Intriguing Concept

I'm not a big fan of civil forfeiture.  I think that it is legalized theft, and should be ended. 

That being said, I do think that the proposal to use civil forfeiture against energy companies.

Short version of civil forfeiture:  If a cop claims that they think that an asset, (Homes, cars, cash , jewelry, etc.) they can take it, and the onus is on you to prove that this property is not involved with a crime.

In a given year, law enforcement typically takes more assets from people than do burglars.

The procedural barriers are basically non existent.  All the police officer has to do is claim that they think that what they took was involved in a crime, and they can take it, and you have to file a lawsuit to prove that this is untrue.

How easy should it be for cops to steal things from you? Very easy, the Supreme Court ruled in Culley v. Marshall earlier this month. “Civil asset forfeiture,” as it’s called, is a legal tool available in most states and under federal law that allows law enforcement agencies to seize essentially any form of property, including cars, money, and real estate. The state doesn’t need a criminal conviction, criminal charges, or even an arrest. If the police have reasonable grounds to believe that your car is linked to alleged criminal activity, they can seize it. That’s even true if the suspected crime had nothing to do with you, like in Culley, where plaintiff Halima Culley’s car was taken after her son was pulled over for driving with marijuana.

This is clearly an inequitable system. But what if it were directed at worthy targets? What if, instead of targeting assets like Halima Culley’s 2015 Nissan Altima, public safety officials utilized this powerful tool to seize and hold property connected to serious corporate crimes, like dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure whose criminally reckless use by Big Oil companies is endangering countless Americans?

Asset forfeiture was introduced to help law enforcement officials thwart large-scale criminal enterprises—the FBI describes it as a tool that targets “criminal organizations” and “terrorists” in order to “disrupt, dismantle, and deter those who prey on the vulnerable for financial gain.” But these days, a typical case involves the police seizing the property of a low- or moderate-income person of color because of a suspected connection to drugs. Then the person seeking to recover their property is subjected to a labyrinthine process—which the Supreme Court upheld—that makes it nearly impossible for them to recover their assets. In some instances, keeping the assets is the whole point. One amicus brief in Culley describes incidents in which law enforcement officials were caught on tape describing forfeited flat-screen televisions as “very popular with police departments” and referring to forfeited property as “little goodies.” Many departments are permitted to keep the proceeds from selling seized property and, perhaps not surprisingly, those facing budget challenges engage in more seizures. A 2020 study estimated that governments have taken in at least $68.8 billion through these procedures.

Deploying civil forfeiture in these ways is profoundly unjust. But many communities do, in fact, urgently need tools that can disrupt and disable large criminal enterprises that are inflicting serious harms on the public, as civil forfeiture was initially intended to do. Rather than continuing to focus on the property of suspected low-level offenders (or that of their mothers), state and local officials should turn this power against serious offenders causing mass harm, like corporate criminal enterprises. One example is the fossil fuel companies whose actions are responsible for widespread destruction and death in communities across the country. For decades, Big Oil companies and the products they sell have generated the majority of all global greenhouse gas emissions and defrauded the public to block climate action, despite knowing that these actions would lead to lethal and, in their own words, “globally catastrophic” climate consequences. A growing number of legal experts believe these actions could fall under the category of criminal violations such as reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, conspiracy and racketeering, and homicide. Such charges are routinely lodged against defendants who have not engaged in the same type of willful conduct and are not inflicting the same scale of harm as fossil fuel companies.

Sounds to me like I there is enough here for law enforcement officers to claim that they think that oil company assets are the product of a crime, and so they could seize corporate jets, real estate leased for energy exploration, refineries, tankers, etc.

What's more should they do so so, one can be reasonably assured that Congress and state legislatures would change the law to tighten up procedural standards to prevent this.

The central tenet of conservatism, and corrupt law enforcement, is that, to quote (the composer, not the political theorist) Frank Wilhoit, "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

If the law is applied to bind the rich and powerful, the polity will respond by making the law less arbitrary and capricious.