Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 371.0

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Unit: $U89

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326

UNITED STATES v. BAJAKAJIAN

Opinion of the Court

in” the offense.
Ibid. The court also found that the funds
were not connected to any other crime and that respondent
was transporting the money to repay a lawful debt. Tr.
61–62 (Jan. 19, 1995). The District Court further found that
respondent had failed to report that he was taking the cur-
rency out of the United States because of fear stemming
from “cultural differences”: Respondent, who had grown up
as a member of the Armenian minority in Syria, had a “dis-
Id., at 63; see Tr. of Oral Arg.
trust for the Government.”
30.

Although § 982(a)(1) directs sentencing courts to impose
full forfeiture, the District Court concluded that such forfeit-
ure would be “extraordinarily harsh” and “grossly dispropor-
tionate to the offense in question,” and that it would there-
fore violate the Excessive Fines Clause. Tr. 63. The court
instead ordered forfeiture of $15,000, in addition to a sen-
tence of three years of probation and a ﬁne of $5,000––the
maximum ﬁne under the Sentencing Guidelines––because the
court believed that the maximum Guidelines ﬁne was “too
little” and that a $15,000 forfeiture would “make up for what
I think a reasonable ﬁne should be.”

Ibid.

The United States appealed, seeking full forfeiture of re-
spondent’s currency as provided in § 982(a)(1). The Court of
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit afﬁrmed.
84 F. 3d 334 (1996).
Applying Circuit precedent, the court held that, to satisfy
the Excessive Fines Clause, a forfeiture must fulﬁll two con-
ditions: The property forfeited must be an “instrumentality”
of the crime committed, and the value of the property must
be proportional to the culpability of the owner.
Id., at 336
(citing United States v. Real Property Located in El Dorado
County, 59 F. 3d 974, 982 (CA9 1995)). A majority of the
panel determined that the currency was not an “instrumen-
tality” of the crime of failure to report because “ ‘[t]he crime
[in a currency reporting offense] is the withholding of infor-
mation, . . . not the possession or the transportation of the
84 F. 3d, at 337 (quoting United States v. $69,292
money.’ ”