Supreme Court curbs seizure of criminals’ assets

The Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously ruled that the ban found in the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution on excessive fines applies to states as well as the federal government. The ruling has widespread implications for the practice of civil asset forfeiture, in which police sometimes seize thousands of dollars of property from criminal suspects. “Protection against excessive punitive economic sanctions … is, to repeat, both ‘fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty’ and ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,’” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion, citing an earlier case on the subject.

The plaintiff, Tyson Timbs of Marion, Ind., pleaded guilty to selling $400 worth of heroin in 2013 and was sentenced to a year of house arrest with no prison time. But a judge in Indiana ruled that the state overstepped its bounds by seizing Timbs’ $40,000 Land Rover. The maximum fine for his crimes was $10,000. Indiana’s highest court overruled the judge because the U.S. Supreme Court had not said specifically that the Constitution’s ban on excessive fines applied to states—a point Wednesday’s ruling clears up.

Law enforcement authorities have increased seizures of civil assets in recent decades, and the proceeds from selling the seizures often go directly to the agency that took the property, Timbs’ attorneys from the libertarian Institute for Justice wrote. The Supreme Court sent the case back to a lower court to work out the details of Timbs’ punishment in light of the decision.