
Carmen Ortiz weighing appeal for motel owner forfeiture suit - forgingahead
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/01/ortiz_motel_owner_we%E2%80%99re_not_done_yet
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fleitz
Excellent, hopefully she can fully sully the reputation of the USDOJ to the
point where the Senate has to step in.

A horrible case like this is exactly the kind of case to bring to trial before
the people to set precedent. The more egregious the violation the more
restrictive the regulation will be. The harder you push the pendulum the
harder it swings back.

Sounds like she's vindictive enough to dig two graves.

Does anyone know how much traction she's getting amongst the AM radio crowd?
Sounds like something that audience would eat up, especially in light of Kelo.

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imjk
There's nothing scarier to me than people of power who are so drunk in their
own arrogance that they refuse to ever accept that they could be in the wrong.
I too hope that this come back to bite her.

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cheez
I believe the nature of the job and ascendancy to the job requires a lack of
empathy.

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electic
This just reeks of being vindictive, evil, stubborn, revengeful, and down
right dumb. This woman has no place in any elected office.

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cobrabyte
Sigh. This woman just doesn't get it, does she? You'd think that the public
taking to pitchforks for her job would have led to some serious introspection
on her part.

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emkemp
Or maybe, just maybe, she thinks she's doing the right thing?

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mpyne
I think it's the Marines that have the saying: "Anything worth shooting, is
worth shooting twice." Unless the judge points out some obvious mis-
application of the prosecutor's legal logic then it _shouldn't_ be unusual to
"weigh an appeal" as the logic was supposed to have been sound enough to
warrant the case in the first place.

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AnthonyMouse
>I think it's the Marines that have the saying: "Anything worth shooting, is
worth shooting twice."

The war on drugs is not a war between nation states. This hotel owner is a
civilian and a citizen of the United States, not an enemy soldier.

>Unless the judge points out some obvious mis-application of the prosecutor's
legal logic ...

Isn't that what the judge just did in throwing out the case?

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mpyne
I didn't mention anything about the war on drugs. I'll spell out the analogy
though: Anything worth trying once for, is worth trying twice for.

> Isn't that what the judge just did in throwing out the case?

Judges throw out cases on non-obvious reasoning all the time. E.g. "the
prosecutor failed to consider the test used in this Circuit since U.S. v. Foo
(2004) and therefore the charges are moot".

~~~
AnthonyMouse
>I didn't mention anything about the war on drugs. I'll spell out the analogy
though: Anything worth trying once for, is worth trying twice for.

The context of the case is the war on drugs. That's the pretense for the
government trying to steal his hotel, and I get the analogy. The problem is
the premise. Even if everything worth trying once is worth trying twice, that
doesn't do anything to prove you were right the first time, without which
trying again is just compounding the error.

>Judges throw out cases on non-obvious reasoning all the time.

And is that what happened in this case? Because it seems like in this case it
was "obvious" that the government was trying to take this man's hotel because
it had no mortgage, they expected him to have insufficient liquid assets to
successfully contest a seizure and when law enforcement seizes assets they get
the resale value added to their budgets.

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mpyne
>>Judges throw out cases on non-obvious reasoning all the time. > And is that
what happened in this case?

I don't know, I haven't checked the details of the ruling.

> Because it seems like in this case it was "obvious" that the government was
> trying to take this man's hotel because it had no mortgage, they expected
> him to have insufficient liquid assets to successfully contest a seizure and
> when law enforcement seizes assets they get the resale value added to their
> budgets.

Oh sure, real obvious. I'm sure all $1 they'd be able to get for that property
would really help boost their training budget...

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AnthonyMouse
>I'm sure all $1 they'd be able to get for that property would really help
boost their training budget...

From the article: "his mortgage-free property is worth more than $1 million."

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lysol
When civil cases are used instead of criminal cases it seems particularly
disgusting that the government can even appeal a decision in favor of a
private citizen.

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jMyles
This is not off-topic. This is about the use of "discretion" on the part of a
prosecutor to stifle entrepreneurship. This is squarely and centrally within
the mainstream of HN.

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tedunangst
Say what? You think the motive for seizing the hotel was "I'm tired of all
these pesky entrepreneurs"?

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eliben
Please, stop this. This is off topic on HN. A prosecutor's legal battles with
some drug-infested motel is not what I come here to read about. Stop turning
HN into a tabloid where people read about loved and hated celebrities.

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thesis
I'm not sure about you, but I am not forced to read every article on the first
page. Skip over them if they don't interest you. Sheesh.

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eliben
But there's only a limited amount of articles on the first page... I would
much rather see something programming/startup/technology-related up there. The
threads about Aaron were important. The follow-up threads about his legal case
vs. Ortiz were perhaps less interesting to some, but still very much relevant.

_This_ is blatantly off topic. Journalists and bloggers are sensationalist and
know how to keep milking a good story when they see it. I do not expect this
to overflow to HN.

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shardling
>_This_ is blatantly off topic.

It's worse than that -- it's simply not interesting.

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socrates1998
Wow, speechless.

