Opinion ID: 1677203
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: historical background of article vi, section 14

Text: Article VI, section 14 is unique in the whole of American constitutional law, and no other provision like it may be found either in the Federal Constitution or in any other modern state constitution. Although this provision dates to our first Constitution signed in Knoxville in February 1796, we know little else about its origin. Similar clauses did not appear in any colonial charter, in any early state constitution, including the 1776 North Carolina Constitution, or in the Constitution of the State of Franklin. [11] Instead, as the Journal of the 1796 Constitutional Convention reveals, the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause made its first appearance in the jurisprudence of this state on Saturday, January 30, 1796, when it was appended to a proposed draft constitution as section 9 of the article governing the judiciary. As originally proposed, this provision read: No fine shall be laid on any citizen of this state, that shall exceed fifty dollars, unless it shall be assessed by a jury of his peers, who shall assess the fine at the time they find the fact. Tenn. Const. art. V, § 9 (1796 draft). Though the Journal of the 1796 Convention was not kept as a verbatim record of the proceedings, no discussion or debate concerning the draft of this clause is evident. Indeed, the final provision issuing from the Convention was precisely the same as that initially proposed, except that it was amended at some point to add a final clause, if they [the jury] think the fine ought to be more than fifty dollars. Tenn. Const. art. V, § 11 (1796). [12] During the summer of 1834, sixty delegates met in Nashville for the purpose of revising and amending the Constitution, which had remained unaltered for nearly four decades. A provision identical to Article V, section 11 of the 1796 Constitution was reported to the Committee of the Whole on July 25 for consideration, and this provision was considered by the Convention on August 6. In stark contrast to virtually every other provision governing the judiciary, the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause received scant attention. Although one amendment was proposed by William Ledbetter of Rutherford Countythe addition of a final sentence, [a]nd if the defendant shall submit, it shall not prevent the court from empaneling a jury instanter to assess the fine if it should seem proper to said courtit was defeated, and the Convention adopted the provision as originally proposed. In its final form, the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause appeared in Article VI, section 14 of the new Constitution, with only two non-substantive changes to its former text: (1) the capitalization of State in the first clause of the provision, and (2) the syntactical amendment of the final clause to read, if they think the fine should be over fifty dollars. (emphasis added). Following the War Between the States, Tennessee entered its present constitutional period following another major convention held in Nashville during the winter of 1870. Given its unobtrusive history, it is perhaps not surprising that Article VI, section 14 was readopted without any recorded debate or proposed amendment. Although the Standing Committee on the Judiciary proposed many revisions to Article VI in its report to the Convention, the 1870 Journal records that neither the majority nor the minority reports from that committee advised changing any part of section 14. When the Convention considered this provision on February 4, the Journal merely reports, again in stark contrast to the other provisions of Article VI, that Section 14 was adopted as recommended by the [Judiciary] Committee. Consequently, the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause emerged from the 1870 Convention in a form identical to that ratified earlier in March 1835, save only minor changes in its punctuation, and it has remained unchanged to this day. Interestingly, prior to the current constitutional period beginning in 1870, no case construed or discussed the substantive import of the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause. In 1873, this Court first noted that Article VI, section 14 is manifestly an amplification of the provisions contained in [section] 16, [article] 1, against the imposition of excessive fines. France v. State, 65 Tenn. (6 Baxt.) 478, 485 (1873); see also State v. Bryant, 805 S.W.2d 762, 767 (Tenn.1991). Since then, this Court has further recognized that the intent behind limiting the ability to lay fines was to prevent judges from imposing unreasonable fines, and to prevent confiscation of the citizen's substance under the guise of a statute applied by a judicial tribunal. Upchurch v. State, 153 Tenn. 198, 205, 281 S.W. 462, 464 (1926); see also State v. Martin, 940 S.W.2d 567, 570 (Tenn.1997). Indeed, as this Court observed in Poindexter v. State, 137 Tenn. 386, 393, 193 S.W. 126, 128 (1917), [w]ere it not for section 14 of article 6 of the Constitution, an impecunious defendant upon whom a large fine had been imposed might be imprisoned for years at the will of the judge alone who tried him. Nevertheless, as this Court has acknowledged for nearly a century, the restriction on imposing fines contained in Article VI, section 14 does not prevent a court from imposing any monetary assessment in excess of fifty dollars. At the time that the 1796 Constitution was drafted and ratified, the term fine was understood to mean a payment to a sovereign as punishment for some offense, see Browning-Ferris Industries of Vt., Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, 492 U.S. 257, 265, 109 S.Ct. 2909, 106 L.Ed.2d 219 (1989), [13] and as we held long ago in Poindexter , Article VI, section 14 does not apply to assessments greater than fifty dollars when the assessment is not punitive in nature. To that end, Article VI, section 14 has not stood as a bar to the imposition of non-punitive measures, such as requiring a defendant to execute a $240 bond to secure child support payments, see Poindexter, 137 Tenn. at 396-97, 193 S.W. at 128, or requiring that a defendant make monthly support payments of sixty dollars, see Abbott v. State, 190 Tenn. 702, 704, 231 S.W.2d 355, 356 (1950).