[cyphertruck]

Government had bo legal right to the bitcoin. Innocent until proven guilty, means the government stole the bitcoin in a criminal attempt to deny him an adequate defense.

You can’t “steal” your own property.

The government agents involved are all felons under 18 U.S. Code § 241. Conspiracy against rights - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/241 and 18 U.S. Code § 242. Deprivation of rights under color of law - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242

The problem us our country is so corrupt you have forgotten we have a constitution and have probably never heard of the above two statutes.

[iudqnolq]

As I understand it your (incorrect) reading of 241 is that when the government securely holds your property pending the final outcome of your trial that violates the clause of 241 that forbids a conspiracy to "injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person".

If that was true detaining a person would be a much more serious violation than detaining your property.

Now I happen to believe that pretrial detention is almost never moral. However, it's pretty obviously not a federal crime for a judge to order someone accused of murder to be held in jail until their trial.

[tomohawk]

On the other hand, feds routinely seize defendants assets to prevent them from being able to pay for robust legal defense. Those assets aren't going to harm anyone, so the case for seizing them is much weaker than holding someone accused of violence in jail. In this specific case, the assets are alleged ill-gotten gains, but often that is not the case at all.

It doesn't seem to be a stretch that the feds "securely holding your property" does not cause injury when it interferes with your right to legal representation.

After all, posession is 9/10ths of the law. If the feds are holding it, its not really yours at that time.

[iudqnolq]

I believe you're completely correct. The current system is amoral; we should change it.

But unfortunately you don't have a right under the constitution to the legal counsel of your choice, and interfering with your ability to pay the legal council you want isn't a federal crimes government agents could go to prison for.

(One of the many reasons why is that the Supreme Court decided a few decades ago that prosecutors have absolute immunity for anything they do on the job, even if they deliberately violated the law.)

[biomcgary]

Do you remember the decision that gave prosecutors immunity? I've been toying with ideas for laws concerning malicious prosecution and I'm curious about the basis of the Supreme Court's decision.

[iudqnolq]

This might help https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_immunity

Edit: If you're serious about this project you should read through Civil Rights Corp's cases.

You'll learn the most a clever, well-resourced team can push the existing rules in practice to hold governments accountable.

In my unexpert opinion a nonlayer can most efficiently get an impression of how an area of law sort of works by reading decisions from lower-court judges who dispense justice assembly-line style.

When you're reading a Supreme Court decision or a law it's incredibly easy to miss a procudure that makes any remedy inpractical.

For example, you might read through a whole process for deciding the merits of a complex argument a prisoner's civil rights were violated. But you'd be missing that prisoner's lawyers can only make an argument if that prisoner, without a lawyer, wrote the exact right words on a complaint form and handed it to a warden within (for example) two weeks of their rights being violated.

Get used to this search engine. And when you read about a case in the news, look it up. This (or a related resource) is usually how the reporter got their primary sources.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/

[theGnuMe]

Feds do this because they can’t win against well funded defendants.

[988747]

That does not make it OK. The proper solution is one or both of:

- Make laws so simple that a layman can understand them, thus removing the need for professional lawyers, and their exorbitant fees.

- Have prosecution be equally well funded as a defendant.

[dale_glass]

Laws start simple. Eg, Code of Hammurabi. Then they get complicated as we run into more and more edge cases that need handling.

In good measure laws get complicated because simple laws get worked around and abused.

We see this in tech too. Email is a simple concept that's grown into a highly specialized territory because spammers will exploit everything they can, and the more holes you patch, the more complex the system becomes.

[988747]

> In good measure laws get complicated because simple laws get worked around and abused.

I can quote tax laws as counterexample. A rule like "you pay 2% of your revenue as a tax" is simple and pretty hard to abuse. A rule like "Take your revenue, subtract expenses (see this 250-page document for list of allowed expenses and the rules when then apply), and pay 20% of your remaining income as tax" gives a lot of room to interpretation and abuse.

Governments make laws complicated because that gives them power - it's pretty much impossible to live in a Western country right now and not break some laws on daily basis.

[api]

> the more holes you patch…

In protocols at least the solution is to design one that assumes a very hostile network and is inherently built for it. None of the old first generation Internet protocols are like that.

[cedilla]

It's always funny to see someone who first talks about the presumption of innocence then going on to call huge groups of people felons without even knowing the details of the case.

[fritztastic]

Even without knowing the letter of the law to a T I'm aware that in a criminal case evidence is confiscated, assets are frozen, etc. during prosecution. It's standard procedure. I don't see how holding bitcoin from a money laundering case is evidence of government corruption. Sure, the CJ system is broken and awful... but your ideas of why are just incorrect.

[tut-urut-utut]

> I'm aware that in a criminal case evidence is confiscated, assets are frozen, etc. during prosecution. It's standard procedure. I don't see how holding bitcoin from a money laundering case is evidence of government corruption.

As fas as I understand it, they didn't seize Bitcoins. They seized the computer, and the computer is still in the government's hands.

If they really wanted to seize Bitcoins, they could transfer them to the Wallet they own. Given the fact that they left them where they were, means they didn't seize them, and they can't complain that a person moved them somewhere else.

[pc86]

> The government agents involved are all felons

Pretty ironic this appears just a couple words after "innocent until proven guilty."

This is borderline sovereign citizen nonsense. The prosecutors and government agents did nothing wrong here.

[DonHopkins]

Hey Trump is looking for a lawyer who will tell him just that. No qualifications necessary (or desirable) except that you just tell him everything he wants to hear, and trust he won't decide not to pay you, lie to you expecting you to repeat it in court, throw you under the bus, say racist shit about your wife, then send an angry mob of confederate surrender flag wielding MAGA mouth breathers to burn your house down. Give him a call, he'll be pleased to her from you! Have fun.