Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Grits for Breakfast

Criminal Law

: Grits for Breakfast

Tenaha becoming poster child for asset-forfeiture abuses

Last night when laying out Sen. John Whitmire's SB 1529 regulating asset forfeiture, House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee Chairman Pete Gallego said he was sending a DVD to committee members with this story from CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 about Tenaha, a small town in East Texas that allegedly decided ripping off drivers passing through town was easier than raising taxes.Key to ending the practice in Tenaha, the legislation would forbid police or prosecutors from requesting, requiring, or in any manner inducing defendants to waive their property interests until a formal civil foreiture case has been filed in a district court. Hopefully that will at least slow down the highway robbery mentality that appears to have infected some Texas jurisdictions when it comes to asset forfiture...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on May 07, 2009 (boomark / email).