Well, they did wrong so gave back the car. As to the money???? It is a shame you can't have the legal tender of the USA with you without being suspected of a crime.
The real question is what lead to the search of the car in the first place. Window tint doesn't give them cause to go spelunking through the vehicle.
So, if you are travelling and have a large amount of cash, and police allegedly find a tiny quantity of drugs in the car, they have the right to confiscate all of that cash and never give it back? This comes very close to stealing. That's a tiny burden of evidence to confiscate someone's valuable property.
Another horror story which is the result of the constant erosion of our rights hatched and upheld by the phony conservatives in the Congress and the Supreme Court. They have made it legal for policemen all across America to steal money and property from citizens without even charging them, much less convicting them of a crime. Highway (robbers) Patrolmen across America have made a cottage industry out of illegally pulling people over, illegally searching them and stealing their money. Thanks to the so called conservative SCOTUS, the burden of proof is on those whose money is stolen. Outrageous!!!
I wasn't the most precise in describing that. I agree that they should be able to confiscate it with a charge of a crime (not without a charge), and not keep it unless there is a conviction.
Sorry I took so long to deal with the above. I get alerts yet at times am besieged by alerts and notice later I missed some of my alerts of things posted to me. I am rusty by now on the points of the case. But isn't it true they did get the car back? That fixed the problem and show my analysis is correct. As to large sums of cash, even having legal tender is illegal per some laws. I invite you to decide who authored the laws and then we might wonder why government has a right to watch you so closely it is counting your cash.
But had you checked the federal laws, just because Democrats in Congress have been so long ran the house and for the most part the Senate too, and those laws date back to Democrats running congress with many Democrat presidents. my suspicions are it was Democrats making such laws.
The state did it. Not the Federal Government. They got back the car. The prosecutor returned it. http://reason.com/blog/2016/10/28/arizona-prosecutor-returns-car-to-elderl
Why should they be able to keep somebody in jail without a conviction? It's a temporary status until the court case has resolved.
You are kept in jail without conviction 1) for your own safety (drunk as a skunk, e.g.) or 2) to assure you don't flee, subject to a bond hearing, before your trial. Neither of these is remotely related to taking your friend's car that had some dope in it while you were driving. Or less: drug possession is roughly half of forfeitures. Almost any crime will do. The Supreme Court case was over a man trying to pick up a prostitute in his wife's car.
Occasionally it is not a temporary status. You can be found not guilty a year after the arrest and in some cases your forfeited assets are long gone covering part of the police and FBI budgets.
No it is "legalized" robbery. Asset forfeiture is a blatant violation of the 5th Amendment. No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. Welcome to Fascist Amerika where laws are created to trump the Constitution and make every ordinary American a criminal 24/7. They don't of course apply to those in positions of power. "Everything Hitler did was legal." - Martin Luther King Jr.
If you're stupid enough to lend your car to the kinds of people who commit crimes, then you have no one to blame but yourself. Most of us are sensible enough not to even mix with that type, much less lend them our cars.
No, I still have the fascist police state to blame for depriving me of my property without due process.
So you feel you should somehow be exempt from legal attention due to your association with criminals? Bizarre.
Legal 'attention' is not the same as the willful confiscation of property without compensation by an agency of the government. Some people who don't split hairs call that old fashioned theft. Maybe the police are not the kind of people you should be associating with.
If the car has been used in the commission of a crime, or is suspected of being used, police have every right and justification for impounding it. If you don't want your stuff used in the commission of crimes, don't hang out with or breed criminals. It's VERY easy to avoid.
Without due process they do not, and that normally requires an order and a hearing in front of a judge. A police assertion of a right to impound, is not the same a right to impound. If you do not like the due process clause, move to a country without our constitution.
I don't know about your laws, but generally speaking police can easily obtain paperwork (warrant, etc) for impounding cars under suspicion or known to have been used in commission of crime. Once again though .. it's incredibly easy to avoid. Why complain about something which will only happen if you literally go out of your way to make sure it does? It's absurd.