Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 384

524US2

Unit: $U89

[09-11-00 13:24:46] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 524 U. S. 321 (1998)

339

Opinion of the Court

(Nov. 1994). Such penalties conﬁrm a minimal
culpability.14

level of

The harm that respondent caused was also minimal. Fail-
ure to report his currency affected only one party, the Gov-
ernment, and in a relatively minor way. There was no fraud
on the United States, and respondent caused no loss to the
public ﬁsc. Had his crime gone undetected, the Government
would have been deprived only of the information that
$357,144 had left the country. The Government and the dis-
sent contend that there is a correlation between the amount
forfeited and the harm that the Government would have suf-
fered had the crime gone undetected. See Brief for United
States 30 (forfeiture is “perfectly calibrated”); post, at 344 (“a
ﬁne calibrated with this accuracy”). We disagree. There is
no inherent proportionality in such a forfeiture.
It is impos-
sible to conclude, for example, that the harm respondent
caused is anywhere near 30 times greater than that caused
by a hypothetical drug dealer who willfully fails to report
taking $12,000 out of the country in order to purchase drugs.
Comparing the gravity of respondent’s crime with the
$357,144 forfeiture the Government seeks, we conclude that
such a forfeiture would be grossly disproportional to the

14 In considering an offense’s gravity, the other penalties that the Legis-
lature has authorized are certainly relevant evidence. Here, as the Gov-
ernment and the dissent stress, Congress authorized a maximum ﬁne of
$250,000 plus ﬁve years’ imprisonment for willfully violating the statutory
reporting requirement, and this suggests that it did not view the reporting
offense as a trivial one. That the maximum ﬁne and Guideline sentence
to which respondent was subject were but a fraction of the penalties au-
thorized, however, undercuts any argument based solely on the statute,
because they show that respondent’s culpability relative to other potential
violators of the reporting provision––tax evaders, drug kingpins, or money
launderers, for example––is small indeed. This disproportion is telling
notwithstanding the fact that a separate Guideline provision permits
forfeiture if mandated by statute, see post, at 350–351. That Guideline,
moreover, cannot override the constitutional requirement of proportional-
ity review.