[noir_lord]

You can't use the proceeds of crime to fund your defense.

If he can't show income then he gets a public defender.

Also this is a federal defender and my understanding (I'm a Brit watching from afar) is they are like our QC's (Queens Counsel - essentially very good and experienced legal professionals) rather than the stereotypical "plead to everything and go to lunch" public defenders.

[nextstep]

Public defenders range from quite good to incompetent, but almost all of them are over-worked because of the large number of things made illegal in our bloated legal system. So, many public defenders encourage their clients to plea guilty for crimes they did not commit. Sadly this happens far too often in the US. HBO did a documentary about this recently: www.hbo.com/documentaries/gideons-army

[fnordfnordfnord]

>You can't use the proceeds of crime to fund your defense.

Alleged crime, but you're right. In this country, the gov't can seize your assets and deprive you of them prior to proving that you are a criminal, or that the assets have any relation to criminal conduct.

[ferdo]

That trick worked even during the Inquisition. The State never changes tactics.

[mistercow]

>You can't use the proceeds of crime to fund your defense.

Sidestepping the due process issue for a moment, is that even a meaningful concept? Money is fungible. If you make $5,000 earned from your day job, and $5,000 from selling drugs, and you spend $5,000 on a car, is the money you have left drug money or honest money?

[leokun]

Well, if you were a criminal you may want to avoid mixing the two so you can pay for your defense in case you need to.

[jlgreco]

Would careful accounting actually help in practice? I don't imagine they would be all to impressed with your careful bookkeeping.

[jtbigwoo]

Criminals often employ people to keep their "legitimate" earnings separate from their criminal earnings. Whitey Bulger had lawyers and accountants working for decades to shuttle money into real estate and mundane businesses so he could keep it out of the government's hands. In Bulger's case, the government is trying to seize the money now that he's been caught and convicted, but it's not yet a sure thing that they'll get it.

[fnordfnordfnord]

So, the more sophisticated a criminal enterprise, the more likely that the defendant(s) will have a fair chance to defend themselves!

[MichaelGG]

>You can't use the proceeds of crime to fund your defense.

Alleged crime. I thought the US had some presumption of innocence or something.

[tptacek]

The assets you presume him to have are the proceeds of a massive online narcotics market. Or is there some other source of income you're saying were seized?

[mistercow]

So in this case he probably is DPR and probably is guilty of at least most of what he's accused of. But because they don't have to prove guilt before seizing assets, they could easily just grab some random person, say "You ran this online drug ring, so we're seizing all of your assets" and then leave you with a public defender.

And that's pretty messed up. It's also messed up that being stuck with a public defender is messed up, but that's another issue. The concept of assuming guilt before trial with respect to your finances is obviously a violation of the spirit - if not the actual letter - of the Fifth Amendment.

[refurb]

I'm not going to argue that the asset forfeiture laws in the US are completely fair, but that's not how it works.

First off, you can't just arrest anyone without going in front of a judge and getting an arrest warrant (unless of course a police officer has evidence you committed a crime). Second, they need to identify your assets and then prove that they are proceeds from illegal activities. Do they just say "all of it is"? Probably and the onus is on you to prove otherwise.

[mistercow]

Yes, it is more complicated than simply arresting someone and taking all of their stuff, but it's not right to say that they need to "prove that they are proceeds from illegal activities". Proving that you are involved with illegal activities is what a trial is for. If you haven't been tried yet, they haven't proven anything.

[revelation]

Of course the source of the funds may be obvious. That doesn't mean we should short out the usual due process, the same reason we have the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine.

[tptacek]

There is a well-established due process scheme for seizing assets. It has a lower standard of proof because it establishes only that a crime took place and that an asset is linked to the crime, without establishing culpability.

[MichaelGG]

I'm guessing "well-established due process" is the part the rest of HN takes objection to.

You seem pretty with it and level-headed, so it seems like we just have different priors.

[fnordfnordfnord]

Calling it due process is like calling ROT13 encryption. It is a sham. What's well-established is the fact that asset forfeiture is abused far and wide, and for every type of asset and supposed crime.

[tptacek]

What's well established is that it has been abused. What's not well established is how widespread the abuse is, because, obviously, reporters only write about the abuses.

[fnordfnordfnord]

You presume the assets to be the proceeds of a massive online narcotics market.

[tptacek]

I do, because the narcotics market is the only source of assets that anyone has mentioned in conjunction with this person.

[fnordfnordfnord]

If his Forbes interview is to be believed, he apparently had accumulated enough BTC to buy out the original creator of SR. If not, then it still isn't a stretch to believe that a person whose involvement with Bitcoin goes back years, has accumulated a few BTC through mining, trading, or some other activity. Nor is it impossible for any other person who could be mistakenly identified as connected to SR to have accumulated a large amount of BTC through legal means.

[jpmattia]

> You can't use the proceeds of crime to fund your defense.

And how is it determined (beyond a reasonable doubt, with a vigorous defense) that you committed a crime to yield those proceeds?

[mikeryan]

Tax returns - or the lack thereof. There's almost no way in the US to make more than about 10k without it being traceable.

Also I can totally be wrong about this its one of those "I' think I heard this a few times" but I think this is one of those things where the burden of proof ends up more on the side of the accused then on the gov't.

[ferdo]

> the burden of proof ends up more on the side of the accused then on the gov't.

That's how tyrannies operate.

[dragonwriter]

The burden of proof is on the government.

The thing is, proof beyond a reasonable doubt is not mathematical/logical proof, it's (as I recall the jury instructions I've seen on this) basically proof to a degree that a reasonably diligent person would use in their most important business dealings.

Multiple sources of evidence that point in the same direction, even when there are theoretically possible innocent explanations for all them, can still constitute "proof beyond a reasonable doubt", which is not "proof beyond any doubt".

[derekp7]

The way I understand it, you can analyze it mathematically. Say one piece of circumstantial evidence puts the likelihood of guilt at 20%/ not guilty at 80%. Now another one has a 15/85 ratio. Take that 15% from 80%, and you now have a 68% not guilty / 32% guilty. Keep going until you have a good enough number, and you have your verdict. Now what that number should be? 90% guilty? 95%?

[dragonwriter]

> The way I understand it, you can analyze it mathematically.

Not meaningfully, for a number of reasons.

> Say one piece of circumstantial evidence puts the likelihood of guilt at 20%/ not guilty at 80%.

Problem with that is that it is rarely easily quantifiable.

> Now another one has a 15/85 ratio. Take that 15% from 80%

This, of course, assumes that the pieces of evidence are independent, which is not necessarily true.

Applying math to the issue isn't really helpful, because that's not the way jurors process evidence.

And if the system were changed to force them to work that way, it would just be a giant mess.

[sjg007]

In my interpretation it is all about what happened and how you spin the story. We see in books and movies where someone appears to be quite guilty but then in the twist they are not or vice versa. Now, life might be messier in some sense that such is less likely in theory. But even forensic evidence can be manipulated and the science of forensic evidence does not have the same rigorous scientific underpinnings as depicted on CSI. In a digital world, a lot of things can be manipulated, and in the world of espionage probably are.

[derekp7]

In that case, it is probably a good thing I've never been on a jury before (sat through jury duty once, never got called). I'll have to definitely keep your points in mind if I ever have to serve on one. Thanks.

[patmcguire]

They can also do it in the form of suing the assets - the money is the defendant. There's no presumption of innocence and you have to establish a preponderance of evidence that it's legit.

[jpmattia]

> Tax returns - or the lack thereof.

And how is it determined (beyond a reasonable doubt, with a vigorous defense) whether or not you committed the crime of tax evasion?

[jlgreco]

On the topic of tax evasion... what if they arrest somebody and find many thousands of bitcoins in their possession, but that somebody claims that they mined them themselves (and the block-chain confirms they weren't transferred)? What if they were all mined when they were basically worthless?

[sjg007]

Would you have to pay tax only when you convert them to dollars? I mean US multinationals don't pay income tax on foreign income until they repatriate it...

[malandrew]

But someone else can fund your defense. If he is in fact DPR, which hasn't been proven yet in a court of law, then he could move bitcoins to someone who could convert them to USD and fund his defense.

Alternatively, what stops people from investing in defendants. If Ulrich is in fact DPR and has 80mm in Bitcoins or large portion thereof stashed away somewhere, wouldn't it make sense for some rich person to fund DPR's defense on the condition that a portion of the 80mm is paid to the investor. Everything would be done through a lawyer the investor trusts, and Ulrich would have attorney client privilege and could in fact privately confide through the lawyer how much return he can make on a successful defense.

Spending $1-2 million defending someone, with the chance of getting a 10x return in 1-2 years seems like a pretty good deal if you can build up the rapport

[wozniacki]

Could you prepay your attorney(s) / legal team in the form of retainers like they (seem to) do in the television show "The Wire"?

The cost of any future trial could be anticipated ahead of time and paid upfront by the perpetrating party. Right?

That way there is no burden on the accused, to prove how the cost of the trial will be borne. Right?

The state (DA) must know that there is certainly no way "Stringer Bell" or "Avon Barksdale" can afford a high priced lawyer (Maurice Levy) from the proceeds of a legitimate yet small-time printing business - an obvious front operation for their drug dealing syndicate, which constituted the lion-share of their earnings.

Right?

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stringer_Bell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avon_Barksdale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Levy_(The_Wire)

[mistercow]

I think that is correct. If so, it's also screwed up because it actually favors the guilty. An innocent person who believes in the justice system would think that they have no reason to retain a lawyer in advance. A smart criminal would do so as an obvious precaution.

[jrockway]

The goal is to convict someone of a crime, not to convict someone guilty of the crime.