Timbs v. Indiana: A Modest Victory and a Missed Opportunity
On February 20, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision on the Eighth Amendment’s excessive fines clause. In Timbs v. Indiana, 2019 DJDAR 1337, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg authored a unanimous decision holding that the excessive fines clause is an incorporated protection applicable to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. A few state supreme courts, most recently Indiana’s, remarkably had concluded that the clause did not apply to state forfeiture actions because the U.S. Supreme Court had not yet squarely held that it did apply. The U.S. Supreme Court easily cleared that up in Timbs but stopped short of providing additional guidance as to what constitutes an excessive fine in this context or otherwise protecting property owners from civil forfeiture’s constant abuse. The decision is disappointing for what it did not say, given that there was ample opportunity to point out why Indiana’s drug civil forfeiture system is uniquely abusive and blatantly unconstitutional, as explained below.
The opinion’s thorough and illuminating discussion of the 800-year history of the excessive fines clause (and the much longer and fascinating history provided in Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion) are quite helpful to anyone raising an excessive fines issue. The history of the clause shows that at common law a fine or forfeiture exceeding the defendant’s current ability to pay or depriving him of his livelihood (for example by taking away a farmer’s land or farming equipment) would be considered unconstitutionally excessive.
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“Timbs v. Indiana: A Modest Victory and a Missed Opportunity,” by David B. Smith* and Jed M. Silversmith was published in the May 2019 issue of For the Defense (Vol. 4, Issue 2), a PACDL publication. Reprinted with permission.
* David B. Smith is in private practice as a partner at the law firm of David B. Smith, PLLC in Alexandria, Virginia.