oklahoma – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Oklahoma Opens Bids For Bibles In Every School With Curiously Specific Requirements

from the holy-shit dept

When it comes to how you include religious texts in public school classrooms and libraries, the devil, as they say, is in the details. Want those texts of various world religions in place for secular teaching of topics they pertain to? All good! But picking one particular religion’s iconography and injecting it into public schools is a fairly blatant First Amendment violation. And if you’re one of those state officials looking to ban certain books due discussions about sexuality, gender, slavery, or violence and you aren’t banning most religious texts, including the bible, then you’re a flat-out hypocrite.

The point is that public schools are secular in nature. Any desire to put religious texts in them should be done so for secular reasons and not for the overt promotion of either a single religion or for political reasons.

And that brings us to Oklahoma and its state Superintendent, Ryan Walters. Walters decided that he wanted a bible in every public classroom in Oklahoma, suggesting it would be used due to the nature of American history and our founding fathers. I would normally simply argue about that history and talk about just how many of our founding fathers either weren’t religious at all, or were religious in a way that today’s conservative religious folks would find abhorrent (see: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Thomas Paine). But instead I’m going to focus more on the original requirements Walters had in the state’s RFP.

Bids opened Monday for a contract to supply the state Department of Education with 55,000 Bibles. According to the bid documents, vendors must meet certain specifications: Bibles must be the King James Version; must contain the Old and New Testaments; must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like material.

Now, most bibles don’t include those other historical documents, and certainly they aren’t all bound in material best served for the interior of a car. But at least one does. And if you’ve followed politics and the news closely enough over the last year or so, you may have already guessed which one that is.

A salesperson at Mardel Christian & Education searched, and though they carry 2,900 Bibles, none fit the parameters. But one Bible fits perfectly: Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, endorsed by former President Donald Trump and commonly referred to as the Trump Bible. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiving fees for his endorsement.

Mardel doesn’t carry the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible or another Bible that could meet the specifications, the We The People Bible, which was also endorsed by Donald Trump Jr. It sells for $90.

Was this a politically motivated move to get specifically Trump-endorsed bibles, for which he receives payment, into the public schools of Oklahoma, thereby using taxpayer funds to enrich the former President. Well, gosh golly gee, we just can’t say for certain, can we? But if that was the motivation, this is exactly the action a person so motivated would take.

Now, after many people in the state and nationally lost their collective shit over what is, at minimum, the appearance of a conflict of taxpayer interests, the state amended the RFP to make it so other, less expensive bibles would qualify. But of course that came along with Walters blaming everyone else for the concern expressed about his very, very tailored RFP.

Walters, in a Monday video on X, said the Bible will be used “because of its historical significance throughout this nation’s history,” blaming what he called the “fake news media” for lies about the program.

“The left-wing media hates Donald Trump so much, and they hate the Bible so much, they will lie and go to any means necessary to stop this initiative from happening,” Walters said.

I’m trying to picture Jesus saying this very thing and somehow I just can’t manage it.

In any case, it should go without saying that when we’re talking about introducing religious texts, paid for by taxpayers and for use in secular schools, it should be done with great care. Having a bloviating boot-licker go about it in this way ought to anger Oklahoman taxpayers, whether they are Christian or not.

Filed Under: bibles, oklahoma, ryan walters, schools

Oklahoma Gov’t Revokes License Of Teacher Who Dared To Push Back Against State’s Censors

from the fascism-in-action dept

More and more politicians have decided the only way to make America great is to abandon the things that made America great in the first place. The free and open exchange of ideas is getting shut down. The First Amendment is being remade and remodeled to only protect the ideas those in power are in favor of.

As is always the case when aspiring fascist take the law into their own hands, the first people against the wall are those whose job it is to pass information on to others. That’s why when rulers seek to control the public’s perception, they go after journalists and teachers first. An educated and informed voting bloc won’t vote the “right” way. And if they’re going to hold onto their power, they need to make sure the next generation of voters and public servants only know what their current leaders want them to know.

This is America and yet it feels like something else entirely in far too many states. Between the incessant book bans, anti-LGBTQ laws, and the constant portrayal of the First Amendment as only protective of speech government leaders like, no one insisting on travelling in Donald Trump’s orbit is actually trying to make America “great.” Instead, it appears they’re trying to make America WWII Germany. Or Russia under Lenin/Stalin/Putin.

That’s why state officials now feel comfortable punishing teachers for the crime of… teaching. Here’s Nadia Lathan with more details for the Associated Press.

Oklahoma’s education board has revoked the license of a former teacher who drew national attention during surging book-ban efforts across the U.S. in 2022 when she covered part of her classroom bookshelf in red tape with the words “Books the state didn’t want you to read.”

The decision Thursday went against a judge who had advised the Oklahoma Board of Education not to revoke the license of Summer Boismier, who had also put in her high school classroom a QR code of the Brooklyn Public Library’s catalogue of banned books.

For that, the board pulled her license. And All Boismier did was highlight the ridiculousness of the state government’s actions and provide opportunities for students to discover for themselves the content Oklahoma legislators unilaterally decided they should no longer have access to.

There’s nothing more American than someone fighting censorship, especially when that person is tasked with educating and informing developing minds. But the Oklahoma government doesn’t want Americans teaching in its schools. And it clearly doesn’t want anyone — no matter what age or position — to question the status quo being imposed by the censors in its midst. All it wants is unquestioning equivocation — the sort of thing that, if adopted by the founding fathers, would have resulted in us never referring to them as “founding fathers.” This would still be a British colony, or failing that, a former British colony now presided over by China or strip-mined of anything of value periodically by successive European nations with their own takes on colonialism before settling in for a long run of corrupt governments and military coups.

But we’re not that. We’re the land of liberty. Or supposed to be. Firing teachers for pushing back against censorship isn’t an American ideal. It’s apparently an Oklahoman ideal, although it would be a stretch to think all Oklahomans support this sort of thing.

But one politician has managed to convert a personal vendetta into a chilling effect that will harm teachers, librarians, and other government employees across the state. State Superintendent Ryan Walters has been trying to get Bosmier fired for two years. And now he’s finally succeeded.

Walters, who was a candidate for Oklahoma’s top education office when Boismier was teaching, had called on the board in 2022 to revoke her teaching license in a letter he shared on social media.

“There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom,” Walters had wrote. He accused her of providing “banned and pornographic material” to students.

Strong words from the state sup. Strong words indeed. Of course, one feels Walters would be completely supportive of a teacher with a “conservative political agenda” presiding over a classroom of young impressionables. His follow-up statement — that Bosier was fired for “breaking the law” that prohibits instruction on topics related to race and gender (and let’s just take a beat to recognize just how amazingly shitty that law is) — doesn’t add anything that would alter the immediate reaction to this news. That reaction being: the state will always fire people who don’t align themselves with the bigots running the government.

He also added this:

He accused her of providing “banned and pornographic material” to students.

This is just as patently false as it is technically false. Bosmier didn’t provide any material to anyone. In fact, she taped off a section of her own classroom bookshelf to prevent access. Handing the kids a QR code to a list of banned books doesn’t “provide” this material to anyone. All it gives them is a list of books. It’s up to the students to do what they will with that information.

But discussing this in rational terms is useless. These are not rational people. These are people steeped in hatred who have the power to inflict misery on anyone who pushes back against their agenda. The state superintendent doesn’t seem to like any political agenda other than his own and the ones pushed by the party he clearly supports. That’s not how America is supposed to work. There’s supposed to be free and open discussion of competing views — something that encourages younger minds to consider all the facts and draw their own conclusions.

For all the whining about “indoctrination” of students with “liberal agendas,” state officials clearly aren’t opposed to indoctrinating kids. They just want to be the ones doing the indoctrinating. It’s sickening and, unfortunately, it’s not the political career-killer it once was. Now, going as far right as you can — even past the Constitutional confines these people claim to support — is encouraged and rewarded. Many more people will be up against the wall before America (hopefully) moves past this embrace of the worst people to ever hold public office.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, bigotry, book ban, censorship, oklahoma, ryan walters, schools, summer bosnier

Judge Tells Corrections Officers To ‘Suck It Up’ If They Can’t Handle An Endless Stream Of Executions

from the inhumanity-is-what-I-want,-says-impartial-magistrate dept

We’ve long known no one cares what happens to people who are incarcerated.

The indifference flows through the so-called criminal justice system to the private sector to tons of voters who firmly believe the nation could be better served by stripping certain Americans of all their rights.

The fact that we jail more people than totalitarian nations is constantly ignored. We pretend prison is the best thing for errant people — something that offers them the chance to pay society for their misdeeds while giving them the bonus of bettering themselves through rehabilitation.

But nothing in the system lends itself to better outcomes. The criminal justice system ensures anyone merely charged with a crime — much less convicted of one — will carry that burden for years, if not the rest of their lives. People jailed for decades for non-violent crimes (mostly of the drug possession variety) can expect to return to society years behind the curve and saddled with a felony conviction that ensures only people willing to exploit others will have anything to do with them.

While behind bars, inmates are treated as less than human by the government at all levels. They’re also expected to routinely be victims of crimes that will never be prosecuted, ranging from theft to assault to rape. And that’s on top of whatever criminal acts are committed by those tasked with protecting them while they’re in the government’s custody.

They’re also at the mercy of entities both public and private. Sheriffs run most county jails with impunity, protected from accountability by layers of immunity and the election process itself. Sheriffs have shown themselves willing to starve inmates to enrich themselves when not just ignoring inmate-on-inmate crime or systemic abuse from jailers in their employ.

Private entities engage in further harm, subjecting an entirely captive audience to rapacious fees if prisoners desire outside contact. At first, it was just exorbitant per-minute fees for phone calls, a burden bore by loved ones who realized the importance of letting people in jail know someone on the outside cared about them.

Those fees — which are always shared with those housing inmates — made the most of the move to internet-based communications, adding even more extortionate fees to everything from texting to access to free streaming services. These fees further pad the payrolls of correctional facilities. But none of this windfall has ever been passed on to the people who actually pay these fees.

Decades of indifference — if not outright disdain — has accustomed us to the fact that the criminal justice system doesn’t care about anyone who can’t beat the rap and is forced to ride the ride.

But this is something else. This is a state judge declaring he doesn’t care about the people the state employs to staff jails and prisons. This a judge saying “fuck you” on top of “fuck those guys,” letting government employees in certain positions know they’re considered little better than the prisoners they watch over.

Here’s Austin Sarat with the details for Slate:

Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, and Steven Harpe, the director of the Department of Corrections, want to slow down the pace of their state’s upcoming executions, moving from a 60-day to a 90-day interval between each of them. They contend that doing so is necessary to deal with trauma to those who carry them out and to ensure that future executions will not be botched.

To reschedule the pending executions, the state needs permission from the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, which, in 2021, had approved a plan to execute 25 death row inmates in less than three years. That plan would have cut the state’s death row population by more than half.

The state of Oklahoma would like inmates to shut up until it’s their time to be killed. The objections raised by the state AG had nothing to do with the fact that the state was killing inmates with alarming frequency. Instead, it was concerned the people who have to perform these killings might need a bit more time off between state-ordained killings.

The AG got the state’s Criminal Court of Appeals to give its executioners some more recovery time — an agreement that would have prevented executions from happening any more often than every 60 days.

However, it appeared the state’s hired killers needed more time off than this. The AG’s office asked for a 90-day recovery period between executions.

And that’s where the state ran head-on into one judge’s particular indifference towards everyone affected. That a former prosecutor-turned-judge wouldn’t be concerned that the state was executing people quickly is unsurprising. What’s alarming is that this judge made it clear he didn’t care about his fellow government employees — the ones tasked with all the killing.

During that hearing, Judge Gary Lumpkin, a former prosecutor who has been on the five-person court for more than 30 years, displayed a surprising callousness about the well-being of the correctional officials involved in the execution process. He said that they need to stop complaining, “suck it up,” and stick to the current execution schedule.

That’s the message being sent by Judge Lumpkin: if you don’t like the job of killing person after person at the behest of the state, you can pack your feelings up and GTFO.

[Judge Lumpkin] insisted that he would not buy into arguments about the traumatic effects of participating in executions, which he derisively labeled “sympathy stuff.”

He said that Drummond and Harpe needed to “man up.” “If you can’t do the job,” Lumpkin continued, “you should step aside and let somebody do it that can.”

Kill them or I’ll find somebody who will.

That’s pretty fucking harsh. And it shows Judge Lumpkin doesn’t think the people handling executions deserve any more empathy than those being executed. Sure, it’s harsh that people are getting killed because Oklahoma still believes firmly in the death penalty. Those performing the executions may not be dying, but they’ve got to live with what they’re doing. All they were asking for is just a little more downtime between killing in the name of. And this judge just told them to go fuck themselves.

Don’t kid yourselves, corrections officers. In Oklahoma, you’re little better than the misfits, outcasts, and abandoned property the government believes your inmates are. You’re as close to nobody as any government employee can get and if you can’t handle the job of government hatchet man, you’re of no use to Judge Lumpkin or the criminal justice system he represents.

Filed Under: executions, gary lumpkin, oklahoma, trauma

Freshman State Lawmaker Wants To Ban Porn In Oklahoma

from the extremist-maga-lawmaker dept

A far-right state lawmaker in the Oklahoma state legislature has started his first term on the civil liberties shortbus. Sen. Dusty Deevers, a Republican lawmaker and Southern Baptist pastor, introduced a complete ban on consensual pornography despite its First Amendment protections.

Senate Bill 1976, sponsored by Deevers alone, features fascistic language looking to completely ban the viewing, production, and distribution of adult content that is otherwise legally produced.

Any violations of the bill, if it were to become law, would make it a felony or misdemeanor if an individual violates these criminal provisions. According to the bill’s language, legal pornography which features one or more consenting adults over the age of 18 years would be defined similarly to criminal penalties for the morally bankrupt asswipes who produce and distribute child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) or cases of non-consensual intimate imagery (e.g., revenge porn, etc.).

Sen. Deevers intends to create entirely new definitions that would ultimately outlaw porn. Deevers uses bogus public safety terminology to sell the bill, which is at the moment being circulated among far-right Christian nationalists, white supremacists, and extremist anti-pornography campaigners to push the bill.

Senate Bill 1976 provides a definition for “obscene material” that isn’t related to CSAM or NCII:

“Obscene material” means and includes any representation, performance, depiction, or description of sexual conduct, whether in any form or on any medium, including still photographs, undeveloped photographs, motion pictures, undeveloped film, videotape, optical, magnetic, or solid-state storage, CD or DVD, or a purely photographic product or a reproduction of such product in any book, pamphlet,[…]magazine, or other publication or electronic or photo-optical format, if said items contain the following elements: a. depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct which are patently offensive as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards, b. taken as a whole, have as the dominant theme an appeal to prurient interest in sex as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards, and c. a reasonable person would find the material or performance taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific purposes or value. The standard for obscenity applied in this section shall not apply to child pornography.…”

Federal statutes and case law indicate that obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment. By this, obscenity is typically content that depicts illegal material that violates the Miller test. U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled in Miller v. California that material that is obscene but is defined by a judge or jury through a three-pronged test. The Miller test asks whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards,” would find that a work is taken as a whole that appeals to a criminal prurient interest. The test adds that if the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state or federal laws. Or that the work taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value to the national culture and conversation. Something is obscene only if the judge or jury defines these three conditions are satisfied. Only then is the material in question obscene.

Porn, as defined in Deevers’ bill, is not considered obscene given that pornography is protected speech.

Adult entertainment companies are regulated by the U.S. Department of Justice and are required by federal law to verify the age and consent of all performers and retain those records through a custodian of records. Any violation of these laws is punishable by federal criminal penalties. By no means does Deevers have a viable bill, given that it seeks to repress legitimate entertainment.

The Oklahoma bill also provides the following definition for “unlawful pornography”:

“[U]nlawful pornography” means any visual depiction or individual image stored or contained in any format on any medium including, but not limited to, film, motion picture, videotape, photograph, negative, undeveloped film, slide, photographic product, reproduction of a photographic product, play, or performance in which a person is engaged in any of the following acts with a person: a. sexual intercourse which is normal or perverted…b. anal sodomy, c. sexual activity with an animal, d. sadomasochistic abuse, e., flagellation or torture, f. physical restraint such as binding or fettering in the context of sexual conduct, g. fellatio or cunnilingus, h. excretion in the context of sexual conduct, i. lewd exhibition of the uncovered genitals in the context of masturbation or other sexual conduct, and j. lewd exhibition of the uncovered genitals, buttocks, or, if such person is female, the breast, for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer.”

Excluding the depiction of bestiality, Senate Bill 1976 defines pornography as unlawful when, in reality, it is otherwise consensual in virtually every other U.S. jurisdiction — including jurisdictions with unconstitutional age verification requirements. In fact, there are some lawmakers in other states who are realizing that broadly applied age verification requirements could limit the rights of free expression and privacy adult entertainment consumers, producers, and creators are given. Deevers is toeing the company line for the Heritage Foundation and the conservatives who openly called for the revocation of First Amendment rights covering legal porn, content that isn’t pornography that deals with sexuality, LGBTQ+ rights and health information, and more. It is safe to say that this legislation follows the fucked worldview of Project 2025, which seeks to strip civil liberties and set back women’s and LGBTQ+ rights back by over five or six decades.

Deevers introduced the bill on his own. It is unlikely that the bill would advance given the First Amendment concerns. But it speaks volumes that a man who knows nothing beyond far-right Christian nationalism ideology feels so emboldened to criminalize legally protected expression.

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics. He is the politics and legal contributing editor for AVN.com.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, adult content, dusty deevers, oklahoma, porn

Oklahoma Senator Thinks Journalists Need Licenses, Should Be Trained By PragerU

from the garbage-people-doing-garbage-things dept

“They’re not sending their best.”

– Donald Trump, June 26, 2015

I hear ya, Donnie. Just look at the jamokes you’ve inspired to set fire to the Constitution, if only because they failed to set fire to Capitol Hill following the 2020 election.

Florida’s full of them. The state legislature is infested with people who think fascism is something to aspire to. As far as they see it, the Constitution protects the rights of white males. Everyone else should just get used to their faces being stamped on forever.

Florida may be the worst, but state governments all over the nation are filled with people too stupid to govern but savvy enough to get elected. The residents that support them love them for their stupidity and performative lawmaking. Everyone else is reduced to looking on in disbelief, at best. At worst, they’re now the target of laws meant to further elevate white, straight males at the expense of everyone else.

But let’s not short-sell these legislators. They’re willing to cross the line to punish white, straight males if these outliers are unwilling to bend the knee. Critics of these government figures are also being pushed up against the wall by legislators, a disturbing number of which are willing to rewrite the First Amendment in their own image. If “free” speech doesn’t make the people in power happy, then that speech should no longer be “free.”

That brings us to the latest bit of anti-Constitutional thuggery being pushed forward in a state legislature. This time is yet another state with a panhandle hosting the idiocy, as Walter Einenkel reports for Daily Kos.

On Wednesday, Oklahoma state Sen. Nathan Dahm has proposed a bill that would require journalists to submit to drug tests, take courses in being “propaganda-free,” and get a license from the state.

Senator Dahm is not only an idiot when its comes to crafting law, but he’s also incapable of coming up with his own ideas.

This isn’t the first, second, or third time that conservative lawmakers have attempted to control the free press by demanding some sort of licensing requirements. In 2016, a South Carolina Republican introduced a bill that would require journalists to be registered and vetted by the state. An Indiana Republican tried to do a similar thing in 2017, arguing it was the same as licensing Second Amendment rights. And in 2023, a Florida lawmaker attempted to force bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis, people in his administration, or state legislators to register with the government.

About the only thing new in Dahm’s attack on the First Amendment is the entity he wants to aid and abet in this mass violation of rights. The bill [PDF] mandates cultural readjustment at the hands of Dahm’s preferred brainwasher.

Each individual reporter, producer, writer, editor, or any other employee involved in the production of content distributed by a media outlet is hereby required to:

a. complete a criminal background check conducted by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, b. receive a license as prescribed by the Corporation Commission as provided in subsection C of this section, c. complete a propaganda-free safety training course of no less than eight (8) hours as prescribed by the State Department of Education, which shall be developed in coordination with PragerU, d. provide proof of liability insurance no less than One Million Dollars ($1,000,000.00), and e. submit to quarterly drug testing for illicit substances to be administered by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation;

Holy shit. We’re on the other side of reality now. “Propaganda-free safety training courses” developed by a performative “school” whose inability to comprehend the First Amendment and/or Section 230 immunity has seen it lose lawsuit after lawsuit. The Senator doesn’t want the state’s journalism to be “free” of “propaganda.” He wants it to parrot the propaganda he likes and is willing to use the government’s power to ensure this happens.

If you don’t think that set of mandates is ridiculous enough, there’s more. These are the ravings of someone who read 1984 and came to the conclusion the government didn’t punish Winston Smith enough.

The list above is just for individual journalists, whether or not they work for larger news agencies. The list of requirements for journalist entities demands $50 million in liability insurance, mandatory PragerU “propaganda” training for all employees (whether they’re journalists or not), and this fever dream of a disclaimer to be attached to anything published by journalists:

“WARNING: THIS ENTITY IS KNOWN TO PROVIDE PROPAGANDA. CONSUMING PROPAGANDA MAY BE DETRIMENTAL TO YOUR HEALTH AND HEALTH OF THE REPUBLIC.”

Welcome to Trump’s America, as legislated by long-time bootlickers like Senator Nathan Dahm. And if you really enjoy deep, dark levels of irony, you should definitely check out Dahm being absolutely crucified on a cross constructed entirely of his own hypocrisy by Jon Stewart. In this interview, Dahm argues against gun registration:

JON STEWART: You want to say I’m a Second Amendment purist and I’m making it safer? You’re not. You’re making it more chaotic. And that’s not a matter of opinion. That’s the truth.

STATE SEN. NATHAN DAHM: That is a matter of opinion, Jon.

STEWART: But why take away their tools?

DAHM: Because certain of their tools that they’re using would be infringements upon the people’s right to keep and bear arms upon their constitutional rights upon due process, upon other things.

STEWART: So you’re saying that registering is an infringement?

And there it is. Dahm thinks people exercising their Second Amendment rights shouldn’t have to be subjected to government interference like registration. But with this bill, he feels people exercising their First Amendment rights should be subjected to registration requirements.

This bill won’t make it far. I mean, I would hope. Even his allies in the state senate are unlikely to support a law that not only pretends the First Amendment doesn’t exist, but allows PragerU to come along for the ride. Unfortunately, Dahm is representative (no pun intended) of legislators being elected all over the country. These people are a threat to democracy and the nation itself. And yet it appears a sizable percentage of voters are ok with a descent into fascism, just as long as it hurts other people first.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, free press, free speech, journalism, licensing journalists, nathan dahm, oklahoma, propaganda
Companies: prageru

Tenth Circuit Says Pretextual Inventory Searches Need To Be A Whole Lot Less Pretextual

from the mic-is-hot,-boys dept

One of the great warrant exceptions is the “inventory search.” Stop a car in a high-traffic or “high crime” area, and officers will feel compelled to tow it away. But before it’s towed, they’ll make a list of everything in the car to ensure the vehicle’s owner gets all of their possessions back when they retrieve it from the impound lot. If there happens to be contraband in the car, it’s a win for the cops. The “discovery” (even if derived from a mostly-pretextual search) will be called “inevitable” and can be used against the person to deprive them of their freedom along with their car.

This one simple trick usually works out for law enforcement. But every so often it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t work, it’s usually because officers were in such a hurry to carry out the warrantless search that they completely forgot about the pretext.

That’s the case here in the Tenth Circuit Appeals Court’s handling of a motion to suppress. The lower court denied the suppression motion, but the Appeals Court reverses [PDF] that decision, finding that the officers created an excuse to search the car, making their discoveries less than inevitable.

It all started with a call to the Tulsa (OK) Police Department about Evan Woodard. The caller said Woodward was in the middle of a drug case, may have smoked PCP, had three previous gun charges, and had violated a protective order. Tulsa PD officers headed out to find Woodard and serve him with an outstanding warrant for public intoxication and the protective order he was allegedly violating.

Here’s what happened next:

Police officers found Mr. Woodard in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at about 8:00 a.m. and initiated a traffic stop. Mr. Woodard pulled into a parking lot at a QuikTrip convenience store and stopped there. The police told Mr. Woodard to get out of the car, arrested him based on the warrant, and took his cellphone. Mr. Woodard then asked if he could call someone to pick up the car. One of the police officers responded “I don’t think so,” and the police decided to impound the car.

But it wasn’t that simple. The stop and search were captured on the officers’ body cameras, which caught them saying things that made it clear they were looking for an excuse to search the car, rather than performing a regular inventory in preparation for towing the vehicle from the convenience store parking lot.

One officer looked in the panel on the driver’s side door and on the floor under the driver’s seat, saying that Mr. Woodard was “fighting a huge drug case.” Defendant’s Mot. to Suppress, Exh. 4 (body camera). The other officer replied that Mr. Woodard liked PCP. As the officer replied, he opened the center console.

One officer commented that he was looking for verification of car insurance, expressing doubt that Mr. Woodard had insured the car. After seeing no verification in the center console, he eventually found proof of an old insurance policy in the glove compartment. By then, however, another officer had found marijuana, cocaine, a digital scale, and a gun.

Using this evidence — as well as some information from another traffic stop of Woodard in Bartlesville, Oklahoma that resulted in the discovery of drugs and a gun — officers obtained a warrant to search Woodard’s phone. Text messages recovered from the phone indicated Woodard was dealing drugs.

Prior precedent from this circuit restricts officers’ ability to impound vehicles, which, accordingly, also limits their ability to search vehicles without a warrant.

These heightened requirements allow impoundments from private property, like the impoundment of Mr. Woodard’s car, only when (1) the car is blocking traffic, (2) the car is posing an imminent threat to public safety, or (3) the impoundment is justified by a standardized policy and a reasonable, non-pretextual rationale of community caretaking.

The Tulsa PD’s impound policies comply with this precedent. As conceded by the state, officers can only impound a car if the vehicle is blocking the “public way” or, if the vehicle is stopped on private property, the traffic stop “follows an offense committed on the public way.” In this case, the stop didn’t follow a traffic violation. It was performed to serve a warrant and protective order.

Hence, the impounding and the attached search were unjustified. And the government’s arguments can’t change that.

The police stopped Mr. Woodard to serve a protective order and execute an arrest warrant for public intoxication. The protective order and warrant were pieces of paper, not offenses. The only offense was public intoxication, and the intoxication did not take place on a public way.

The government contends that Mr. Woodard was stopped for a continuing offense: failing to pay costs for his charge of public intoxication. But failing to pay court costs is not a continuing offense.

Plus, there were things said by officers that made it clear they were really interested in searching the car, rather than ensuring it wasn’t left on private property where it might have bothered the owner of the convenience store or been molested by an unspecified criminal element (based on the government’s contention the QuikTrip was in a “high crime area”).

While the government presented a long list of reasons it could have impounded the car (lack of proof of insurance, Woodard’s lack of a valid drivers license, concern over ownership, evidence of a crime, etc.), the officers stated none of these reasons before performing the search, nor after it. These reasons didn’t make an appearance until the search was challenged, indicating the impound was mere pretext for the warrantless search of the car.

Also indicative were statements like these:

Not only does every factor point toward pretext, but other powerful evidence of pretext exists. Before searching the car, the police officers discussed how to proceed and the senior officer declared his intent to “friggin’ light [Mr. Woodard] up with whatever we can.”

[…]

As the police started the search, one officer said that Mr. Woodard was fighting a big drug case and facing three gun charges. The other officer said that Mr. Woodard liked PCP, adding that he had been “digging around” the center console area, and the officer began his search there. Defendant’s Mot. to Suppress, Exh. 4 (body camera), Exh. 5 (body camera). These statements and actions showed the officers’ intent to look for drugs, not to safeguard the car and its contents

And the government couldn’t even come up with any plausible excuse for the first officer’s statement:

At oral argument, the government surmised that the officer might have meant only that he wanted to cite Mr. Woodard for whatever violations could be proven at the time of the decision to impound the car. This explanation is new and illogical. The explanation is new because the government never suggested in district court that this is what the officer had meant. The explanation is also illogical. The command to “light [Mr. Woodard] up with whatever we can” shows that the officer wanted to look for new evidence. The phrase cannot plausibly be interpreted to mean that the officer wanted only to bolster the public intoxication charge and serve the protective order.

The conclusion? The Tulsa PD is wrong and so is the lower court for approving these actions.

Because the Tulsa Police Department’s standardized policy did not apply and the stated rationale for impoundment was pretextual, the district court erred in denying the motion to suppress evidence of the drugs, digital scale, gun, and cellphone found in the Tulsa search.

With that evidence gone, so are the text messages taken from the search of the phone. Without those text messages implicating Woodard in drug distribution, the charges in the other stop in Bartlesville are reversed as well, leaving the officers with nothing but a couple of illegal searches.

Filed Under: 10th circuit, evan wodard, excuses, oklahoma, police, pretextual searches, tulsa

Oklahoma Deputies Steal 141,500FromMenTryingToBuyLand,ManageToMake141,500 From Men Trying To Buy Land, Manage To Make 141,500FromMenTryingToBuyLand,ManageToMake10,000 Of It Disappear

from the a-little-due-diligence-goes-a-long-way dept

Some regular, everyday highway robbery committed by an Oklahoma law enforcement agency is getting some airtime and additional scrutiny, which certainly isn’t going to be beneficial to the Canadian County Sheriff’s Office. (via Reason)

Two businessmen from New Mexico were on their way to buy some land in Oklahoma when they were stopped by sheriff’s deputies. After asking for the driver’s license, the deputies began badgering the driver, Thai Nang, about the presumed existence of cash, hopefully lots of it.

“They keep asking like do I have cash, do we have cash, many times, many times. I say, ‘Of course we have cash,’” Nang told News 4.

He said that’s when the deputy started searching their car and found the $141,500 in cash that they were going to use for the land purchase.

“That’s our savings money to buy the agriculture land and he told me, ‘I’m 300% sure that’s illegal money,’” Nang said.

The deputies seized the cash and took Nang and his partner back to the Office for questioning. Several hours later they were released. But not their money. The $141,500 was confiscated by the Sheriff’s Office, which obviously plans to forfeit it as illegally-obtained.

On the way to the forfeiture proceedings, the Sheriff’s Office made nearly $10,000 of it disappear.

According to the court documents, only 131,502wasseized,whichis131,502 was seized, which is 131,502wasseized,whichis10,000 short.

The document also alleges that the money was “furnished, or intended to be furnished, in exchange for a controlled dangerous substance,” “traceable to such an exchange” or was “intended to be used to facilitate a violation of the Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Act.”

Those allegations are going to be pretty difficult to prove. And even the minimal level of proof needed to successfully steal property from drivers is unlikely to be met here. Reporters from KFOR did what the Sheriff’s Office refused to do. They went out and attempted to verify Nang’s claim the money was being used to purchase property. They were successful.

A Caddo County property owner is standing behind two New Mexico businessmen who told KFOR they were attempting to purchase land with thousands of dollars that was seized from them by the Canadian County Sheriff’s Office.

“Why didn’t they just send somebody out to ask me like you’re asking me? I’d have told them the same thing,” a Caddo County property owner, who wanted to keep his identity private, told News 4.

Not only did the property owner verify the story, he also provided documentation of the planned purchase, including the bill of sale. He also verified that dollar amount ($141,500) was accurate, stating that the land was being sold for 100,000plus“100,000 plus “100,000plus“30-40,000 to upgrade the electricity and the water.”

Presumably these statements have already been converted into a notarized affidavit that Nang’s lawyer will be bringing to court. Presumably the Sheriff’s Office will be bringing nothing more than its speculative fiction about the money’s innate illegality. And while it will be satisfying to see these badge-wearing crooks get their ill-gotten gains stripped away in a court of law, I imagine it would have been much more satisfying to Nang and his partner to be in possession of the property they were purchasing and putting their time and energy into that, rather than spending money righting a wrong that never should have been perpetrated on them.

Filed Under: cash, civil asset forfeiture, legalized theft, oklahoma, thai nang

If there’s one thing that nearly everyone can agree on while locked down during this COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that Netflix’s show Tiger King is the most batshit thing to watch. Everything about the documentary series played as if it was a Christopher Guest mockumentary, except in real life (and, incredibly, with characters even more colorful than Guest’s usual crew). I watched it about a week after it came out (i.e., a week after everyone else in the world had watched it) and was surprised that no one mentioned to me that amidst all the other craziness regarding various competing keepers of “big cats,” there was a copyright lawsuit.

As is all too common these days, the documentary didn’t do a particularly good job describing the legal issues at the heart of the dispute, and mentioned both trademark and copyright claims that came up. There were actually three separate lawsuits — one over trademark and two over copyright (and then a few follow on efforts that we won’t even get into). To be clear, the trademark claims, were more legitimate — though not a complete slam dunk. You can see the court docket here. I still feel like many trademark cases are bogus, but this case seemed like the perfect example of what trademark law is supposed to be for: to stop a pretty obvious copycat from trying to confuse the public into who is who. And that’s exactly what Joe Exotic was attempting to do in setting up Big Cat Rescue Entertainment Group, for his “traveling show” (bringing tigers and such to malls) in a manner that was designed to confuse the public into thinking he was actually his nemesis organization Big Cat Rescue Corp (which doesn’t do shows). In fact, despite being based in Oklahoma, Joe Exotic used a Florida phone number for the BCR “Entertainment” Group, knowing full well that the actual BCR was based in Florida.

So, that sounds like a standard issue trademark infringement situation… Except, it wasn’t even that clear. While Carole Baskin and BCR had a trademark on BCR’s logo, they did not have a registered trademark on the name — nor the use of “snow leopard eyes.” The website has since changed, but here’s a quick screenshot from the Netflix episode (Episode 4) that discusses the cases. On the left is Joe Exotic’s “copycat” and on the right is Carole Baskin’s website at the time:

The crazy thing is (probably by total coincidence) the elements that Joe Exotic copied were not the elements that were covered by the registered trademark. That said, Baskin had a strong case for common law trademark infringement, which is almost as good, but the case (contrary to what’s said in the documentary) did not actually end with the court ruling that Baskin won the trademark dispute. While the documentary implies that Baskin won the case, that’s not quite what happened. Joe Exotic had filed some (mostly silly) counterclaims in his response to the complaint, trying to throw a bunch of fairly weak defamation claims back at Baskin (and a few equally weak tortious interference claims).

Carole Baskin and BCR sought to have the counterclaims thrown out on summary judgment, which is exactly what the judge did. While the clip in the documentary shows Howard Baskin saying the judge ruled in their favor, that was only on dismissing Joe Exotic’s counterclaims, and not on the actual trademark issue. That was still set to go to trial, and perhaps recognizing how insanely costly an actual trial was going to be, that’s when the two sides agreed to settle, with Joe agreeing to pay nearly a million dollars (though as the documentary makes clear, he had little intention of actually doing so).

The main copyright case covered in the documentary (full docket here), however, is just… bad. It’s a really bad case. It’s an obvious SLAPP suit, filed on very questionable grounds, as a pile-on lawsuit while the trademark lawsuit discussed above was still chugging along. The details here are just ridiculous. Joe Exotic had come across a photo of Baskin’s employees happily holding up some dead rabbits that they were going to feed to the tigers, and made a big deal out of her killing the rabbits (it appears that this was not, as we find out, because he’s opposed to killing animals — because he’s not — but apparently because he hates Carole Baskin). Joe used the photo on social media and in a variety of videos as part of his never-ending hate-campaign against Baskin. I’m not going to post the photo here, but will say that it’s both in the documentary and if you do want to see it, it’s in the court filings.

Baskin had not taken the photograph, nor registered it, but had purchased the rights to the photograph from the photographer, Julie Hannon, then registered the photograph, and immediately issued DMCA notices on Joe’s use of the images. Joe counternoticed the DMCA takedown claiming that the “material was removed due to a mistake or misidentification.” He should have claimed fair use, because it clearly was. But he didn’t, and then Baskin sued.

Again, this is quite clearly an abuse of copyright law to censor fair use of the image. No matter what you think of either of the two individuals (neither of whom comes out of this looking good), there’s no way the use in question was not fair use, and the purchasing of the rights and the late registration, were quite clearly just aimed at censoring Joe Exotic, the critic, and not for any legitimate copyright purpose.

While Joe eventually did make a fair use claim, the fact that he (stupidly) didn’t use that as his claim in the YouTube counternotice actually opened him up to Baskin adding a DMCA 512(f) (!!!) claim for making false statements in his counter notice. Joe’s legal team argued fair use, failure to state a claim, misuse of copyright, and a few other similar defenses. Most of these got tossed because (they were nonsense and because) Joe Exotic’s legal team didn’t actually support most of the defenses, making it easy for the judge to toss them. The one defense that the court did not rule on was the fair use defense, which the judge said should be determined by a jury at trial. For what it’s worth, the judge also claimed the 512(f) claim should go to trial as well.

There were a few more twists and turns in the case before, once again, the case settled with a consent decree, with Joe agreeing to pay statutory damages of $50,000. The statutory damages part is interesting, in part, because statutory damages are supposed to only be available for infringement that happens after registration — and registration is supposed to occur within 3 months of “first publication” for statutory damages to be available. In this case, it’s unclear what actually counts as “1st publication” or if there was a first publication by the photographer.

Separately, even though the initial infringement occurred prior to registration, it appears that after Baskin sued, Joe Exotic decided to keep on posting the image over and over and over again to various social media, blogs, and videos, which might then open him up to statutory damages. Of course, the fact that the case was settled kind of makes the whole question moot anyway. It feels odd that the settlement agreement said it was for statutory damages. In the terms of a settlement agreement, it’s not clear why the type of damages matters at all. It’s just been agreed to by the parties.

That said, what’s amazing to me is that copyright maximalists seem to be cheering on this clear abuse of copyright as a form of a SLAPP suit. The Copyright Alliance, a Hollywood front group that lobbies for ever more aggressive anti-consumer copyright policies, put out a blog post happily explaining this lawsuit as if it were a perfectly normal and reasonable copyright lawsuit. In fact, the Copyright Alliance — somewhat incredibly — says that Joe Exotic should have just taken down this obviously fair use image when he got the DMCA takedown notice, to avoid the lawsuit, which was clearly filed as a pile-on to go with the trademark lawsuit:

Joe Exotic may have been able to avoid the two copyright infringement lawsuits and not been liable to Big Cat Rescue at all. Big Cat Rescue had sent a notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (?DMCA?) requesting the Photographs and videos containing the alleged infringing Photographs be taken down from the respective websites.

But instead of taking down the alleged infringing material, Exotic made the deliberate choice to challenge Big Cat Rescue?s claims by filing a counternotice contesting the infringement claims. After the counternotice was filed, under the law, Big Cat Rescue had 10 days to file a lawsuit in federal court, otherwise Exotic would be permitted to repost the photos.

Had Exotic not filed the counternotice, it is possible that Big Cat Rescue would have simply been content with the photos (and videos containing the photos) being taken down and it may not have sued Exotic. It should also be pointed out that, not only did the court hold that Exotic was liable for copyright infringement, it also held that he lied in the counternotice that he filed.

This is quite incredible. This is basically the Copyright Alliance ignoring fair use (which it literally never mentions), ignoring the obvious SLAPP nature of the lawsuit, and falsely claiming that the court held that Joe Exotic lied in the counternotice (it did not, it said that it was a matter to be determined at trial):

The evidence submitted by Plaintiff demonstrates that genuine disputes exist as to whether any of the Defendants “knowingly” misrepresented facts. Plaintiff, therefore, is not entitled to summary judgment.

But even more bizarre is the idea that if he’d taken down the images “it is possible that Big Cat Rescue would have simply been content…” Given that this was one of a few pile-on lawsuits all designed to go after Joe Exotic, the idea that Baskin would have simply been content to drop things if he’d taken the images down upon the DMCA notice defies all sense of reality. It’s nonsense.

Even worse: in a Twitter discussion about whether or not this lawsuit was a SLAPP suit, a former top US Copyright Office official, and now top USPTO official, David Carson, misleadingly claimed that it wasn’t a SLAPP because the court awarded judgment to Baskin. Except that’s not at all what happened. The case settled before it could go to trial, just like in the trademark case, and the only award was what was agreed to (perhaps in bad faith by Joe Exotic) as part of the settlement, and not because the judge or a jury actually weighed all the facts.

Separately, this case stretched from 2011 to 2013. At that time, Florida had a very, very narrow anti-SLAPP law. It only put in place a (slightly) better one in 2015, long after this case was over. So there was no official way to use an anti-SLAPP law to fight this case at the time.

As with the documentary, most of the details of this case are crazy, with crazy personalities. But it’s even more ridiculous when even copyright maximalist lobbyists and (worse) Copyright Office/Patent Office officials try to defend this obvious abuse of copyright law in a SLAPP suit, and argue that the person using the photograph should have just silenced himself to get out of the suit.

Correction: in the original version, we said David Carson worked at the Copyright Office, which is where he used to work, as opposed to running copyright policy for the USPTO, where he currently works (in between he worked for the recording industry). That has since been corrected.

Filed Under: anti-slapp, carole baskin, censorship, copyright, florida, joe exotic, oklahoma, slapp, tiger king, trademark
Companies: big cat rescue, copyright alliance

Ridiculously Stupid: 4 State Attorneys General File Totally Bogus Lawsuit Against Internet Transition

from the make-it-stop dept

Okay, this is really dumb. What is it about state attorneys general making totally bullshit claims? It seems to happen with fairly consistent frequency. The latest is that four state AGs (from Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Nevada) have filed a lawsuit to stop the IANA transition. If you don’t recall, we’ve written about this a bunch. A bunch of people are up in arms over something they don’t seem to understand. The IANA transition is a good thing. It’s not the US government handing over the internet to Russia and China as you may have heard. It’s the Commerce Department severing an almost entirely symbolic link between it and a very specific internet governance capability concerning top level domains. And it’s important to complete the transition because other countries (including Russia and China) keep pointing to this symbolic link as a reason for why they should have more say in internet governance. Getting rid of the link keeps the internet functioning as it has for decades — and takes away a weapon from Russia and China. More importantly, going back on the transition now actually gives even more ammo to Russia and China, allowing them to point to unilateral actions by the US gov’t to block a process that everyone had agreed upon earlier.

Anyway, to the actual lawsuit. It’s dumb. It’s really dumb. If you live in Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma or Nevada, you should be embarrassed for your Attorneys General. Elect better ones next time, please. First of all, they have no standing whatsoever to file this lawsuit. The IANA/top level domain system is not those states’ property. They have no claim here other than “HEY LOOK! POLITICAL FOOTBALL THAT WE CAN GRANDSTAND OVER!” That does not give them standing. The best they can come up with for claiming standing is… uh… “hey, we have some websites.” No, really.

Plaintiffs operate multiple websites, including those that use the .gov and .com generic top level domains, to conduct their business and communicate with their citizens.

Yeah. That’s not enough to get standing here, buckos. Also, in filing a lawsuit they don’t allege any actual harms. That’s kind of a big no no when filing a lawsuit. Instead, they sorta maybe kinda speculate that maybe possibly there could (sorta, maybe) be some (possible, maybe, not really) harm in the theoretical future. Maybe.

Second, the entire crux of the lawsuit is that the authoritative root zone file and the internet domain name system itself are somehow “property” of the federal government, and that this transition is, in effect, the giving away of government property without an act of Congress, violating the Property Clause of the Constitution. Except, as we just discussed recently, the Government Accountability Office studied this issue earlier this month and came to the conclusion that “nope, it’s not property.” In case you missed it then:

It is unlikely that either the authoritative root zone file?the public ?address book? for the top level of the Internet domain name system?or the Internet domain name system as a whole, is U.S. Government property under Article IV. We did not identify any Government-held copyrights, patents, licenses, or other traditional intellectual property interests in either the root zone file or the domain name system. It also is doubtful that either would be considered property under common law principles, because no entity appears to have a right to their exclusive possession or use.

Others have walked through some of the other charges and find them all totally lacking. A judge is set to review this request for an injunction later today, and you never know how any individual judge might rule. So it’s entirely possible that this will muck up the timing of the transition, but long term, this filing is not just a joke, but it’s an embarrassment and a waste of taxpayer money in those four states.

Filed Under: arizona, congress, gao, iana, iana transition, internet governance, nevada, oklahoma, property, standing, texas
Companies: icann

Oklahoma Cops Debut Tool That Allows Them To Drain Pre-Paid Cards During Traffic Stops

from the Square,-but-for-fucking-citizens dept

A couple of years ago — as the ugliness of asset forfeiture abuse was becoming a mainstream media topic — the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s senior Washington correspondent published a cautionary article featuring a very blunt headline:

American shakedown: Police won’t charge you, but they’ll grab your money

In it, the CBC’s Neil MacDonald pointed out that being “not from around here,” coupled with rental vehicles and cash — made visiting Canadians little more than rolling ATMs for “drug interdiction task forces” sporting nifty acronyms and friendly asset-sharing partnerships with federal agencies.

MacDonald listed a few tactics that might lower Canadians’ chances of being robbed at badgepoint:

Avoid long chats if you’re pulled over. Answer questions politely and concisely, then persistently ask if you are free to go.

Don’t leave litter on the vehicle floor, especially energy drink cans.

Don’t use air or breath fresheners; they could be interpreted as an attempt to mask the smell of drugs.

Don’t be too talkative. Don’t be too quiet. Try not to wear expensive designer clothes. Don’t have tinted windows.

And for heaven’s sake, don’t consent to a search if you are carrying a big roll of legitimate cash.

Cash = guilt to many law enforcement agencies, even if they’re only interested in pursuing cash, rather than criminal charges.

WHERE’S YOUR MOSES NOW?

[T]he Oklahoma Highway Patrol has a device that also allows them to seize money in your bank account or on prepaid cards.

It’s called an ERAD, or Electronic Recovery and Access to Data machine, and state police began using 16 of them last month.

Here’s how it works. If a trooper suspects you may have money tied to some type of crime, the highway patrol can scan any cards you have and seize the money.

Well… fuck.

So much for keeping the thieving, non-prosecuting cops off your back by carrying prepaid cards rather than cash. Highway-patrolling drug warriors are now going to be pressing the narrative that drug dealers and other criminals now use cards, because asset forfeiture has severely disrupted the cash-based drug economy or something.

There’s literally no way to win. Any amount of money is considered inherently suspicious when it’s in cash form. Now any amount of money — no matter where it’s stored — can be declared the fruits of criminal activity by a cop with an ERAD device. Law enforcement can now drain any prepaid cards in your possession all without you having to leave the driver’s seat.

And they have every incentive to do so. ERAD sells these devices to cops for $5,000 and takes 7.7% of the haul. (Here’s Oklahoma’s contract [PDF] with ERAD for the devices.) These devices aren’t going to pay for themselves. Nope, citizens will pay for them — twice. First, during the initial outlay and a second time when their cards are drained by law enforcement officers.

But it’s totally cool because there’s an almost non-existent chance you’ll be able to recover improperly-seized funds at some undetermined point in the future.

“If you can prove can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we’ve done that in the past,” [Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. John] Vincent said about any money seized.

Sure, that sounds like due process, but it really isn’t. Law enforcement agencies have at least 30 days before they have to officially notify those whose money they’ve seized. From that point, seized assets head into a labyrinthine adjudication process in which the government does everything it can to keep the owners of forfeited cash from participating, starting with in rem proceedings that pit the state versus seized money, rather than against the person from which the funds were seized.

To navigate this, you need a lawyer, preferably one with experience in recovering forfeited property. That isn’t cheap. During the long, expensive process, agencies will often try to push people into accepting low-dollar settlements that allow the government to keep money it hasn’t proven is tied to criminal activity.

In many cases, the dollar amount is low enough that the expense of recovering it makes it a losing proposition. But those lower dollar amounts can also be the difference between solvency and bankruptcy for someone who’s had their money seized. With this technology, officers will literally be stealing people’s paychecks, as those who aren’t able to secure a checking account are now almost exclusively receiving their paychecks on reloadable prepaid cards.

And, in almost every state, including Oklahoma, there’s no conviction stipulation tied to asset forfeiture, meaning the government only has to stake a claim based on dubious “evidence” — like the driver was traveling on a major interstate, had one too many air fresheners in the car, an officer thought he smelled marijuana, etc. — to hold onto money it can’t prove is tied to criminal activity.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, card scanner, civil asset forfeiture, debit cards, oklahoma, oklahoma highway patrol, police