
| things from an outsider's perspective.
| lolinder wrote:
| I'm not commenting on the way things should be, I'm
| commenting on the way things are.
|
| And if you're saying that this ruling is bad because it
| doesn't work well in an idealized model of the law as you
| think it should be... that's an interesting observation,
| but you can hardly fault the judge for crafting a ruling
| that works in the context of the actual legal system.
| SllX wrote:
| Because laws are executed by people, not computers.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Why yes?
| tocs3 wrote:
| There are times that parts of a law should be vague to
| allow those evolved to make intelligent decisions. They
| should be specific enough to come to a resolution quickly
| if needed.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| This opens the door to routine injustices whereby those
| who can afford expensive attorneys get a sweet deal, and
| everyone else gets stabbed in the name of justice.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Courts tend to follow precident, indeed precident is
| nearly the same as law. It's not really the case that an
| expensive attorney can argue his way around the well-
| established interpretations of the meaning of the
| constitution and other laws. Maybe, in the case of
| something novel, or for a question that has never come up
| before. It's not at all routine.
| autoexec wrote:
| that sounds like what we have right now.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, the constitution itself only prohibits
| "unreasonable" searches and seizures, and only states
| that "probable cause" is required for a warrant. These
| terms are undefined, and left to the courts to interpret.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The definitions are well defined in theory. How they get
| applied to specific cases and how they have been
| perverted over time is the real problem.
|
| Take warrants and probable cause. It's supposed to be
| that by a preponderance of the evidence that the crime
| has been committed. The quality of many warrants today
| seem to completely miss this to the point that many of
| the descriptions fail to even claim that the elements of
| the offense have been satisfied. Then we have such a lazy
| system that warrants foe summary offenses don't even have
| to be for the correct crime - all that needs to be
| claimed is that any crime has been committed. That's how
| it goes when the system is too lazy to give each issue
| the correct level of attention to protect your basic
| rights.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| Isn't that what garbage collection essentially is?
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Garbage collection doesn't impose a subjective reasonable
| vs unreasonable time limit for holding memory. It checks
| if the memory is still in use or not. Garbage collection
| is never subjective; it is entirely objective and without
| ambiguity or bias with regard to the guarantees it
| offers.
| eesmith wrote:
| Earlier you wrote "Let's invent a new programming
| language that tells its users that the amount of time for
| which they hold memory should be "reasonable", without
| getting into specifics."
|
| This is essentially what Python-the-language does. It
| does not require reference counting, or mark-sweep, or
| any garbage collection at all. The language specification
| says at https://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.htm
| l#objects-v... :
|
| "Objects are never explicitly destroyed; however, when
| they become unreachable they may be garbage-collected. An
| implementation is allowed to postpone garbage collection
| or omit it altogether -- it is a matter of implementation
| quality how garbage collection is implemented, as long as
| no objects are collected that are still reachable."
|
| That subjective language specification is quite different
| than its objective implementation in a Python
| implementation, which appear to be what you refer to now.
| nox101 wrote:
| I'm not sure of your definition of objective here. If you
| mean a specific implementation and exact version of a
| specific language does one objective thing that might be
| true.
|
| But, different implementations of the same language and
| different versions of those implementations can all do
| different things. GC rarely says exactly when something
| will be collected. Only that it will eventually.
|
| Example: https://jsfiddle.net/8cej4tpk/2/
|
| Firefox GCs after about 8 seconds, Safari GCs
| immmediately, Chrome never (probably not until there's
| pressure). And, you'll find different behavior if you go
| check different versions of those browsers.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Apologies, but the point was that a GC will never
| unjustly take your memory from you without a well-defined
| rule. It may delay in taking it away, but if it does, it
| will be very clear why it did.
| kbolino wrote:
| This claim is false for a lot of modern language runtimes
| which use tracing garbage collection, like the CLR
| (C#/VB), JVM (Java/Kotlin/Scala/etc), Go, BEAM
| (Erlang/Elixer), etc.
|
| There are no hard promises about when or even whether GC
| will reclaim a particular piece of garbage, precisely to
| enable optimizations and necessary compromises.
| Application availability is often more important than
| immediately collecting every possible piece of garbage.
| The use of tagging, generations, arenas, etc. all allow
| the GC to use heuristics and apply different collection
| regimes to different pieces of garbage.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Apologies, but I meant it terms of the guarantees that a
| GC offers. Yes, the GC can delay, but it will never over-
| eagerly reclaim beyond its advertised guarantee. It will
| always err on the side of not reclaiming.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| So exactly the same as saying that you will get your
| money back at some undefined point in the future whenever
| the police agency you're dealing it will find it
| convenient?
| OutOfHere wrote:
| No, rather that your money (memory) will never be taken
| away from you (your application) by the police/system
| (runtime/OS) without an objective rule.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| So police is the VM/programming language and you're the
| program? Person writing the program? Or is it the other
| way around?
| bee_rider wrote:
| It seems like the analogy just didn't work.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| I know you think you're being facetious, but you've just
| described how modern operating systems work.
|
| They give programs a reasonable amount of memory, without
| getting into specifics about the limits. And they reclaim
| memory as necessary based on the demands of the OS and
| other programs. See, for example, browser memory usage vs
| video game usage.
|
| It turns out that in practice "reasonable" works quite well
| as long as you are reasonable about it.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Presumably much better than a language which would free all
| memory after 46 minutes in all cases regardless if that
| makes sense in the given context.
|
| Also not sure why people like coming with analogies so
| much, they very rarely are useful or make anything clearer.
| xelamonster wrote:
| I dunno, I think it's generally quite useful to identify
| relations between similar concepts. Not always easy to
| find one that fits perfectly but usually it just needs a
| bit of a tweak.
|
| Like in this case, the situation you describe is exactly
| what a garbage collected language does, the key is that
| they let you mark what memory is still in use with a
| reference. Similarly in this case, there should be an
| explicitly defined time with a rule that if police want
| to hold something longer, they need to actively justify
| why and what the expected timeline is for the return
| without the owner needing to take them to court over it.
| Not perfect, but neither is garbage collection, and to me
| sounds much improved from what we've got.
| lolinder wrote:
| It's not perfect, but forcing police to define the time that
| something will be taken does go a long way to shining a light
| into their intentions and make it easier to prove that they're
| being unreasonable. "Local police department claims right to
| hold things for 30 years without a warrant" is a much better
| headline that would draw a lot more scrutiny from local voters
| and councils than just "the police won't tell me when I'll get
| my stuff back".
| njovin wrote:
| I wouldn't call it useless, the decision is pretty clear on
| when property can be held:
|
| > If the rationales that justified the initial retention of the
| plaintiffs' effects dissipated, and if no new justification for
| retaining the effects arose, then the Fourth Amendment obliged
| the MPD to return the plaintiffs' effects.
|
| ...and even addresses acceptable reasons for delay:
|
| > we do not suggest that it must always return the property
| instantaneously. Matching a person with his effects can be
| difficult, as can the logistics of storage and inventory.
|
| The court's opinion is basically that once the criminal
| complaint is resolved and the investigation is terminated, the
| gov't has no reason to hold the property and it must be
| returned. If it takes them a few days or weeks to get the stuff
| out of inventory and coordinate the return that's fine, but
| they can't continue holding it just because they feel like it.
| Yoofie wrote:
| This is easily bypassed and/or worked around. What is to
| prevent an indefinite investigation? The FBI D.B Cooper case
| was open for decades, for example.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| They same thing that would prevent anything else they do,
| being taken to court. It's the only thing they fear.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| A court can't set hard limits. It's up to a legislative body to
| enact clearly defined laws.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| A court can set a more relaxed upper bound at say 60 days. A
| legislative body can then come in and set a tighter bound at
| say 30 days, or at any value that doesn't exceed 60 days. In
| this way, a court can indeed set a hard limit. How is
| rational decision making supposed to work without numbers?
| thereisnospork wrote:
| But what happens when the property is something that cant
| be reasonably returned in 30 or 60 days? Maybe it's a
| cruise ship that got seized and needs to be be made sea
| worthy before being transported? Hard numbers don't allow
| for edge cases, the vagueness is a feature not a bug.
| xnyan wrote:
| Edge cases can be addressed by allowing for law
| enforcement to appeal to a judge for an extension. The
| burden of proof should be on the the party that has taken
| your stuff, not on the person who's stuff has been taken.
|
| >vagueness is a feature not a bug.
|
| A feature for who? Where's the evedence that law
| enforcement being able to keep your stuff indefinitely
| benefits the public? The default must be that your stuff
| belongs to you, unless the police can convince a judge
| that in this specific case there's a good reason not to
| do so.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| The vagueness is a feature for law enforcement but a bug
| for the individual. Real life doesn't not have time caps.
| How many days can a person go without food, without a
| livelihood, without his property that supports his
| existence? There are time caps for each of these things.
|
| Imagine if prison sentences didn't define the duration of
| the sentence, and it was left to the prison to keep
| extending the duration beyond a defined limit.
| paddy_m wrote:
| I once heard of a behavioral economics paper that said you can
| reliably predict a judge's ruling on a legal or ethics matter
| based on what is best for the legal profession.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This is why judicial records are so secret that you can't
| even subpoena exculpatory evidence from them. They want to
| protect the image of the judicial system. So old fashioned.
| In today's world, you build trust with transparency...
| assuming your organization isn't rotten...
| mattmaroon wrote:
| It would not be up to the police to define but a court.
|
| And that's why times aren't given. Legal precedent can adapt to
| time, changing views, and corner cases far more easily than a
| hard number can.
|
| Police would implement their policy knowing that if they keep
| an item too long they may have to go to court over it. They
| wouldn't have a hard number at first, but the system that
| results could be better and more adaptable than if a legislator
| just said "45 days".
| OutOfHere wrote:
| That's all very convenient for the police, but not at all for
| the individual. Real life of an individual does have hard
| time caps, for the duration of their expected life, for how
| many days they can go without food, without a livelihood,
| etc. When the police seizes property, they affect these
| things for an individual. There are time caps to each of
| these things for the individual.
|
| Imagine if a prison sentence failed to define the duration of
| the sentence, and it was left to the prison to keep the
| individual for as long as the prison wants.
| exabrial wrote:
| Baby steps though, progress not perfection. None of your points
| are invalid
| lokar wrote:
| IANAL, but I don't think they are supposed to. They decide the
| case in front of them: 14 months is too long. And give some
| insight as to why and what the might be in other cases, but
| that's not authoritative.
|
| We will have to wait for more cases to refine the time limit
| and other factors that impact it.
| lucianbr wrote:
| > We will have to wait
|
| I seem to remember something about "justice delayed".
|
| Sure these things are complicated. But coming to a just
| conclusion sooner rather than later should also be a goal,
| not just dotting Is and crossing Ts. Of course for law
| specialists such as lawyers and judges minutiae seem
| important. But to me it seems the overall goal of the entire
| concept has been forgotten. Or maybe is ignored on purpose.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| More like "this is how you creep in justice". You set a
| date and politicians will spend months determining what's
| too long/too short. Or in this case, the judges may not get
| a unanimous ruling as easily. The article mentions that
| this is a DC appeals court that establishes this, and
| several other circuits have rules otherwise.
|
| The fastest way is leaving it vague, waiting for some court
| case to set precedent on what is "too long" and use that as
| a reference for future court cases. Or in this case, it may
| in fact go to the supreme court who will be able to
| determine a more concrete time (or just throw it all away
| and doom us all).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Given the prior majority of appeals courts deciding the
| other way, it seems like something of a waste of time to
| figure out a time period.
|
| Better to say "you can't hold it for an unreasonable
| period, and 14 months was unreasonable"
|
| It will have to be resolved at the Supreme Court level
| anyway, given the US Court of Appeals split.
| rodgerd wrote:
| I hope that you aren't expecting a court with a rampant
| Clarence Thomas to care about anything pertaining to your
| rights vis-a-vis the police.
| autoexec wrote:
| > The fastest way is leaving it vague, waiting for some
| court case to set precedent on what is "too long" and use
| that as a reference for future court cases.
|
| We're stuck with the courts because congress doesn't do
| their job, but leaving this to the courts to decide on a
| case by case basis could mean that only people who can
| afford to pay the lawyers and court fees and take the
| time off for a lengthy court battle against the police
| can expect to have their rights respected. Ideally, we'd
| have claws with specific limits that would then be used
| to set department policy. That way it'd be clear to
| everyone what the expectation is and when a violation
| occurred.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| A functioning congress could make laws regulating this.
|
| But as things are, we have wait for some random court case to
| bubble up.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Congress has no reason to care. They certainly aren't
| subjected to any of the shady tactics. Most of their
| constituents aren't either. Just the edge cases, but nobody
| cares unless they find themselves in it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If the ruling had capped it to 14 or 30 days, that would be
| a useful ruling_
|
| How confident are you this has no good exceptions? That's why a
| reasonableness standard exists. To permit edge cases.
| userbinator wrote:
| _Imagine if prison sentences didn 't have a time cap._
|
| For many serious crimes, they don't.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment
| nimbius wrote:
| I once had the cops seize $800 in cash I had on me to pay for
| motorcycle service (15% discount with cash) and hold it for 3
| months.
|
| Eventually I got a letter saying I had to show up and prove I
| wasnt going to do drugs with it. So I showed up with my
| invoice.
|
| Then I was told I had to submit fingerprints and sign a letter
| promising I wasnt going to do drugs and I refused.
|
| Finally a month later they sent me a letter saying I had
| forfeited the money and I showed up again (took a day off work)
| and they said I had to go to court. So I went to court, and the
| judge spent ten minutes telling the cops that didnt show up I
| had to get my money back.
|
| Next month after that I got a call saying I had property to
| pick up and that I'd be fined daily if I didnt. So I got the
| money back.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Pretty common. This sort of mistrust is one reason people
| oppose red flag laws that require seizure (before even being
| tried, and without the protections of the criminal system).
|
| On a side note, how did they find the money? Or was this an
| expensive lesson in why not to consent to a search?
| sneak wrote:
| If you don't consent to searches, cops that want to search
| you will either simply search you illegally anyway, or call
| out dogs that are trained to alert whenever the cops want
| them to. There's a reason that K-9 units are called
| "probable cause on four legs".
| EasyMark wrote:
| Not true, I have refused a "look over"of my car for two
| traffic stops, both cops threatened canine cops and I
| told them go ahead. One radioed in "not available", The
| other one went back to his car and wrote me a ticket and
| told me I was lucky he got another call while he was
| filling out the ticket. I'm sure they sometimes do "do it
| anyway" but it isn't a sure thing.
| bluGill wrote:
| Canines need to be well trained, if it goes to court the
| need to prove the dogs won't point if there are no drugs
| (or whatever the dog looks for) so if there isn't good
| reason to suspect you they won't bother (depending on how
| far away a dog is) they are just threatening as if you
| are guilty you may give up.
|
| There are also rules about how long they can detain you
| while waiting. See a lawyer (the rules may not be good
| but you can get off in court if they are 'too long')
| sneak wrote:
| No, in practice they do not need to prove that.
|
| The presumption of innocence is mostly a fiction.
| liquidgecka wrote:
| If they try make sure you assert that you do not consent
| to searches, and would like to be on your way.. Then when
| they try to hold you ask them if the detention is inline
| with `Rodriguez v. United States` which specifically
| forbids cops from delaying a driver so that they can get
| dogs to the scene.
| klyrs wrote:
| Does it forbid the tactic in a way that results in
| negative consequences for the perpetrating officers?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Your right has been confirmed in that case. It then has
| the basis for a civil rights case.
| godelski wrote:
| This sounds nice until a cop throws you against a car
| anyways. You're right to give the advice because this is
| what should happen but that's not the reality because the
| whole premise is based on what already should not be
| happening. You'd only need that line against a cop
| abusing their power. They're almost always going to
| continue abusing their power
| giantg2 wrote:
| Many cops just try to trick you or are ignorant.
| Providing this info and asking for a supervisor is the
| best basis for any potential future legal recourse
| (especially if recording). Of course none of that matters
| in the moment, but it can make a big difference in
| getting that $800 back or not having it seized in the
| first place.
| godelski wrote:
| > If you don't consent to searches, cops that want to
| search you will either simply search you illegally anyway
|
| Over a decade ago (in California) I had met up with some
| friends at a park where we were going to carpool to a
| concert in LA. I had a medical license and my weed was
| locked in my trunk AND we hadn't smoked. Cops pulled up,
| asked what we were doing, we explained, they asked if
| they could search, we said no, they did anyways. One
| friend had his hands in his pockets when the cops rolled
| up and they asked him what he had in there, so he
| naturally pulled them out and the cops threw him against
| a car and searched, saying they thought he was pulling a
| knife on him... I got a ticket, had to show up to court.
| Contested which meant another court date (I was following
| the law. Cop didn't even show up!). I talked with one of
| the clerks because I had a calc midterm that day and he
| pushed me to a afternoon session. Showing up to that the
| judge grilled me about "being late" (I had docs) and I
| yelled at him for wasting my time, the publics time,
| money, and how I was scheduled for this time because I
| had a fucking calculus test so to stop treating me like a
| degenerate. That I followed the letter of the law. 15
| minutes total and charges dismissed. What a shit show...
|
| Another time I was visiting the Golden gate Park. I asked
| a ranger for directions. He said we smelled like weed. I
| told him SF smelled like weed. He asked to search, we
| walked, he grabbed us and my backpack. His evidence to
| give us a ticket was my still sealed bottle from the
| dispensary.
|
| I won't say all cops are bad, but some just want to abuse
| their power. I won't say cops are good, because the ones
| that don't abuse do know the ones that do. And you know
| what they say about "good men" who do nothing...
|
| And people still wonder why I'm critical of authority
| giantg2 wrote:
| Drug dogs only provide probable cause for drug searches.
| They arent suppoaed to extend to other crimes. Just as if
| the dog alerts on private property and a warrant is then
| needed, it only provides probable cause for a drug search
| (or related offense).
|
| On another note, in many states the dogs can't be trained
| on marijuana as it has legal purposes (medicinal or
| recreational). If coming from a state where it is legal,
| it still _shouldn 't_ provide probable cause as the
| sniffable residue could be from previous legal use.
|
| So in my view, the drug dog liability is low (biggest
| threat being planted evidence, but that could happen
| anyways), and being reined in further. Yes, the made-up
| probable cause is more likely. That's why I was
| wondering.
| jajko wrote:
| Why such needless arrogance from cops in a developed country
| like US? They for sure couldn't be following some written
| law, right?
|
| I mean that's not even pretending to 'protect and serve',
| unless we change subject from 'citizens' to 'ourselves'. I
| would expect such stories from say Russia or some parts of
| Africa, not champion of free world.
| sneak wrote:
| Cops in the USA are social tech support. They exist to
| protect the social and economic status quo, and to close
| out trouble tickets that come in over the phone. Protecting
| and serving aren't in the job description, practically or
| even legally.
| cypress66 wrote:
| It should be up to the legislators and justice to limit
| cops power, and punish them when appropriate.
| acdha wrote:
| There's a lot of sordid history around the police being
| used to keep certain ethnic groups in line (heavily but not
| just black people - one of the more interesting shifts was
| how Irish immigrants went from being over-policed to
| comprising large fractions of many forces), but then the
| war on drugs really hardened things into a relationship
| more like an occupying military force. That coincided with
| many cops joining white flight to the suburbs, meaning that
| they didn't feel part of the cities where they served as
| had been the case a generation earlier, and the lurid tales
| of how violent & well-armed drug gangs were along with how
| dangerous "super predators" were lead to a lot of quasi-
| military weaponry and tactics becoming routine with quaint
| things like warrants being severely undermined. I say
| quasi-military because I've known multiple combat vets to
| express disbelief at the poor discipline shown by cops
| compared to the rules they had in places like Fallujah.
|
| The other big driver was the concept of qualified immunity
| and civil forfeiture. The modern form of the latter was
| invented during the drug war and formally embraced by the
| Reagan administration as a way to make elevated police
| presence self-funding, and that opened up a lot of room for
| abuse since it created huge conflicts of interest and the
| growth of qualified immunity removed the potential
| counterbalance of personal accountability.
| bluGill wrote:
| They mostly are not, but with 300 million people and free
| press you hear about the exceptions. If you think your
| country doesn't have simialar problems you are not paying
| attention.
| godelski wrote:
| > you are not paying attention.
|
| Or it just isn't being discussed. I'd expect to hear
| fewer of these stories in Russia because they don't have
| a free press and you can be punished for what you say
| online.
|
| I'm sure this is what you mean, but not everyone is going
| to understand what that phrase means.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Protect and serve hasn't been a thing for a long time.
| Police have been trained that no one or anything is worth
| dying for.
|
| That's why cops go and hide during mass shootings at
| schools.
| monkaiju wrote:
| Its never been the thing they want you to think it is. It
| was coined by an extremely racist LAPD officer
| autoexec wrote:
| Do you have a source showing that Joseph Dorobek was
| extremely racist? I can't seem to find anything about him
| being racist. I saw one article which said that according
| to Dorobek's granddaughter it was coined by her mother
| who was 17 at the time, and he submitted her idea as part
| of a contest to find a motto
| metadat wrote:
| Utterly ridiculous. I'm sorry that happened to you, how
| infuriating.
| jascination wrote:
| This is hilariously Kafka-esque, what a shitshow
| Fokamul wrote:
| Heh USA biggest police state, in EU there is only one state
| with same level of policing. Germany. Cops there will make
| you strip search even before concert, because of "drugs" lol.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| They took my camera and then when I tried to get it back they
| claimed that nothing like that was in evidence. So I filed a
| police report because the police stole my camera, but I never
| heard back about it.
|
| Glad you eventually got your money.
| giantg2 wrote:
| There is a cap implied. The only reasonable reason to hold the
| property is for evidence. Once the statue of limitation runs
| out, or the appeals process is exhausted, there is no
| reasonable reason to hold the property anymore.
| gist wrote:
| > but largely useless ruling because it fails to define the
| maximum duration for which property can be held. As such, it's
| up to the police as to what qualifies as indefinite. If the
| ruling had capped it to 14 or 30 days, that would be a useful
| ruling.
|
| Not always correct as a principle.
|
| To define a time period also means the police will tend to keep
| the property at least as long (or even a bit longer) than the
| time period listed. If the time is 'reasonable' (and yes that
| can vary for sure) it's ambiguous enough to make someone wonder
| if they would be called out as 'unreasonable' and that in
| itself (in many but not all cases) makes them think a bit more.
|
| For example you will notice that at takeout places there are no
| signs saying how many forks or ketchup you can take (it's
| implied 'reasonable'). Imagine if the sign said 'you can take
| no more than 5 forks' my guess is many people would then think
| 'it's ok I don't need to forks but since I can I will take 5
| forks just in case'.
|
| Anyway to the point how much would people think is
| 'reasonable'?
|
| 10 years - no way 5 years - no way (unless needed for a
| specific purpose ie a trial) 1 year - probably not 1 month -
| might be to short
|
| ... and so on.
|
| I'm not saying so much a time shouldn't be applied but that
| it's not always apparent and also people tend to push to the
| 'last minute' with timing and so on.
| solidsnack9000 wrote:
| One way that a time cap or caps could be set is by legislation,
| as you mention; but judges don't write legislation. There is a
| way the rules develop as "common law" -- via judicial decisions
| -- but frequently that involves a process of gradual firming up
| through several cases that cover different situations. For
| example:
|
| - There would be cases where a person's medications were
| confiscated; the courts would probably find that these need to
| be returned within a few days.
|
| - There would be cases where a person's groceries were
| confiscated along with their car; perhaps the courts would find
| that the groceries don't have to be returned at all but rather
| their value replaced (it is hard to set a consistent timeline
| for groceries since crackers are good for weeks but ice cream
| in a car is good for maybe a few hours) whereas the car must be
| returned within a few weeks.
|
| - And so on.
|
| It generally isn't up to a court, faced with a specific case,
| to come up with a rule that covers a wide variety of
| dissimilar, if related, situations. Information for those
| situations is not generally covered in the case before them so
| it would be hard for them to make a good decision. They also
| aren't tasked to go get that information, since their job is to
| decide a particular as in an expeditious manner.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| This is a good point.
|
| I've always thought a constitutional amendment to make every
| law in the books auto sunset, unless explicitly voted in by
| congress
|
| I would think this would have made the PATRIOT ACT obsolete
| some time ago, among other things
| shkkmo wrote:
| The Patriot act was reauthorized (in part) several times, but
| expired in 2020.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| It's not useless at all. It provides the framework for lawyers
| all across the nation to contest property detentions on a case
| by case basis, some will find sympathetic judgments, and the
| facts behind the case law results will be cited and reused in
| further rulings.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| https://medium.com/exploring-history/7-worlds-longest-servin...
|
| "James Holmes, the perpetrator of the mass shooting in Aurora,
| Colorado, received an astonishing 12 life sentences along with
| an additional 3,318 years"
|
| The cap is the heat death of the universe for the US
| iambateman wrote:
| The fourth amendment prohibits unreasonable seizure.
|
| Shouldn't this have been obviously unconstitutional since like
| 1800?
| LightHugger wrote:
| It depends on the mangled interpretation and enforcement of the
| courts, and the courts are run by evil motherfuckers.
| rlewkov wrote:
| Being vague is often necessary. E.g., what is cruel and usual
| punishment.
| londons_explore wrote:
| We shouldn't need a court to make this the case...
|
| The police have a role of serving the publics interests. Taking
| someone's phone and keeping it for a year is clearly
| substantially detrimental to that specific member of the public,
| and rather unlikely to be of commensurate benefit to the rest of
| the public.
|
| Therefore, such activity isn't what we pay them for or expect
| them to do - at a minimum we should be firing any cops who do
| this deliberately, _even_ if it weren 't illegal.
| mempko wrote:
| Interesting fact, police seizure (police stealing from people who
| are arrested, even if they are never prosecuted) is more than
| criminal theft. In other words, police steal more from people
| than criminals.
| chaboud wrote:
| I thought this was an obviously ridiculous statement, and then
| I looked it up. In many of the last 25 years, civil asset
| forfeiture outpaces criminal burglary in total losses.
|
| Wow. I thought civil asset forfeiture was a messed up problem
| before...
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Step 1: seize property
|
| Step 2: hold onto it for an indefinite period of time
|
| Step 3: steal the property
|
| Step 4: when the owner comes for their stuff, claim the property
| went missing
|
| Step 5: wait for a lawsuit that usually doesn't come because the
| property isn't worth enough and nobody wants to get in a suit
| with cops for what's usually small claims
|
| None of this is going to change unless you prevent cops from
| handling seized property.
| from-nibly wrote:
| Any time I hear the word reasonable in a law, I throw up my
| hands. That word is not concrete. It's the "give up on life
| pants" of legalese. Respect yourself and others, if you can't
| define proper limits then you don't know what you want or how to
| get it. In which case you should leave everyone else in peace.
| tgv wrote:
| Idk where you come from, but defining is hard. It's really hard
| to define a table or a chair. You can come up with some
| definition, but probably someone has a table or a chair that
| doesn't fit it.
|
| Defining what's _reasonable_ is much harder, but it can be
| parceled out through individual cases, and slowly build
| jurisprudence.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Defining is not hard. You can say "a table is a flat board
| with four support structures roughly 1 m (+/- 5 cm) in
| height, built for the purpose of keeping things off the
| ground". Anything that fits that description is a table, and
| anything that doesn't, isn't. Supposed tables with three
| legs, or Japanese tables, aren't tables by this definition;
| they are something else. Perhaps this is a problem, or
| perhaps it isn't.
|
| I would argue that an imperfect definition that doesn't
| completely encompass a situation is better than a loose
| guideline, because the definition is unambiguous, while the
| guideline will always leave room for bickering about
| interpretation.
| brewdad wrote:
| Do we really want to spend our time in the legal system
| litigating what a table is? What if I use a chair as a
| place to set my dinner plate while eating on the sofa? A
| reasonableness standard is the only practical way to start
| defining a law. The specifics and edge cases get worked out
| over time. Otherwise, I can add a fifth center support to
| my table and now you have to rewrite every law pertaining
| to tables. Rinse. Repeat.
| fluoridation wrote:
| >Do we really want to spend our time in the legal system
| litigating what a table is?
|
| Well, the point of it being defined is that you don't
| have to.
|
| >What if I use a chair as a place to set my dinner plate
| while eating on the sofa?
|
| Did you forget the other half of the argument? Why should
| there be a problem if you want to eat on your chair?
|
| >Otherwise, I can add a fifth center support to my table
| and now you have to rewrite every law pertaining to
| tables.
|
| Why would the definition of what a table is need to be
| modified if someone transforms a table into not-a-table?
| cwillu wrote:
| Because presumably the laws about the sale, use and
| disposal of tables-of-mass-consumption where written for
| a reason, and dodging them by adding or removing a leg
| would result in criminals getting away with terrible
| table crimes because of the technicality. Let alone what
| the police will do to poor students sitting in their
| "tables" (you know, the ones with four legs and a small
| horizontal working surface).
|
| Silly definitions enshrined into law are why cameras
| arbitrarily limit the length of the videos they will
| record, lest they be accused of being video equipment and
| thereby subject to additional tariffs.
| fluoridation wrote:
| >dodging them by adding or removing a leg would result in
| criminals getting away with terrible table crimes because
| of the technicality
|
| If it's a crime to do X on a "table" and you do X on a
| not-table, by definition you're not committing a crime.
| Saying that you're getting away with a crime in such a
| situation is like saying that you're getting away with a
| crime by driving your car within the speed limit, whereas
| if you were an honest criminal and drove a little bit
| faster the police would be allowed to ticket you. If
| there are clearly demarcated limits that people are
| allowed to stay within, it's not a technicality whether
| you're on one side or the other.
|
| >Let alone what the police will do to poor students
| sitting in their "tables" (you know, the ones with four
| legs and a small horizontal working surface).
|
| Sorry, I don't understand the argument.
|
| >Silly definitions enshrined into law are why cameras
| arbitrarily limit the length of the videos they will
| record, lest they be accused of being video equipment and
| thereby subject to additional tariffs.
|
| What the alternative, given that the government wants to
| tax "professional video equipment" but not "consumer
| video equipment" and there's a gradient from one to the
| other?
| monkaiju wrote:
| This would immediately be useless IRL in cases and is why
| we try to establish precedence-based definitions of
| reasonableness. Simple but incomplete definitions work
| pretty easily in many engineering contexts, especially
| because you can easily scope the realm that you apply the
| definition to, but would immediately fall flat in something
| as large and complex as the legal context.
|
| Honestly the more I study social/political systems, the
| more obvious it becomes just how much more difficult the
| problems in that space are than the engineering ones I'm
| used to...
| fluoridation wrote:
| I disagree. It's not that definitions "fall flat", it's
| that people don't like the conclusions that are derived
| from those definitions. If tables are defined as above
| and are supposed to be taxed at 20% while chairs are
| taxed at 15%, and someone builds a 1 m-tall chair with
| three legs and a 1 m^2 seat, that's not in itself a
| problem. It's only a problem because the government would
| like that "chair" to be taxed as if it was a table. But a
| definition can't be incorrect; it's a definition.
| xrd wrote:
| It would be egregious to keep property for years even if the
| arrest were made with charges. But, in the DC case, "the
| protesters did not face any charges" and their phones were kept
| for 14 months. That's doubly insane.
| commercialnix wrote:
| Most people who live in cities are very domesticated. In third
| world countries and also small towns in USA, where the police
| blatantly rob people under the color of law, people form their
| own small gangs and literally hunt the other gang (irrespective
| of costume/uniform) down and kill them.
|
| Highway robbery is highway robbery, uniformed or not.
| freen wrote:
| Can't sell it, have to hold it, storage isn't free, so
| effectively if it isn't evidence, they can't keep it.
|
| I wonder if you are owed interest on cash held for an extended
| period of time.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| Non-news, because it will have little effect. Tell the tow
| companies that? And they will laugh, and tell you to get off
| their lawn. Any and all legal jurisdictions in the U.S. have a
| multitude of tow companies profiting from theft. (Seizure) Even
| San Francisco has TWO companies investigated by the FBI... No
| arrests were made.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| How about charging interest and lost market gains on any property
| wrongly seized, and no qualified immunity for wrongful seizure
| either. Liability for both the department and individual as a
| private citizen.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| The current Supreme Court would overturn this decision in record
| time.
| pstuart wrote:
| The fact that the police can materially gain from this is a toxic
| incentive. They should not have _any_ of these ill-gotten gains.
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