Does the 4th A protect your property if a business holding that property is raided

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
After FBI seizure of safe deposit boxes in Beverly Hills, legal challenges mount


U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner on Tuesday declined one customer’s request for an emergency order that would have blocked prosecutors from using the boxes’ contents as evidence in the investigation. It also would have stopped the FBI from requiring box holders to identify themselves as a condition of getting their valuables back.

Klausner, however, left open the possibility that the sweeping nature of the seizures violated the box renters’ rights.

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Prosecutors have argued in court filings that they are on solid legal footing, saying they can prove the company itself is a criminal enterprise and that most of the box holders were criminals hiding “ill-gotten wealth.” But they also acknowledged in court records that innocent people had been swept up in the case. No charges have been filed against any of the store’s customers.

Legal scholars say the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles is testing constitutional restraints on the government’s power to seize private property.

“This was at bottom executing a warrant at a business,” said Orin Kerr, a UC Berkeley law professor. “What makes it different is that hundreds of customers had their own 4th Amendment protected spaces in their safe deposit boxes. That’s what makes this unusual. It’s not just the business. It’s also users storing their things — some engaging in criminal activity, others not, I assume.”

A federal grand jury indicted U.S. Private Vaults last month on three counts of conspiracy — to distribute drugs, launder money and structure cash transactions to dodge currency reporting rules. The indictment lists four unnamed people affiliated with the business as co-conspirators but has not charged them. More charges could be filed later.

In a court statement defending the seizure, FBI agent Kathryn E. Bailey said agents searching the boxes found fentanyl, OxyContin, guns, gold bullion and stacks of $100 bills. Some of the largest-sized boxes each contained more than $1 million in cash, she said.

Customers who sued the government said prosecutors had no right to seize the contents of their boxes because they had no evidence that would give them reason to suspect the customers were stashing contraband or committing some other crime.




Storing Items in a Safety Deposit Box Does Not Make You A Criminal Guns, Gold Bullion and Cash are NOT Illegal
 

glhs837

Power with Control
This is a real question:

Why are you so pro-criminal?

This stinks of the asset forfeiture BS. "I'm going to take your property without due process, and make it impossible for you to get it back." See, there's a way you do things, part of which is not seizing a citizens property without enough evidence to convince a judge that that person has committed a crime. This is akin to just setting up a roadblock on I-95 and searching every car that comes through because you know some of them are running guns or drugs. Not legal.
 

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
Why are you so pro-unconstitutional government behavior?

I have a strong sense of right and wrong.

We make it easy to commit crimes in this country. It's easy to be a drug runner. Easy to traffic in illegal guns. Easy to embezzle. The dumbest POS on earth can make a crap ton of money doing these things while the rest of us toil at our mediocre jobs and dream of a retirement we may or may not ever get. If you get busted, you just buy you a lawyer, a judge, and maybe a few jurors if it even gets that far - just a cost of doing business.

Seriously moronic criminals lay their goods out in plain sight, but most of them are smart enough to hide it and I have no doubt that the vast majority of these vaults were filled with illegal goods. LAT cherry-picked the one guy who may or may not have been legit to further a narrative, and they probably had to dig their asses off to find him.

And here we are going, "No, I don't want you to bust these people because doing so violates their rights." If they're smart enough to even cursorily hide their illegal activity, cops are chit out of luck.

I reject that.

We're either a nation of laws or we're a nation of civil rights. Pick one because you can't have both. And if you want us to be a nation of civil rights, that's fine but I don't want to hear anymore bitching about crime. I definitely don't want to hear you bitching about drugs. Or illegal immigration. Or anything, really.

You think you have civil rights, but you don't. Unless you're connected to powerful people you have no rights and the government can do anything to you it wants. If you're a Hollywood celebrity or massive political donor or related to someone who is, you can break the law all you want and suffer no consequences. Then, to top it off, people on the internet will go to bat for you saying that your civil rights were violated, even though they themselves have no civil rights and never will.

It's just astonishing watching people cheer on criminals. I've read about this stuff in history books - people who revered Bonnie and Clyde, or Manson, or other various violent criminals - and now I get to watch it play out in real time. It's like the movie Natural Born Killers. WTF is wrong with us??
 

Ken King

A little rusty but not crusty
PREMO Member
We're either a nation of laws or we're a nation of civil rights. Pick one because you can't have both.
Why can't we have both? Our Constitution places limits upon the government, when the government exceeds those limits it should be held to account just as citizens should be held to account for any violation of the laws that we have allowed the government to mandate.

Your "strong sense of right and wrong" seems to show that the government is always right and that those governed are always wrong. In this specific instance (the searching and seizing of the safety deposit boxes) should only be legal if the government specifically identified those suspect boxes and contents through evidence and sworn affidavits, not mere conjecture that there is probably something illegal within the contents. If the government wants to search and seize the boxes then they should do the leg-work to do it right. Allowing them to do otherwise is indeed stripping us of our rights and supporting that is antithetical with freedom and everything we are supposed to be about.
 

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
Why can't we have both? Our Constitution places limits upon the government, when the government exceeds those limits it should be held to account just as citizens should be held to account for any violation of the laws that we have allowed the government to mandate.

It should, shouldn't it? But it doesn't, so now what?

Also, I am not aware that the Constitution places limits on The Government. Can you show me a recent incident where that has happened?
 

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
I have a strong sense of right and wrong.
:lmao:..that overrides the Constitution. Got it. And the entire 100% stated purpose of the Constitution was to limit - limit severely - the present and future powers of any central government that might emerge. To keep you "gummint is all powerful and we should all submit" folks at bay.
 

black dog

Free America
It should, shouldn't it? But it doesn't, so now what?

Also, I am not aware that the Constitution places limits on The Government. Can you show me a recent incident where that has happened?

No civics classes in Nebraska?
It happens everyday the three branches of government work.
Its called separation of powers...
 

Ken King

A little rusty but not crusty
PREMO Member
Also, I am not aware that the Constitution places limits on The Government. Can you show me a recent incident where that has happened?
Ever read Article I, section 9? There are some specific limits contained there. Additionally, laws are found to be unconstitutional quite often. A recent case (2019) Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants is one of the many. There are more where not only the Fed but State governments are found to have acted unconstitutionally. https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/unconstitutional-laws/ There are probably more recent cases but not in that data base.
 

Hijinx

Well-Known Member
Here is my concern: If they get away with this in california, what is to stop them from going from bank to bank and getting into everyone's safe deposit box?

To be perfectly honest, The banks are pretty sorry. They pay 17 cents on a hundred dollars in their CD's, they don't want your money and if the FBI is allowed to get into your safe deposit box what good are they, Buy a safe, and store your stuff at home including your money.
 
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