US cops can steal your CD collection

A US STATE Supreme Court has decided that coppers in the city of Concord can keep more than 500 CDs they took from a man suspected of piracy.

This is despite the fact that several court cases have been unable to prove that Michael Cohen, owner of Pitchfork Records pirated any of the CDs.

Inspector Knacker of the Concord Yard arrested Cohen in 2003 for attempting to flog bootleg recordings. The coppers' case collapsed when it turned out that most of the recordings were made legally.

The police dropped six of the seven charges, and Cohen went to trial and was found not guilty in the remaining charge.

However, Inspector Knacker of the Yard refused to return the CDs and Cohen had to go to State Supreme Court to get them back.

Unfortunately for Cohen, the robed but not wigged ones thought that it was fine for police to impound property that they believed was stolen even if there was no evidence. The only judge who disagreed said that the state's failure to establish in any way that the seized property constitutes contraband made it impossible to justify keeping Cohen's property.

However it seems that the precedent is set. If judges and coppers suspect that a crime has been committed they can take away your property.

More here. µ