This is the Cater Daily Podcast for Monday, July 24th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has expanded civil forfeiture, ending restrictions on the practice that had been imposed in previous

administrations, forfeiture is a process by which the government takes property for people who

have not been convicted of or are even charged necessarily with a crime.

Heiters Clark Neely comments on the change.

I always go back to previous attorneys general

when it comes to civil asset forfeiture because I can remember

Eric Holder of course was at least in policy somewhat more skeptical of civil asset forfeiture

than previous attorneys general.

Loretta Lynch when she was being discussed

and when she was testifying before the Senate referred to forfeiture as a

great tool a wonderful tool and drew no distinction whatsoever between

criminal and civil asset forfeiture and now we have Jefferson Beauregarde Sessions the third as Attorney General and he is seeking

to not only undo policies of holders time in office but also re-expand civil asset forfeiture.

Yeah, so that's right. I mean two points to start off with here that I think are really important.

The first is to understand the difference between civil forfeiture and criminal forfeiture.

A criminal forfeiture occurs after someone has been convicted of a crime, either an open court

or through a plea bargain bargain and then the government proves

that the property that they wish to seize was in fact either the proceeds of or

related to those crimes in some way. That's criminal forfeiture and nobody really has a beef with that. Civil forfeiture is the real problem here. Civil forfeiture occurs when the police or other law enforcement sees your property simply by asserting that it is connected with crime

and somehow but never actually proving it and in most cases never even

...