The Pursuit

Prior to November 2018, felons in Florida were barred from the voting booth for life. That meant that about 10% of the voting age population in the state was disenfranchised for having a felony conviction. When someone owes a debt to society, how should we determine when it’s paid in full?

Throughout this episode Natalie Dowzicky talked with; Julie Ebenstein, Neil Volz, Lance Wissinger, and Ashley Thomas

Image Credit: New York Post

Music by Cellophane Sam

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If you are convicted of a crime, can the police take hold of your personal property as part of your sentence? Forfeiture has resulted in many individuals losing some of their most valuable possessions. It has not helped police fight the War on Drugs and it remains one of the largest threat to personal property rights.

Throughout this episode Tess Terrible talked with; Tyson Timbs, Sam Gedge, Theshia Naidoo, Solicitor General Fisher, and Natalie Dowzicky.

We also included Oral Argument from Timbs v. Indiana at the Supreme Court of the United States

Image Credit: Institute for Justice

Music by Cellophane Sam

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We hear life, liberty and property, the Lockean version, or life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which was something that the Founding Fathers of course used in the Declaration of Independence. It’s really interesting and important that property was replaced with pursuit of happiness. In order to be able to pursue the American dream, something that people even today risk their lives coming from other countries to come to the United States to be free and to be able to pursue their right to earn an honest living, to earn food and shelter for their families and to create things. You need to have property rights. You need to have ownership. You need to know that the things that you own and the things that you create are yours.

Music by Cellophane Sam.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Due to the lack of transparency across most states and within the federal government, we simply don’t know whether people are convicted of a crime when their property is taken or not. Even the Department of Justice, which tracks more details about seized property than most states, does not track whether or not forfeited property was forfeited in conjunction with any sort of criminal charges or conviction.

Music by Cellophane Sam.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many people who are proponents of the drug war believe that an important component of waging the drug war is to take away the money that essentially finances it and that provides the incentives for people to participate in the drug market, the illegal drug market. But when you allow law enforcement essentially to, what we sometimes refer to as police for profit, they will begin to focus their attention and their resources on policing the crimes that enable them to seize large amounts of cash, oftentimes at the expense of policing the more serious crimes like murder and other violent crimes.

Music by Cellophane Sam.

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Government, big or small, really does impact people’s lives. And more than that, it sets the tone about what people believe they can do about their own lives. And when government makes people feel as though it’s untrustworthy or the individual is unempowered, in democracy, that’s bad. In our system, it really needs to be a system of laws and not just of people exerting power.

Music by Cellophane Sam.

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Eminent domain is the power of government to take someone’s property away from them. And there are two requirements for government to exercise eminent domain, it has to be for a public use and it has to be justly compensated.

Music by Cellophane Sam.

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Eminent domain emphasizes that property taken must benefit the public and that the government must pay just compensation. In theory, asset forfeiture’s main objective is to dismantle crime. If used correctly within limitation, and carefully, these seem like effective, reasonable government tools. But are they?

Music by Cellophane Sam.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.