Here’s more fuel for the fire over policing for profit:  The Texas Supreme Court today ruled that law enforcement can seize assets even when police officers violated the law and conducted an illegal search. See the opinion. In the case, police found drugs as a result of an illegal search; the criminal case was thrown out but prosecutors kept appealing on the forfeiture case, hoping to take ownership of the defendant’s Lincoln Navigator.

The intermediate appellate court had ruled that the Code of Criminal Procedure “precludes the state from initiating a civil-forfeiture proceeding based on an illegal search.” SCOTX, though, ruled that courts may impose no sanction on law enforcement for illegal searches in civil proceedings, holding for the first time that the exclusionary rule does not apply in these cases.

SCOTX decided that the purpose of the exclusionary rule is to punish law enforcement misbehavior as a deterrent and judged cops had been punished enough by throwing out the criminal case. They shouldn’t be doubly punished, according to this reasoning, by being disallowed from seizing the defendant’s assets.

Can you believe these judges are supposedly conservatives? Hard to imagine a less respectful stance toward the constitution and property rights, much less a more explicit abrogation of limited government principles.