The link police can't afford to get soft now.
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Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
They seem to be going with the idea that the property isn't rightfully yours, so you aren't being deprived of it (and you must prove the property is rightfully yours to get it back).
It's in my car. How would they prove it's theirs?
According to the precedent cited by SCOTUS, the ownership is irrelevant; The object itself is deemed guilty, by dint of the use to which it was put being illegal.
The precedent here is
the seizure of the brig Palmyra, by the US Navy in 1827; Story J. deemed that the vessel, being guilty of piracy, was forfeit regardless of whether her owner was convicted of any crime.
This strikes me as a grave error; Mr Justice Story has conflated the ship with her crew, and considered this combined entity as the guilty party; where a reasonable view would hold that the vessel is not herself a rational actor, but is rather the tool by which her crew, and specifically her captain, committed the crime of piracy. His conclusion that the ship should be forfeit is correct, but his reasoning is flawed; the ship is not guilty, but is rather a tool used by the guilty parties, and should be forfeit on the grounds that her primary purpose as enacted by her captain was piracy, and that her owner was aware and complaisant in her use for this purpose.
The law is an ass; and this is a prime example of that. The best remedy would be for either legislation, or a constitutional amendment, stating clearly that guilt is no longer a state that can be ascribed to inanimate objects. Alternatively the SCOTUS could rule that the illegal act in a given case was an insufficient fraction of the intended use of the object being seized; The example given of a cruise ship not being forfeit due to the presence of a small amount of contraband in the possession of one passenger is interesting, as the court makes it clear that such a case would need to be tried, and that therefore the case of The Palmyra, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat) 1, 14, 6 L.Ed. 531 (1827) is not a binding precedent in all cases, but that consideration must be given to the extent to which illegality is the primary purpose of the object being seized. This SCOTUS ruling in Bennis v. Michigan would appear to have significantly lessened the range of circumstances within which that argument could be made, however.
I am not holding my breath for this idiotic loophole in the law to be closed any time soon.