David Greenberg's rundown of Rudy Giuliani's frightening authoritarianism reminds me of one episode from my youth that I'd forgotten: "In 1999, for example, he directed (without the City Council's permission) the police to permanently confiscate the cars of people charged with drunken driving -- even if the suspects were later acquitted." Greenberg describes this as "Cheney-esque" but while the Bush administration has certainly been happy to act with a cavalier indifference to the guilt or innocence of the people they're surveilling, detaining without counsel, torturing, etc. I think even they have never claimed the right to punish people who've been certified as innocent.
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Punishment for the Innocent
28 Oct 2007 04:15 pm
Comments (23)
"reminds me of one episode from my youth." So, what kind of car did they take from you, Matt?
I don't agree. Giuliani did not order the punishment of the innocent, but of suspects - even if they later turned out to be wrongly accused. Bush ordered exactly the same, in Guantanamo, through rendition, etc., but on a bigger and more cruel scale. Those who were imprisoned for years and tortured, then released without compensation or apology are certifiably as innocent as a sober driver who lost his car under Giuliani, but obviously much, much worse off.
However, this Giuliani history may be used against him for a very cynical reason: people who don't care about people with Arab-sounding names being tortured, may care about white suburbans losing their cars for no reason. That could also happen to themselves.
The quote sounds like a clumsy way of saying "Confiscate the cars of suspects who may later have been acquitted."
"authoritarianism"
Please, don't be ignorant.
Rudy doesn't think waterboarding is torture. That's beyond "authoritarianism"
Why do suspected drunk drivers hate America?
To be clear, the suspects' cars stayed confiscated even if they were later acquitted.
he directed (without the City Council's permission) the police to permanently confiscate the cars of people charged with drunken driving -- even if the suspects were later acquitted
How ironic, considering how he championed Scooter Libby's pardon.
To be clear, the suspects' cars stayed confiscated even if they were later acquitted.
did he explain how he'd get around the 5th amendment?
So Cheney would have lost a couple of cars under Rudy - even Dubya would have lost one. They don't seem to mind.
Matt, I understand that the suspects' cars stayed confiscated even if they were acquitted. My point is that Bush also imposes punishment upon people without waiting for a guilty verdict, and when those people are found innocent refuses to undo that punishment. Giuliani would not give back the car, Bush will not restore rights and property, let alone compensate for lost income and other harm. I see no difference at all, except that New Yorkers who wrongly lost their cars were presumably not also dumped a thousand miles from home on some Balkan hillside.
An interesting sidenote to all this, the new A.G. shows up in a white hat:
"The New York Police Department is trying to give back about 6,000 cars that were confiscated in the last five years or so from suspects in drunken driving and other criminal cases, city officials said yesterday." The city's practice of seizing vehicles in the absence of any finding of guilt -- and sometimes notwithstanding actual acquittals of the drivers (see Jan. 31, 2000 and links from there) -- fared badly before judges. Among those who deserve credit for correcting the abuses are federal judge Michael Mukasey, who handed down rulings chastising the city for its failure to observe due process, and Tom O'Brien, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society who filed the original challenge in 1999. (Susan Saulny, "City Police Giving Back Seized Cars", New York Times, Mar. 9)(via Vice Squad)(more on forfeiture/seizure: Mar. 19-20, 2001; May 25, 2000; Jul. 21, 1999).
http://www.overlawyered.com/2004/03/nyc_police_giving_back_seized.html
Please, don't be ignorant.
Rudy doesn't think waterboarding is torture. That's beyond "authoritarianism"
I think it's a pretty apt use of the term. Authoritarian states may sometimes use torture. The difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism is more or less one of degree.
Civil forfeiture is what it's called, and at the time Rudy made his decision (not one I agree with, BTW), it was being used by...the Clinton administration! Horrors!
Rudy was a heavy-handed showboat of a prosecutor and a not-half-bad mayor
He is unsuitable to be President for many reasons
That being said, someone captured say,carrying an RPG in an alley in Kandahar should not enjoy the same constitutional due process as a drunk driving suspect on the West Side Highway
I realize that the New York Times tells me that, say, French Algerians go to Pakistan to study ARABIC and somehow find their way onto a battlefield in Afghanistan and it's all perfectly innocent enough (don't they all speak arabic in pakistan?)I am skeptical and unsympathetic to that view
No, to hell with the people in Gitmo amd Abu Gharib, they didn't get there for singing too loud in church (as the saying goes) or drunk driving. If leftists can't sort out the two, fuck 'em too.
The continued cretinous attempts to equate criminals with captured enemy in wartime persists:
I don't agree. Giuliani did not order the punishment of the innocent, but of suspects - even if they later turned out to be wrongly accused. HansB
How many POWs or unlawful enemy combatants - do you think - ever get lawyers and trials while a war is on?
In WWII, the US and Brits held 2 million Axis soldiers as POWs. None got trials. After the War was won, certain POWs, instead of being released, were tried as war criminals. Same with many enemy never taken as prisoners but tried by tribunal. 2 million. Not one trial related to being a captured legitimate combatant, not one lawyer hired at taxpayer expense for Nazi lawsuits.
As for unlawful combatants - from the American Revolutionary War to Korea - were shot on the spot, interrogated by us and Allies, then shot - or went into due process occasionally via tribunal if time and resources permitted.
Bush ordered exactly the same, in Guantanamo, through rendition, etc., but on a bigger and more cruel scale. Those who were imprisoned for years and tortured, then released without compensation or apology are certifiably as innocent as a sober driver who lost his car under Giuliani, but obviously much, much worse off. HansB
Who was tortured? Do you mean cold cells, Qu'ran flushing, the humiliation of being guarded and questioned by filthy infidel females?
Innocent?
Maybe a few, but they were caught with enemy and probably 98% of the people at GITMO would have killed us as we went in after AQ in 2001 if they could have. In fact, 2 released did go back to infidel-killing and shot down two US soldiers in Afghanistan. Another two have been rearrested for renewed terrorist activity in their home country.
How many Nazi or Confederate or Brit POWs were released by us with an apology and compensation for the sin of us stopping them from from shooting at us.
Would you guess.....none??
Only a Lefty would equate terrorists and people on the battlefield to someone found innocent of driving a car while boozed up.
However, this Giuliani history may be used against him for a very cynical reason: people who don't care about people with Arab-sounding names being tortured, may care about white suburbans losing their cars for no reason. That could also happen to themselves.
Posted by Hans B
Ahhh, now you are getting to the truth...though it is quite Lefty to excuse terrorists and butchers as simply "innocent people with Arab-sounding names"..nor were any subjected to real torture outside the hardships we inflict on many of our own troops in training and in the field. Life can be tough in the military. Many die or get badly injured just doing their basic training or the jobs..
I laugh at horrified Lefties talking about "cold rooms", lack of sleep, stress position pain, crappy food, and their dread bugaboo - waterboarding - as clueless - given what goes on in our military or in any French, African, Cuban, Japanese, Mexican, or Indian prison.
Nor was it white suburbanites or "Rudy's base" of whites, asians, Jews in Queens, Staten Island, Manhattan that were seeing their cars confiscated for drugs or drunkeness. Most were minority drunks or druggies.
Chris Ford yahoos: "Ahhh, now you are getting to the truth...though it is quite Lefty to excuse terrorists and butchers as simply "innocent people with Arab-sounding names"..nor were any subjected to real torture outside the hardships we inflict on many of our own troops in training and in the field. Life can be tough in the military. Many die or get badly injured just doing their basic training or the jobs..
I laugh at horrified Lefties talking about "cold rooms", lack of sleep, stress position pain, crappy food, and their dread bugaboo - waterboarding - as clueless - given what goes on in our military or in any French, African, Cuban, Japanese, Mexican, or Indian prison. "
Chris Ford strikes me as the sort of Bush supporter who would scream bloody murder if he were given a parking ticket. That he doesn't give a damn about the fact that US soldiers and intelligence agents are torturing people on spec doesn't surprise me.
He would have been a very good German indeed between 1933 and 1945. Stupid macht Frei.
Punishment for the Innocent
Matthew is lying.
Giuliani's policy was to go after the car under civil asset fortfeiture laws. These laws require that the government show by a prepondrance of the evidence that the auto was, in fact, used in the commission of a crime. By definition, if the auto were properly seized pursuant to the civil asset forfeiture laws, the persons driving them would be guilty, albeit on a preponderance of the evidence rather than beyond a reasonable doubt.
(Remember, for example, the difference between OJ Simpson being acquitted, but yet losing the civil case to the Goldmans. OJ was not "innocent" - he has been found guilty of murder by a preponderance of the evidence. He just has not been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Same would apply to the autos under the Giuliani policy.)
Accordingly, when Matthew says that innocent people would lose their autos under the Giuliani policy, that's just a flat-out lie. Only guilty people would lose their cars.
Oh, and also, the policy caused a 38.5% decrease in drunken driving accidents. Apparently Matthew is in favor of increased druken driving accidents.
Actually, Al, you're the one who's being misleading. The program was shut down when a federal judge--Mukasey--ruled that the city had to provide car owners with a reasonably prompt preliminary hearing. Most of the 6,000 vehicle seizures from people our legal systems presumes to be innocent were never brought before a judge.
The hearings should address three issues, Judge Mukasey wrote: whether probable cause existed for the arrest, whether it is likely that the city would prevail in an action to forfeit the vehicle, and whether it is necessary for the car to remain impounded to ensure its availability as evidence. The judge said the department would have the "burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence as to all three issues."The details of the process seemed almost insurmountable to the Police Department, which has seized 8,607 cars from drunken driving suspects since 1999, Detective Burnes said.
"Giuliani's policy was to go after the car under civil asset fortfeiture laws."
And assent forfeiture laws are a constitutional and moral abomination. A way of punishing a person for a crime they were aquitted, of, or (in many cases) somebody else's crime, by way of the legal fiction that it's the property which is being sued, not the owner, and property doesn't have constitutional rights.
Matt's mistake is in not recognizing how widespread this abomination is, not in recognizing the abomination as such.
"I think even they have never claimed the right to punish people who've been certified as innocent."
Clearly you haven't heard of federal asset forfeiture, then. It's not Bush's doing, but they've certainly pursued some egregious instances of it.
"Oh, and also, the policy caused a 38.5% decrease in drunken driving accidents. Apparently Matthew is in favor of increased druken driving accidents."
This is somewhere between nanny-statism and authoritarianism. Let the government impose its will on the populace- just so long as the outcomes are "good". I bet you could cut down on crime if every American were implanted with an RFID chip and their movements monitored by a huge and elaborate bureaucracy, but that wouldn't make it right.
Gotta love the way that the Bush apologist know that every innocent villager fingered by his neighbor for a few thousand bucks and lying in Guantanamo is a terrorist.
Abu Ghraib is especially precious. I'm sure the 50,000 or so Iraqis we've got penned up in Iraq are all legitimate enemy combatants. If there are so many in Iraq alone, we're screwed...
Comments closed November 11, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Well, everyone's guilty of something, so the authoritarians are never wrong -- just arbitrary in their determination of what 'guilt' means.
Posted by El Cid | October 28, 2007 4:34 PM