Concerns about the government having unlimited power to require pretrial forfeiture or a freeze of a criminal defendant’s assets—unrelated to the crime charged—swarmed across the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday in a case that involves the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
The government’s argument in Luis v. United States appeared to be in trouble when Justice Anthony Kennedy leaned forward and said to Deputy Solicitor General Edward Dreeben: “Just to be clear: the necessary consequence of your position is that any state in the union can provide for forfeiture or a freeze of assets pending trial in any assault and battery case, spousal abuse case, criminal negligence, date rape cases in order to make the victim whole, to pay for medical costs, to pay for pain and suffering, and can freeze those assets even if the consequences of that is that in most of those cases most people cannot afford counsel.”
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