Court Opinion

ID: 9634022
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:14:43.575098+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:48.242420
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I join the court’s opinion without reservation but add a few words about an issue that, as the court notes (Op. at 632 n. 5), the litigants have overlooked.
All parties assume that the exclusionary rule applies to forfeiture, so that the res must be returned if it was improperly seized. Yet the Supreme Court has twice held that the exclusionary rule is not used in civil proceedings. See INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032, 104 S.Ct. 3479, 82 L.Ed.2d 778 (1984) (deportation); United States v. Janis, 428 U.S. 433, 96 S.Ct. 3021, 49 L.Ed.2d 1046 (1976) (taxation). See also Pennsylvania Board of Probation & Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 118 S.Ct. 2014, 141 L.Ed.2d 344 (1998) (rule inapplicable to probation revocation). Although One 1958 Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania, 380 U.S. 693, 85 S.Ct. 1246, 14 L.Ed.2d 170 (1965), suppressed evidence in a forfeiture, Janis stated that this was because that forfeiture was intended as a criminal punishment. 428 U.S. at 447 n. 17, 96 S.Ct. 3021. The forfeiture in our case is civil. It is farther from a criminal prosecution than is a probation-revocation proceeding.
Suppressing the res in a civil proceeding, even though the property is subject to forfeiture, would be like dismissing the indictment in a criminal proceeding whenever the defendant was arrested without probable cause. The Supreme Court has been unwilling to use the exclusionary rule to “suppress” the body of an improperly arrested defendant. See United States v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655, 112 S.Ct. 2188, 119 L.Ed.2d 441 (1992). Why then would it be sensible to suppress the res?
The appropriate remedy is civil damages measured by the value of the privacy interest wrongly invaded. Exclusion sometimes may be appropriate in criminal prosecutions, but damages are the best remedy in the run of situations. See Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 126 S.Ct. 2159, 165 L.Ed.2d 56 (2006); Herring v. United States, — U.S. -, 129 S.Ct. 695, 172 L.Ed.2d 496 (2009). This case illustrates why: the value of the res is about $121,000, exceeding any plausible estimate of the injury inflicted by opening the case before the dog arrived. Awarding claimants $121,000 would both overcompensate *643them and overdeter law-enforcement agents — -just as awarding excessive damages in tort suits warps the incentives of both potential victims and potential injurers, leading potential victims to take excessive risks and potential injurers to take excessive (ie., unjustifiably expensive) precautions.
Because the United States has not questioned the use of the exclusionary rule, and the issue does not affect subject-matter jurisdiction, we need not decide what scope Janis, Lopez-Mendoza, Hudson, and Herring leave for One 1958 Plymouth Sedan.