My first post - Driving with money is a crime!

It seems that Eight Circuit Court of Appeals feels that if you are traveling with a large amount of cash, you must be a bad guy. It does not matter if you were arrested or convicted of any wrong doing, your cash can become the property of the police department that finds it. The Newspaper.com has this to report:

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that if a motorist is carrying large sums of money, it is automatically subject to confiscation. In the case entitled, "United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit took that amount of cash away from Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez, a man with a "lack of significant criminal history" neither accused nor convicted of any crime.

Yes, you did read that correctly. You do not even have to be accused of committing a crime to have your cash confiscated. Now this is quite the revenue generating concept for your local police department.

The court's reasoning?

Yesterday the Eighth Circuit summarily dismissed Gonzolez's story. It overturned a lower court ruling that had found no evidence of drug activity, stating, "We respectfully disagree and reach a different conclusion... Possession of a large sum of cash is 'strong evidence' of a connection to drug activity."

This is just another example of the Judicial Branch gone wild.

The full opinion is here.