On February 20, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision on the Eighth Amendment’s excessive fines clause. In Timbs v. Indiana, 2019 DJDAR 1337, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg authored a unanimous decision holding that the excessive fines clause is an incorporated protection applicable to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. A few state supreme courts, most recently Indiana’s, remarkably had concluded that the clause did not apply to state forfeiture actions because the U.S. Supreme Court had not yet squarely held that it did apply. The U.S. Supreme Court easily cleared that up in Timbs but stopped short of providing additional guidance as to what constitutes an excessive fine in this context or otherwise protecting property owners from civil forfeiture’s constant abuse.

Originally published in the May 2019 issue of For the Defense (Vol. 4, Issue 2).