Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 373.0

524US2

Unit: $U89

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UNITED STATES v. BAJAKAJIAN

Opinion of the Court

Inc., 492 U. S. 257, 265 (1989). The Excessive Fines Clause
thus “limits the government’s power to extract payments,
whether in cash or in kind,
‘as punishment for some of-
fense.’ ” Austin v. United States, 509 U. S. 602, 609–610
(1993) (emphasis deleted). Forfeitures—payments in kind—
are thus “ﬁnes” if they constitute punishment for an offense.
We have little trouble concluding that the forfeiture of cur-
rency ordered by § 982(a)(1) constitutes punishment. The
statute directs a court to order forfeiture as an additional
sanction when “imposing sentence on a person convicted of ”
a willful violation of § 5316’s reporting requirement. The
forfeiture is thus imposed at the culmination of a criminal
proceeding and requires conviction of an underlying felony,
and it cannot be imposed upon an innocent owner of unre-
ported currency, but only upon a person who has himself
been convicted of a § 5316 reporting violation.3 Cf. id., at
619 (holding forfeiture to be a “ﬁne” in part because the
forfeiture statute “expressly provide[d] an ‘innocent owner’
defense” and thus “look[ed] . . . like punishment”).

3 Although the currency reporting statute provides that “a person or an
agent or bailee of the person shall ﬁle a report,” 31 U. S. C. § 5316(a), the
statute ordering the criminal forfeiture of unreported currency provides
that “[t]he court, in imposing sentence on a person convicted of ” failure to
ﬁle the required report, “shall order that the person forfeit to the United
States” any property “involved in” or “traceable to” the offense, 18 U. S. C.
§ 982(a)(1). The combined effect of these two statutes is that an owner of
unreported currency is not subject to criminal forfeiture if his agent or
bailee is the one who fails to ﬁle the required report, because such an
owner could not be convicted of the reporting offense. The United States
endorsed this interpretation at oral argument in this case. See Tr. of
Oral Arg. 24–25.

For this reason, the dissent’s speculation about the effect of today’s hold-
ing on “kingpins” and “cash couriers” is misplaced. See post, at 352, 354.
Section 982(a)(1)’s criminal in personam forfeiture reaches only currency
owned by someone who himself commits a reporting crime.
It is unlikely
that the Government, in the course of criminally indicting and prosecuting
a cash courier, would not bother to investigate the source and true owner-
ship of unreported funds.