Source: http://supreme.nolo.com/us/509/602/case.html
Timestamp: 2019-05-20 06:26:10
Document Index: 516946172

Matched Legal Cases: ['§881', '§881', '§881', '§ 881', '§ 881', '§ 881', '§ 881', '§ 881', '§ 1615']

AUSTIN v. UNITED STATES - 509 U.S. 602 - 1993 - Full Text - US Supreme Court Center - USSC Cases - Nolo
US Supreme Court Center > Volume 509 > AUSTIN v. UNITED STATES 509 U.S. 602 (1993) > Full Text
AUSTIN v. UNITED STATES - 509 U.S. 602 (1993)
(b) A review of English and American law before, at the time of, and following the ratification of the Eighth Amendment demonstrates that forfeiture generally, and statutory in rem forfeiture in particular,
BLACKMUN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which WHITE, STEVENS, O'CONNOR, and SOUTER, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, post, p. 623. KENNEDY, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which REHNQUIST, C. J., and THOMAS, J., joined, post, p. 628.
A brief of amici curiae was filed for the State of Arizona et al. by Grant Woods, Attorney General of Arizona, and Cameron H. Holmes and Sandra
L. Janzen, Assistant Attorneys General, Daniel E. Lungren, Attorney General of California, George Williamson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, and Gary W Schons, Domenick Galluzzo, Acting Chief State's Attorney of Connecticut, and by the Attorneys General for their respective jurisdictions as follows: Winston Bryant of Arkansas, Robert A. Butterworth of Florida, Michael J. Bowers of Georgia, Robert A. Marks of Hawaii, Larry EchoHawk of Idaho, Robert T. Stephan of Kansas, Chris Gorman of Kentucky, Richard P. Ieyoub of Louisiana, Michael Carpenter of Maine, J. Joseph Curran, Jr., of Maryland, Scott Harshbarger of Massachusetts, Frank J. Kelley of Michigan, Hubert H. Humphrey III of Minnesota, Michael Moore of Mississippi, Joseph P. Mazurek of Montana, Don Stenberg of Nebraska, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, Jeffrey R. Howard of New Hampshire, Tom Udall of New Mexico, Michael F. Easley of North Carolina, Susan B. Loving of Oklahoma, Ernest D. Preate, Jr., of Pennsylvania, Jeffrey B. Pine of Rhode Island, T. Travis Medlock of South Carolina, Dan Morales of Texas, Jan Graham of Utah, Stephen D. Rosenthal of Virginia, Christine Q Gregoire of Washington, Joseph B. Meyer of Wyoming, and Rosalie Simmonds Ballentine of the Virgin Islands.
2 "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." U. S. Const., Arndt. 8.
Austin contends that the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause applies to in rem civil forfeiture proceedings. See Brief for Petitioner 10, 19,23. We have had occasion to consider this Clause only once before. In Browning-Ferris Industries of Vt., Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 U. S. 257 (1989), we held that the Excessive Fines Clause does not limit the award of punitive damages to a private party in a civil suit when the government neither has prosecuted the action nor has any right to receive a share of the damages. Id., at 264. The Court's opinion and JUSTICE O'CONNOR'S
3 In Browning-Ferris, we left open the question whether the Excessive Fines Clause applies to qui tam actions in which a private party brings suit in the name of the United States and shares in the proceeds. See 492 U. S., at 276, n. 21. Because the instant suit was prosecuted by the United States and because Austin's property was forfeited to the United States, we have no occasion to address that question here.
And, of course, even those protections associated with criminal cases may apply to a civil forfeiture proceeding if it is so punitive that the proceeding must reasonably be considered criminal. See Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U. S. 144 (1963); Ward, supra.
6 For this reason, the United States' reliance on Kennedy v. MendozaMartinez and United States v. Ward is misplaced. The question in those cases was whether a nominally civil penalty should be reclassified as criminal and the safeguards that attend a criminal prosecution should be required. See Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U. S., at 167, 184; Ward, 448 U. S., at 248. In addressing the separate question whether punishment is being imposed, the Court has not employed the tests articulated in MendozaMartinez and Ward. See, e. g., United States v. Halper, 490 U. S., at 447. Since in this case we deal only with the question whether the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause applies, we need not address the application of those tests.
The second kind of common-law forfeiture fell only upon those convicted of a felony or of treason. "The convicted felon forfeited his chattels to the Crown and his lands es-
In Calero-Toledo, we observed that statutory forfeitures were "likely a product of the confluence and merger of the deodand tradition and the belief that the right to own property could be denied the wrongdoer." 416 U. S., at 682. Since each of these traditions had a punitive aspect, it is not surprising that forfeiture under the Navigation Acts was justified as a penalty for negligence: "But the Owners of Ships are to take Care what Master they employ, and the Master what Mariners; and here Negligence is plainly imputable to the Master; for he is to report the Cargo of the Ship, and if he had searched and examined the Ship with proper care, according to his Duty, he would have found the Tea ... and
7 Dictionaries of the time confirm that "fine" was understood to include "forfeiture" and vice versa. See 1 T. Sheridan, A General Dictionary of the English Language (1780) (unpaginated) (defining "fine" as: "A mulct, a pecuniary punishment; penalty; forfeit, money paid for any exemption or liberty"); J. Walker, A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1791) (unpaginated) (same); 1 Sheridan, supra (defining "forfeiture" as: "The act of forfeiting; the thing forfeited, a mulct, a fine"); Walker, supra (same); J. Kersey, A New English Dictionary (1702) (unpaginated) (defining "forfeit" as: "default, fine, or penalty").
9The Government relies heavily on this fiction. See Brief for United States 18. We do not understand the Government to rely separately on the technical distinction between proceedings in rem and proceedings in personam, but we note that any such reliance would be misplaced. "The fictions of in rem forfeiture were developed primarily to expand the reach of the courts," Republic Nat. Bank of Miami v. United States, 506 U. S.
80, 87 (1992), which, particularly in admiralty proceedings, might have lacked in personam jurisdiction over the owner of the property. See also Harmony v. United States, 2 How. 210, 233 (1844). As is discussed in the text, forfeiture proceedings historically have been understood as imposing punishment despite their in rem nature.
10 Because the forfeiture provisions at issue here exempt "innocent owners," we again have no occasion to decide in this case whether it would comport with due process to forfeit the property of a truly innocent owner.
12The doubts that JUSTICE SCALIA, see post, at 625-627, and JUSTICE KENNEDY, see post, at 629, express with regard to the historical understanding of forfeiture as punishment appear to stem from a misunder-
standing of the relevant question. Under United States v. Halper, 490 U. S. 435, 448 (1989), the question is whether forfeiture serves in part to punish, and one need not exclude the possibility that forfeiture serves other purposes to reach that conclusion.
13 Although the United States omits any reference to this legislative history in its brief in the present case, it quoted the same passage with approval in its brief in United States v. Parcel of Rumson, N J., Land, 507 U. S. 111 (1993). See Brief for United States, O. T. 1992, No. 91-781, pp.41-42.
Fundamentally, even assuming that §§881(a)(4) and (a)(7) serve some remedial purpose, the Government's argument must fail. "[A] civil sanction that cannot fairly be said solely to serve a remedial purpose, but rather can only be explained as also serving either retributive or deterrent purposes, is punishment, as we have come to understand the term." Halper, 490 U. S., at 448 (emphasis added). In light of the historical understanding of forfeiture as punishment, the
14 In Halper, we focused on whether "the sanction as applied in the individual case serves the goals of punishment." 490 U. S., at 448. In this case, however, it makes sense to focus on §§881(a)(4) and (a)(7) as a whole. Halper involved a small, fixed-penalty provision, which "in the ordinary case ... can be said to do no more than make the Government whole." Id., at 449. The value of the conveyances and real property forfeitable under §§881(a)(4) and (a)(7), on the other hand, can vary so dramatically that any relationship between the Government's actual costs and the amount of the sanction is merely coincidental. See Ward, 448 U. S., at 254. Furthermore, as we have seen, forfeiture statutes historically have been understood as serving not simply remedial goals but also those of punishment and deterrence. Finally, it appears to make little practical difference whether the Excessive Fines Clause applies to all forfeitures under §§ 881(a)(4) and (a)(7) or only to those that cannot be characterized as purely remedial. The Clause prohibits only the imposition of "excessive" fines, and a fine that serves purely remedial purposes cannot be considered "excessive" in any event.
15 JUSTICE SCALIA suggests that the sole measure of an in rem forfeiture's excessiveness is the relationship between the forfeited property and the offense. See post, at 627-628. We do not rule out the possibility that the connection between the property and the offense may be relevant, but our decision today in no way limits the Court of Appeals from considering other factors in determining whether the forfeiture of Austin's property was excessive.
In order to constitute a fine under the Eighth Amendment, however, the forfeiture must constitute "punishment," and it is a much closer question whether statutory in rem forfeitures, as opposed to in personam forfeitures, meet this requirement. The latter are assessments, whether monetary or in kind, to punish the property owner's criminal conduct, while the former are confiscations of property rights based on improper use of the property, regardless of whether the owner has violated the law. Statutory in rem forfeitures have a long history. See generally Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U. S. 663, 680-686 (1974). The property to which they apply is not contraband, see the forfeiture Act passed by the First Congress, ante, at 613-614, nor is it necessarily property that can only be used for illegal purposes. The theory of in rem forfeiture is said to be that the lawful property has committed an offense. See, e. g., The Palmyra, 12 Wheat. 1, 14-15 (1827) (forfeiture of vessel for piracy); Harmony v. United States, 2 How. 210, 233-234 (1844) (forfeiture of vessel, but not cargo, for piracy); Dobbins's Distillery v. United States, 96 U. S. 395, 400-403 (1878) (forfeiture of distillery and real property for evasion of revenue laws); J. W Goldsmith, Jr.-Grant Co. v. United
*Thus, contrary to the Court's contention, ante, at 618-619, n. 12, I agree with it on this point. I do not agree, however, that culpability of the property owner is necessary to establish punitiveness, or that punitiveness "in part" is established by showing that at least in some cases the affected property owners are culpable. That is to say, the statutory forfeiture must always be at least "partly punitive," or else it is not a fine. See ante, at 622, n. 14.
I would have reserved the question without engaging in the misleading discussion of culpability. Even if punishment of personal culpability is necessary for a forfeiture to be a fine; and even if in rem forfeitures in general do not punish personal culpability; the in rem forfeiture in this case is a fine. As the Court discusses in Part IV; this statute, in contrast to the traditional in rem forfeiture, requires that the owner not be innocent-that he have some degree of culpability for the "guilty" property. See also United States v. Parcel of Rumson, N. J., Land, 507 U. S. 111, 121-123 (1993) (plurality opinion) (contrasting drug forfeiture statute with traditional statutory in rem forfeitures). Here, the property must "offend" and the owner must not be completely without fault. Nor is there any consideration of compensating for loss, since the value of the property is irrelevant to whether it is forfeited. That is enough to satisfy the Browning-Ferris standard, and to make the entire discussion
Here, however, the offense of which petitioner has been convicted is not relevant to the forfeiture. Section § 881 requires only that the Government show probable cause that the subject property was used for the prohibited purpose. The burden then shifts to the property owner to show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the use was made without his "knowledge, consent, or willful blindness," 21 U. S. C. § 881(a)(4)(C), see also § 881(a)(7), or that the property was not so used, see § 881 (d) (incorporating 19 U. S. C. § 1615). Unlike monetary fines, statutory in rem forfeitures have traditionally been fixed, not by determining the appropriate value of the penalty in relation to the committed offense, but by determining what property has been "tainted" by unlawful use, to which issue the value of the property is irrelevant. Scales used to measure out unlawful drug sales, for example, are confiscable whether made of the purest gold or the basest metal. But an in rem forfeiture goes beyond the traditional limits that the Eighth Amendment permits if it applies to property that cannot properly be regarded as an instrumen-
In recounting the law's history, we risk anachronism if we attribute to an earlier time an intent to employ legal con-
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