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LEONARD v. TEXAS 

Statement of THOMAS, J. 

sale.  It also affirmed the trial court’s rejection of petition-
er’s innocent-owner defense.  Petitioner had asserted that 
the  money  was  not  related  to  a  drug  sale  at  all,  but  was
instead  from  a  home  she  had  recently  sold  in  Pennsylva-
nia.  The  court  deemed  this  testimony  insufficient  to  es-
tablish that she was in fact an innocent owner. 

Petitioner  now  challenges  the  constitutionality  of  the 
procedures used to adjudicate the seizure of her property. 
In  particular,  she  argues  that  the  Due  Process  Clause
required  the  State  to  carry  its  burden  by  clear  and  con-
vincing  evidence  rather  than  by  a  preponderance  of  the 
evidence. 

II 

Modern civil forfeiture statutes are plainly designed, at 
least  in  part,  to  punish  the  owner  of  property  used  for
criminal purposes.  See, e.g., Austin v. United States, 509 
U. S. 602, 618–619 (1993).  When a state wishes to punish
one  of  its  citizens,  it  ordinarily  proceeds  against  the  de-
fendant personally (known as “in personam”), and in many 
cases  it  must  provide  the  defendant  with  full  criminal 
procedural  protections.  Nevertheless,  for  reasons  dis-
cussed  below,  this  Court  permits  prosecutors  seeking
forfeiture  to  proceed  against  the  property  (known  as 
“in rem”)  and  to  do  so  civilly.  See,  e.g.,  United  States  v. 
James  Daniel  Good  Real  Property,  510  U. S.  43,  56–57 
(1993).  In rem proceedings often enable the government to 
seize  the  property  without  any  predeprivation  judicial 
process and to obtain forfeiture of the property even when
the  owner  is  personally  innocent  (though  some  statutes,
including  the  one  here,  provide  for  an  innocent-owner
defense).  Civil  proceedings  often  lack  certain  procedural 
protections that accompany criminal proceedings, such  as
the  right  to  a  jury  trial  and  a  heightened  standard  of 
proof.

Partially  as  a  result  of  this  distinct  legal  regime,  civil