Opinion ID: 576216
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Classifying Civil Sanctions as Punishment

Text: 17 Levin's arguments that the forfeiture violates the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the Eighth Amendment's bar on Cruel and Unusual Punishment and Excessive Fines are predicated upon his contention that the forfeiture is in reality a criminal penalty and, as such, is subject to constitutional limitations on punishment. See generally Pratt & Petersen, Civil Forfeiture in the Second Circuit, 65 St. John's L.Rev. 653, 668-70 (1991) (discussing disturbing implications of courts' failure to regard civil forfeiture as punishment). He argues that the forfeiture of his $68,000 interest in the condominium--and the resultant loss of his home--as a consequence of a sale of $250 worth of cocaine must be seen as punishment, since it, or at least some part of it, cannot be said to serve proper civil purposes. 18 Levin's point here is not that Section 881(a)(7) is properly read as a penal, rather than civil, enactment, see generally United States v. Ward, 448 U.S. 242, 248, 100 S.Ct. 2636, 2641, 65 L.Ed.2d 742, reh'g denied, 448 U.S. 916, 101 S.Ct. 37, 65 L.Ed.2d 1179 (1980); United States v. $2500 in U.S. Currency, 689 F.2d 10, 14 (2d Cir.1982), cert. denied, 465 U.S. 1099, 104 S.Ct. 1591, 80 L.Ed.2d 123 (1984), but rather that the application of the statute in the circumstances of his case is punishment. Levin relies on United States v. Halper, 490 U.S. 435, 109 S.Ct. 1892, 104 L.Ed.2d 487 (1989), in which the Supreme Court found that a civil sanction imposed following a criminal sentence for filing false claims violated the Double Jeopardy Clause's proscription of multiple punishments. 1 19 In Halper, an employee of a medical laboratory filed sixty-five false claims for Medicare reimbursement, each of which overstated the amount reimbursable to the lab by $9, resulting ultimately in a fraud on the government of $585. Under the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729-31, the government sought a civil penalty of $2000 plus double damages for each violation of the Act. This subjected Halper to a penalty of over $130,000, exponentially greater than the amount of the fraud, and ... also many times the amount of the Government's total loss. 490 U.S. at 445, 109 S.Ct. at 1900. Despite the sanction's imposition in a civil proceeding, pursuant to a civil enactment, the Justices unanimously recognized that the sanction as applied could be so extreme and so divorced from the Government's damages and expenses as to constitute punishment. 490 U.S. at 442, 109 S.Ct. at 1898. 20 The Court applied a rule of reason to the sanction. Finding it overwhelmingly disproportionate, and without rational relation to the purported goal of compensating the government, the Court presumed the sanction to be punitive. 490 U.S. at 449-50, 109 S.Ct. at 1902. It then shifted the burden to the government to prove otherwise, through an accounting of [its] damages and costs. 2 490 U.S. at 449-50, 109 S.Ct. at 1902. 21 The Court cautioned, however, that the burden of accounting for a civil sanction would fall on the government only in the extreme case, and that leeway was to be given the government's attempt to achieve rough remedial justice, particularly in view of quantifying the precise amount of the Government's damages and costs. Halper, 490 U.S. at 449, 109 S.Ct. at 1902; see also United States ex rel. Marcus v. Hess, 317 U.S. 537, 550-51, 63 S.Ct. 379, 387, 87 L.Ed. 443, reh'g denied, 318 U.S. 799, 63 S.Ct. 756, 87 L.Ed. 1163 (1943). As a general rule, therefore, particularly where few statutory violations are involved, the Court stated that it would not disturb a fixed penalty plus double damages provision, together with reasonable liquidated damages clauses. Halper, 490 U.S. at 449, 109 S.Ct. at 1902. 22 Where an accounting is appropriate, however, Halper requires a district court to compare the government's proven damages and costs against the sanction the government seeks to impose. Following an accounting, a sanction must be classified as punitive when the size of the sanction can not fairly be attributed to remedial purposes, but rather can only be explained as also serving either retributive or deterrent purposes. 490 U.S. at 448, 109 S.Ct. at 1902 (emphasis added). The amount in excess must be deemed punishment. 23 The classification of a sanction as punitive under Halper does not automatically transform the sanction proceeding into a criminal prosecution, with all the attendant procedural safeguards required by the Constitution. For example, the applicability of Sixth Amendment protections to statutory proceedings and the standard of proof used in those proceedings are determined not with reference to the particular sanction ultimately imposed, but rather by considering the proceeding's inherent nature, identified through recourse to statutory language, structure, and intent. Halper, 490 U.S. at 447, 109 S.Ct. at 1901 (citing United States v. Ward, 448 U.S. at 248-51, 100 S.Ct. at 2641-43). 24 Nonetheless, certain constitutional protections do attach when an individual is subjected to a civil sanction that in effect is punishment. Such an individual is protected against multiple punishments under the Double Jeopardy Clause, because that constitutional protection is intrinsically personal, serving a humane interest. See Halper, 490 U.S. at 447, 109 S.Ct. at 1901 (quoting United States ex rel. Marcus v. Hess, 317 U.S. at 554, 63 S.Ct. at 389 (Frankfurter, J., concurring)). 25 Furthermore, we agree with Levin that Eighth Amendment protections attach when an individual is subjected to a civil sanction classified as punitive under Halper. Like the Double Jeopardy Clause, the Eighth Amendment is a personal and humane limitation on the government's ability to punish an individual. Although the Supreme Court did not explicitly so rule in Halper, in Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 U.S. 257, 109 S.Ct. 2909, 106 L.Ed.2d 219 (1989), decided shortly after Halper, the Court stated that Halper implies that punitive damages awarded to the Government in a civil action may raise Eighth Amendment concerns.... 492 U.S. at 275 n. 21, 109 S.Ct. at 2920 n. 21; see also Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 669 n. 37, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 1411 n. 37, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977) (Some punishments, though not labeled 'criminal' by the State, may be sufficiently analogous to criminal punishments in the circumstances in which they are administered to justify application of the Eighth Amendment.); Note, Crossing the Line Between Rough Remedial Justice and Prohibited Punishment, 65 Wash.L.Rev. 437 (1990). 26