Court Opinion

ID: 9709583
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:51:49.071813+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:50.338581
License: Public Domain

RANDALL, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
The facts are not in dispute and the majority correctly sets them out. Attorneys for appellant and for respondent submitted an Agreed Statement of Record stating simply that respondent was the sole owner of the ear in question, had committed a driving offense, and had the requisite driving record, so that appellant could properly invoke the motor vehicle forfeiture statute.
The sole issue on appeal is whether the civil forfeiture of respondent’s car, on these facts, constituted an unconstitutional, and therefore illegal, second punishment. Respondent, the driver, had already been subjected to criminal penalties for the aggravated DUI offense arising out of the same incident which led. to appellant’s attempt to forfeit her 1986 Mazda.
The trial court considered respondent’s motion to dismiss and appellant’s countermotion for summary judgment. The court granted respondent’s motion to dismiss and returned her car to her. I agree with the trial court.
The trial court and the majority, with no disagreement, both cited to the same series of federal cases and its progeny. See United States v. Halper, 490 U.S. 435, 441, 109 S.Ct. 1892, 1898, 104 L.Ed.2d 487 (1989); Austin v. U.S., 509 U.S. 602, 617, 113 S.Ct. 2801, 2810, 125 L.Ed.2d 488 (1993); and Department of Revenue of Montana v. Kurth Ranch, — U.S. -, -, 114 S.Ct. 1937, 1948, 128 L.Ed.2d 767 (1994).
I agree with the trial court that the automobile civil forfeiture statute in question, Minn.Stat. § 169.1217 is, when stripped of all smoke and mirrors, a deterrent to future illegal driving conduct and punishment/retribution by the state for past driving conduct. Deterrence and punishmenVretribution are two legitimate, wonderful, holy, and constitutionally proper aims of punishment upon conviction of a crime. The only drawback is both the U.S. Constitution and the Minnesota Constitution limit the state to imposing punishment but once for the same criminal act.
The majority and I agree that under the Double Jeopardy Clauses of the Minnesota and United States Constitutions,
a defendant who already has been punished in a criminal prosecution may not be subjected to an additional civil sanction to the extent that the second sanction may not fairly be characterized as remedial, but only as a deterrent or retribution.
*305Halper, 490 U.S. at 448-49, 109 S.Ct. at 1902. This holding by the Halper court has been variously called the “solely deterrent/retributive” test, State v. Hanson, 543 N.W.2d 84, 87 and the “fairly characterized as remedial” test, State v. Rosenfeld, 540 N.W.2d 915, 920 (Minn.App.1995).
But I simply cannot accept any explanation for appellant’s wanting to seize respondent’s car other than that they want to punish her further for being a drunk driver and to deter her, and others like her, in the future. I emphatically state that they only call it “remedial” because they know they have to call it “remedial” to avoid the above-cited double jeopardy clauses of both the federal and state constitution.
As one commentator has noted, the purpose of civil forfeiture statutes has been so expanded by the courts that their original purposes have been corrupted. Leiske, Civil Forfeiture Law: Replacing the Common Law with a Common Sense Application of the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment 21 Wm. Mitchell L.Rev. 265, 271 (1995). As the author candidly observes,
It is clear that civil forfeiture laws are used to circumvent the constitutional rights of property owners. Simply stated, civil forfeiture statutes are designed to punish the individual property owner without resort to cumbersome criminal procedures mandated by the Constitution. Under the guise of the in rem legal fiction that inanimate property is capable of committing a crime, civil forfeiture statutes allow prosecutors to circumvent the constitutional rights ordinarily due the individual by proceeding directly against the property.
Id. at 298.
The trial court wisely, and with candor, pointed out:
In addition, if the remedy sought is preventing particularly dangerous drunken drivers from driving again, it is difficult to imagine a statute more poorly calculated to effectuate that purpose than Section 169.1217. One may easily drive another vehicle even if his automobile is taken, particularly if he already owns another vehicle. The forfeiture statute itself recognizes the empirical fact that people often drive vehicles which do not belong to them. Minn.Stat. § 169.1217, Subd. 7(d) (allowing forfeitures of automobiles not owned by the driver). An implied consent proceeding is at least related to the remedial goal of preventing further drunk driving; notwithstanding their effectiveness, implied consent proceedings result in the direct suspension of driving privileges. A forfeiture of one automobile, on the other hand, does not even deliver the admonition that the defendant should not drink and drive again.
Trial Court Memorandum at 6.
It is common place that an individual has easy access to more than one vehicle during his or her day, or during an average week. Vehicles belonging to spouses, companions, children of teenage years or older, friends, relatives, business acquaintances, etc. are plentiful, and can be obtained with little or no effort.
Respondent’s Mazda is a used car and from the record appears to be worth just several hundred dollars. But if respondent’s car were a 1996 Mazda, or a 1996 Cadillac, or a 1996 Rolls-Royce, appellant’s position would be the same. Appellant is not desirous at all of framing their argument in terms of some rough equivalency of value to the offense committed. Appellant argues for the pure right to forfeit the automobile under the statute if the requisite driving record has been reached. This is exactly the same as ratcheting up a criminal fine (pure punishment) for a criminal conviction from $500 to $5,000 to $50,000. Since we can legally attach fines as additional punishment upon a criminal conviction, if we want to attach the fine of losing a vehicle to other criminal penalties, then the state should petition the legislature to add automobile forfeiture to the present criminal penalties of imprisonment and/or fine.
Seizing one’s automobile is not remedial. It is simply pure punishment. If the state were serious about “remediation” and thus want to have a right to impose a remedial penalty in a second hearing (and have it stand up constitutionally, in addition to the *306imprisonment and/or fines previously imposed as punishment and deterrence), the state has a wide-ranging menu of options which truly have a remedial effect. These options would include, without limitation, such things as court-ordered attendance at alcoholics anonymous meetings, court-ordered restitution to victims and their families, the court requiring as part of a “Sentencing to Serve” program, a requirement that the convicted driver spend so many hours helping in the emergency room of a general hospital or so many hours visiting victims of crimes or so many hours helping the groundskeeper at cemeteries tend to grave sites.
These court-imposed remedial duties would have a true remedial effect, as opposed to simply ratcheting up jail time or ratcheting up the amount of a monetary fine/forfeiture. Jail time", fines, and forfeitures are permissible, but being concededly punishment, are only permissible once for the same crime. If the state wants remediation in addition to punishment, they can have it as long as it is not a thinly disguised second punishment. The automobile forfeiture statute is a second punishment so thinly disguised, it is not even disguised at all.
The State of Minnesota and its subdivisions might as well be honest and state that they intend to seize the automobiles of repeat DUI offenders for more punishment, and then they can go on to state that they hope additional punishment has a deterrent effect on that individual, and other offenders in a like class. Seizing the automobile of a person, particularly with the high to extremely high cost of even a modest car today is swift and sure and harsh punishment. If our state is to be honest, they should go to the legislature and try to add automobile forfeiture to the already existing criminal penalties for DUI offenders. If the state thinks that seizing cars is the answer to our DUI problem (and I do not suggest by this opinion that it is), then with candor the state should go to the legislature and ask for it. Our present civil forfeiture laws are nothing but a transparent attempt to punish DUI offenders not once, but twice, and our forfeiture laws were accurately described by the Leiske article.
I dissent and would have affirmed the trial court.