Timbs v. Indiana: A New Precedent on Civil Forfeiture
According to 18 U.S. Code § 981. Civil forfeiture, law enforcement are permitted to seize “[a]ny property, real or personal, involved in a transaction or attempted transaction in violation of section 1956, 1957 or 1960 of this title, or any property traceable to such property” [1]. The references to sections 1956, 1957, and 1960 specifically describe forfeiture in cases where property is used for money laundering, theft, or other crimes.
Essentially, property can be seized under the legal doctrine of civil forfeiture if that property has been used in conjunction with illegal activity. Civil forfeiture has been considered a permissible recourse for law enforcement, with few attempts to curtail the scope and use of it. However, in a recent case, Timbs v. Indiana (2019), the Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s excessive fines clause applies to the case of civil forfeiture. The decision in Timbs challenges the implications of the problematic implications of civil forfeiture. As such, this case reflects the changing dynamics between law enforcement and private citizens, and reveals the challenging issues surrounding drug policy and law enforcement. Timbs v. Indiana holds the potential to create healthier interactions between law enforcement and private citizens.
Timbs involved a petty heroin seller, Tyson Timbs, whose car was confiscated by local police through civil forfeiture because the car had been used by Timbs to help him sell heroin in the state of Indiana [2]. In particular, Timbs’ Land Rover cost $42,000, which meant that Timbs’ total monetary loss from the seizure amounted to more than four times the $10,000 maximum fee he should have been required to pay under federal law [3]. Timbs eventually contested the forfeit of his car and appealed the case. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes in the majority opinion on the case, “The Court of Appeals of Indiana affirmed, but the Indiana Supreme Court reversed, holding that the Excessive Fines Clause constrains only federal action and is inapplicable to state impositions” [4]. Therefore, the action of the state was upheld by the Indiana Supreme Court because the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment had not been incorporated to the states within the context of civil forfeiture, and therefore, the Excessive Fines Clause had no applicability to the state’s action. Therefore, the seizure of Timbs’ property could not be contested as an “excessive” action at that time.
However, the Supreme Court ruled to reverse the decision of the Indiana Supreme Court found that the Eighth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures with regards to the practice of civil forfeiture should be incorporated to the states. The Eighth Amendment explicitly states, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted” [5]. This clause provided the framework for the decision. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing the majority opinion of the Court, argued the following: “Like the Eighth Amendment’s proscriptions of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ and ‘[e]xcessive bail,’ the protection against excessive fines guards against abuses of government’s punitive or criminal- law-enforcement authority” [6].
The Supreme Court’s decision in Timbs effectively limits the potential excesses of state and local law enforcement through the incorporation of the Eighth Amendment’s excessive fines clause. Yet, the case also reflects a changing approach to the way that Americans and law enforcement approach crime.
For example, the case of Bennis v. Michigan reveals some of the notable differences between the traditional approach to civil forfeiture and the emergence of a new, modern examination of the issue of civil forfeiture. In 1996, the husband of Tina Bennis, a Michigan state resident, was convicted of gross indecency after having sex with a prostitute in their jointly-owned car, which was confiscated by the local police under an abatement order filed by a prosecutor. This order allowed the police to take the car because it had been deemed to be a public nuisance [7]. Following a reversal of the trial court’s decision by the Appeals Court and a subsequent upholding of the trial court’s decision by the Michigan Supreme Court, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court in 1996, the court ruled in a 5-4 decision that Bennis’ claim to lack awareness of her husband’s actions did not grant her the right to continue to possess property that was connected to indecent activity [8].
Part of this decision to enforce civil forfeiture legislation onto people like Tina Bennis, who was remotely though not intentionally associated with her husband’s criminal activity due to their joint-ownership of the car, may be related to the so-called “War on Drugs.” In a 2015 article published in the Harvard Law Bulletin titled “Is the War on Drugs Succeeding?,” Robb London writes that, while there are different views with regards to the effectiveness of the actual “War on Drugs,” the traditional, and still ongoing approach to the issue of drugs was to increase prosecutions and other measures taken against illicit drugs, to the point that one quarter of the 2 million incarcerated people in the United States are in prison “for drug-law violations–more than the total number of people jailed for all criminal offenses in Western Europe, although the U.S. has 100 million fewer people” [9].
As London mentions clearly in his article, the effectiveness of these policies is still a matter of debate by scholars and analysts. However, with the increase in drug use in impoverished, predominantly urban communities in the 1970s, law enforcement began to become more aggressive in their tactics to combat the rise of drugs and drug-trafficking networks. This involved a new approach to the application of civil forfeiture practices. In a Harvard Law Review article on the relationship between the criminal law enforcement’s tactics and civil forfeiture, the writer states that, early in American history “civil forfeiture was restricted to maritime, customs, and war power cases and did not break free of these constraints until the Prohibition era when applied to violations of criminal statutes regarding alcohol” [10]. In the post-1920s era, civil forfeiture still remained narrowly focused on its original restrictions until the 1980s, when “Civil forfeiture was also extended to property used to facilitate a crime, proceeds of an offense, and property traceable to those proceeds” [11]. The messy implications of self-interest among law enforcement, who often retained the proceeds from civil forfeiture [12] and the increasingly broader application of the initially narrow idea of civil forfeiture in a world dealing with the very real consequences of illicit drugs produced an uneasy relationship between law enforcement and the communities most affected by the practice of civil forfeiture. Essentially, “civil forfeiture heavily incentivizes federal and state agencies to participate in a system that has become dangerously entangled with criminal law, implicating a number of constitutional concerns” [13]. As the case of Bennis demonstrates, these constitutional issues of governmental encroachment on the rights of private citizens affect not only criminals but also staid citizens, which indicates that the excesses of civil forfeiture, prior to Timbs, is an issue confronting all American citizens. This understanding of the unexpected repercussions of the precedent re-enforced by cases like Bennis informed the Supreme Court’s decision in Timbs.
Thus, Timbs v Indiana takes one step towards establishing a new precedent of civil forfeiture and, consequently, the dialogue surrounding the interactions between law enforcement and private citizens. In truth, Timbs addresses serious questions that have been part of the American legal system from its inception. Through identifying when civil forfeiture constitutes “excessive fines” under the Eighth Amendment, the Supreme Court has taken a major step toward fixing one constitutional issue. The burden falls upon concerned citizens to continue this process into the future.
[1] Civil forfeiture 18 U.S. Code § 981.
[2] Timbs v. Indiana, 139 S. Ct. 682, 586 U.S., 203 L. Ed. 2d 11 (2019).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Amendment 8. U.S. Const. amend. VIII. Sec. 2. U.S. Const. amend. 8.
[6] Timbs v. Indiana, 139 S. Ct. 682, 586 U.S., 203 L. Ed. 2d 11 (2019).
[7] Bennis v. Michigan, 516 U.S. 442, 116 S. Ct. 994, 134 L. Ed. 2d 68 (1996).
[8] Ibid.
[9] Dahl, Dick. “Is the War on Drugs Succeeding?” Harvard Law Bulletin, 2005.
[10] “How Crime Pays: The Unconstitutionality of Modern Civil Asset Forfeiture as a Tool of Criminal Law Enforcement.” Harvard Law Review 131, no. 2387 (2018). https://harvardlawreview.org/2018/06/how-crime-pays-the-unconstitutionality-of-modern-civil-asset-forfeiture-as-a-tool-of-criminal-law-enforcement/.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.