finding that civil forfeiture action seeking forfeiture of convicted drug dealer’s home and business was subject to Excessive Fines Clause and noting that the Clause “limits the government’s power to extract payments … as punishment for some offense.” (second emphasis added and internal quotation marks omitted)
How later courts described this case
- finding that civil forfeiture action seeking forfeiture of convicted drug dealer’s home and business was subject to Excessive Fines Clause and noting that the Clause “limits the government’s power to extract payments … as punishment for some offense.” (second emphasis added and internal quotation marks omitted)
- holding that the forfeiture of conveyances and real property pursuant to §§ 881(a)(4) and (a)(7) constituted punishment because under the statute the amount forfeited "can vary so dramatically that any relationship between the Government's actual costs and the amount of the sanction is merely coincidental"
- holding that “[w]e need not exclude the possibility that a forfeiture serves remedial purposes to conclude that it is subject to the limitations of the Excessive Fines Clause. We, however, must determine that it can only be explained as serving in part to punish.”
- holding that restitution is a criminal penalty that negates the imposition of prejudgment interest
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Reported overruled by United States v. Bajakajian, 524 U.S. 321 (1998) — not on the Supreme Court's list
Therefore, I conclude that Bajakajian overruled Chandler. III. Under Austin and Bajakajian, the appropriate inquiry in forfeiture cases is twofold.
Questioned by Georgia v. Bell (In Re Bell), 215 B.R. 266 (1997)
509 U.S. 602, 113 S.Ct. 2801, 125 L.Ed.2d 488 (1993), the Court called into question the very nature of the civil forfeiture remedy.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Robinson v. Huerta, 123 F. Supp. 3d 30 (2015)
509 U.S. 602, 608, 113 S.Ct. 2801, 125 L.Ed.2d 488 (1993), and thus are inapplicable to this type of administrative action.
Distinguished by Hoskins v. Business Men's Assurance, 2002 Mo. LEXIS 79 (2002)
509 U.S. 602, 606, 113 S.Ct. 2801, 125 L.Ed.2d 488 (1993), is inapposite.
Distinguished by In re 1994 Chevrolet Cavalier VIN 1G1JF14T7R7112126 New Hampshire Registration AWT291, 142 N.H. 705 (1998)
The Supreme Court, however, has since unequivocally determined that Austin is inapplicable to double jeopardy analysis because the excessive fines clause is not parallel to, or even related to, double jeopardy protection.
Distinguished by In re Forfeiture of $25,505, 220 Mich. App. 572 (1996)
In United States v Tilley, 18 F3d 295, 299-300 (CA 5, 1994), the court held that Austin was inapplicable to forfeiture of drug proceeds.
The opinion
Justice Kennedy,
with whom
The Chief Justice and Justice Thomas join, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I am in substantial agreement with Part I of Justice Scalia’s opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. I share Justice Scalia’s belief that Part III of the Court’s opinion is quite unnecessary for the decision of the case, fails to support the Court's argument, and seems rather doubtful as well.
In recounting the law’s history, we risk anachronism if we attribute to an earlier time an intent to employ legal con *629 cepts that had not yet evolved. I see something of that in the Court’s opinion here, for in its eagerness to discover a unified theory of forfeitures, it recites a consistent rationale of personal punishment that neither the cases nor other narratives of the common law suggest. For many of the reasons explained by Justice Scalia, I am not convinced that all in rem forfeitures were on account of the owner’s blameworthy conduct. Some impositions of in rem forfeiture may have been designed either to remove property that was itself causing injury, see, e. g., Harmony v. United States, 2 How. 210, 233 (1844), or to give the court jurisdiction over an asset that it could control in order to make injured parties whole, see Republic Nat. Bank of Miami v. United States, 506 U. S. 80, 87 (1992).
At some point, we may have to confront the constitutional question whether forfeiture is permitted when the owner has committed no wrong of any sort, intentional or negligent. That for me would raise a serious question. Though the history of forfeiture laws might not be determinative of that issue, it would have an important bearing on the outcome. I would reserve for that or some other necessary occasion the inquiry the Court undertakes here. Unlike Justice Scalia, see ante, at 625, I would also reserve the question whether in rem forfeitures always amount to an intended punishment of the owner of forfeited property.
With these observations, I concur in part and concur in the judgment.