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Clark Neily

@ConLawWarrior

Oct 18

Civil forfeiture is back in the news. And for good reason: It’s among the most corrupt and corrupting public policies in America and presents serious constitutional concerns. Unfortunately, policymakers and activists both overlook the single most effective forfeiture reform. /1

If you want to reform civil forfeiture without completely eliminating it you just have to do one thing: treble damages for prevailing property owners. Why would that be so effective? Two reasons. /2

1. With treble damages, far more property owners will be represented by counsel. I can tell you from personal experience that no factor more affects the outcome of forfeiture cases than having a lawyer because LEOs tend to be SUPER-sloppy when policing for profit. /3

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Clark Neily

@ConLawWarrior

May 21

Judge Carlton Reeves has criticized qualified immunity before, but wow, he really cut loose this time. It's extremely rare for a sitting judge to express this level of disdain for a legal doctrine that SCOTUS has consistently and repeatedly affirmed. /1 s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2467…

What gives Judge Reeves' latest assault on QI such force is that (virtually?) nobody disputes any of his points—namely, that SCOTUS invented QI out of whole cloth in direct (and increasingly indisputable) contravention of statutory text and unambigous legislative purpose. /2

At this point, the *only* "defense" (if one can call it that) offered by QI's vanishingly small coterie of defenders is that SCOTUS has been getting it wrong for nearly half a century and Congress has done nothing to correct that error, so why should either of them bother now? /3

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Clark Neily

@ConLawWarrior

Apr 26

Just beneath the surface of the Trump immunity case lies the fact that our CJ system has gone so off the rails that few people—especially if they’ve done anything interesting like run for office or start a business—can be confident they haven’t committed multiple felonies. /1

Is it reasonable for future presidents and executive-branch officials to be concerned that the decision whether to prosecute them for *something* they did in office will end up being purely a matter of prosecutorial largesse? Absolutely—just like the rest of us. /2

We live in a wildly overcriminalized society where even the govt has lost track of how many laws are on the books—true fact: DOJ has repeatedly tried and failed to count just the number of federal criminal laws on the books, which is of course just the tip of the iceberg. /3

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Clark Neily

@ConLawWarrior

Mar 30

Why have retaliatory-arrest cases—including recently argued Gonzalez v. Trevino—so confounded SCOTUS? Simple: Because courts have become deeply committed to ensuring that govt officials who’ve been plausibly accused of misconduct can avoid jury trials. /1
scotusblog.com/case-files/cas…

Consider how low the stakes are for the govt officials in Gonzales compared to most criminal defendants—none are going to jail, it’s highly unlikely any will be fired or meaningfully disciplined if found liable, and they’ll be indemnified for any damage award regardless. /2

Truly, the stakes could scarcely be lower for the govt defendants who’ve been plausibly alleged to have grossly abused their official powers to inflict political payback on a 76yo grandmother, FFS. So why on earth are the justices tying themselves up in knots over these cases? /3

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Clark Neily

@ConLawWarrior

Jan 7

More thoughts on qualified immunity. Besides the fact that it is lawless, immoral, and bad policy, QI reflects breathtaking political naïveté by gratuitously creating a policy that confers a massive institutional benefit on a powerful special interest (LEOs) that’s paid for by /1

Victims of civil rights violations. Contrary to the self-serving pablum you’ll hear from its various apologists, QI’s primary function in our system is not to protect cops from frivolous lawsuits (there are other tools for that), it’s to protect cops from MERITORIOUS claims. /2

Good example is the cops whom Tony Timpa called for help during a mental health crisis and ended up asphyxiating him while joking about it. They fought like cats for QI precisely because they understood how a jury was likely to—and ultimately did—react. /3 keranews.org/criminal-justi…

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Clark Neily

@ConLawWarrior

Jan 5

https://twitter.com/citizenfreepres/status/1743075120107725243

US police are very good at going after low-hanging fruit like traffic infractions, nonsense regulatory infractions, and low-level drug crimes—which is why ~80% of arrests are for misdemeanors. But they’re just awful at solving serious crimes like murder and rape, which is why /1

https://twitter.com/citizenfreepres/status/1743075120107725243

US clearance rates for homicide and other serious crimes are among the lowest in the developed world. Also, police enjoy low levels of trust in communities where crime is most prevalent, partly because they prioritize enforcement of BS “crimes” like this and partly because /2

They are, as an institution, fundamentally untrustworthy. Police are trained to use deceit as a routine investigative tool, and recordings of police blatantly lying to motorists, bystanders, random teenagers, etc, are endemic. One thing that would go a long way to restoring /3

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