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The Crazy Origin of Civil Asset Forfeiture

You can lose your car. You can lose your cash. And you don’t even have to be charged with a crime. In this episode of Plain Meaning, I tell the true story behind civil asset forfeiture—the legal process that allows the government to seize property without a criminal conviction, without a jury, and often without ever charging the owner at all. It begins on an Oklahoma highway. In September 2024, Oklahoma Highway Patrol pulled over Jabrion Hardin for an allegedly illegal lane change. An officer claimed to smell marijuana. A search followed. Thousands in cash was found. Hardin explained the money came from a legal settlement. He had documentation. But the money was taken anyway. The State of Oklahoma didn’t charge Hardin with a crime. Instead, it charged the money. State of Oklahoma v. Sixty-Two Thousand Six Hundred Fifty Dollars in U.S. Currency. The cash was the defendant. That legal fiction—that property can be guilty even when a person is not—didn’t start in America. It goes back centuries, to medieval England, where ropes, carts, ships, and even coins were blamed for death and forfeited to the Crown under a doctrine called deodand—“a thing given to God.” In this episode, you’ll see: -How medieval coroners charged objects with crimes -How kings quietly turned piety into revenue -How admiralty courts used forfeiture without juries -How that system crossed the Atlantic -How it survived the American Revolution -And how it reappeared on modern highways as civil asset forfeiture From a rope on a ship in 1336… To a cart in a forest in 1275… To a shirt sewn with silver in 1313… To John Hancock’s ship in Boston Harbor… To a traffic stop in Oklahoma in 2024. The names changed. The justifications changed. The mechanism did not. This episode traces the origin of civil asset forfeiture, why courts say it’s constitutional, and how calling property guilty allows the government to bypass due process protections promised by the Fifth and Seventh Amendments. And this is only the beginning. In the companion episode, How Civil Asset Forfeiture Took America, I explain how this power expanded after the Civil War, Prohibition, and modern crime legislation—often with the blessing of Congress and the courts. Plain Meaning explores quiet mechanisms with enormous real-world consequences—systems most people never see until they’re caught inside them. New episodes every Tuesday.