Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1993

Austin v. United States

509 U.S. 602 | 113 S. Ct. 2801 | 125 L. Ed. 2d 488 | 1993 U.S. LEXIS 4407

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that a civil in rem forfeiture is subject to the Eighth Amendment when it serves, even in part, to punish; whether Austin's particular property forfeiture was excessive was left for the lower courts on remand.

Background

Richard Lyle Austin pleaded guilty in South Dakota state court to possessing cocaine with intent to distribute and received a seven-year prison sentence. The evidence showed that Austin arranged a cocaine sale at his auto body shop, traveled to his mobile home to obtain the cocaine, and returned to the shop to complete the sale. Searches of both properties also uncovered small amounts of drugs, paraphernalia, a revolver, and about $4,700 in cash.

The United States then brought an in rem civil forfeiture action against Austin's mobile home and body shop under 21 U.S.C. §§ 881(a)(4) and (a)(7). Those provisions authorize forfeiture of conveyances and real property used to facilitate specified drug offenses. Austin argued that taking both properties would violate the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause.

The District Court granted summary judgment to the Government. The Eighth Circuit affirmed, though reluctantly. It believed the forfeiture was disproportionate to Austin's offense, but concluded that precedent allowing in rem forfeiture even against innocent owners foreclosed proportionality review. The Supreme Court granted review to resolve disagreement among the circuits over whether the Excessive Fines Clause applies to in rem civil forfeitures.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause applies to civil in rem forfeitures under 21 U.S.C. §§ 881(a)(4) and (a)(7).

Holding

Yes. Forfeitures under these provisions are at least partly punitive and therefore are subject to the Excessive Fines Clause.

Reasoning

The Court began with the Clause's text and purpose. Unlike constitutional provisions expressly confined to criminal cases, such as parts of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, the Eighth Amendment contains no criminal-proceeding limitation. Its central purpose is to restrain the Government's power to punish, and the Excessive Fines Clause restricts governmental exactions imposed as punishment for an offense.

The relevant question was not whether the forfeiture proceeding was formally civil or criminal. Civil sanctions can serve punitive as well as remedial goals. Under the Court's prior cases, a sanction is punishment when it cannot fairly be explained as serving solely a remedial purpose and instead also serves retributive or deterrent ends.

Historical practice showed that forfeiture has long had punitive aspects. English deodands, forfeitures following felony or treason convictions, and statutory forfeitures of ships and goods used in customs violations were all understood at least in part as penalties. Early American forfeiture statutes likewise placed forfeiture alongside other punishments and used the language of fines and forfeits interchangeably.

The Court's forfeiture precedents also treated statutory in rem forfeiture as punitive. Although those cases sometimes invoked the fiction that the property itself was guilty or allowed forfeiture despite an owner's asserted innocence, they rested in significant part on the premise that an owner who allowed unlawful use of property could be punished for negligence or for entrusting the property to another. The Court had repeatedly reserved the harder question whether forfeiture of a truly innocent owner's property would be constitutional.

Sections 881(a)(4) and (a)(7) reinforced, rather than displaced, the punitive character of forfeiture. Their innocent-owner defenses focus forfeiture on an owner's culpability. The statutes also directly tie forfeiture to drug crimes, and their legislative history describes forfeiture of real property as a means to punish and deter profitable drug trafficking.

The Government's remedial explanations were insufficient. A home, auto body shop, or other lawful property used in a drug offense is not contraband simply because it facilitated wrongdoing. Nor can forfeiture of property with dramatically varying value be treated as liquidated compensation for law-enforcement costs or social harms. Even if the statutes have remedial effects, they also serve punishment and deterrence, making the forfeitures payments to the Government as punishment and thus fines under the Eighth Amendment.

Issue #2

Whether the Supreme Court should establish the test for deciding whether Austin's forfeiture was constitutionally excessive.

Holding

No. The Court remanded for the lower courts to determine excessiveness in the first instance.

Reasoning

The Eighth Circuit had believed that it could not conduct any proportionality inquiry, even though it thought the Government was exacting too severe a penalty. Because it had not decided what considerations should govern an excessiveness analysis, the Supreme Court declined to formulate a multifactor test on the existing record.

The Court reversed and remanded so that the lower courts could decide whether forfeiture of Austin's mobile home and body shop was excessive. The Court did not limit that inquiry to any single factor, though it noted that the relationship between the property and the offense could be relevant.

Concurrences

Justice Scalia

Reasoning

Justice Scalia agreed that the forfeiture was a fine subject to the Excessive Fines Clause, but he would have reached that conclusion more directly. A fine is a payment to the sovereign as punishment for an offense, and payment may be in kind as well as cash. Permitting unlimited property confiscations while limiting only cash penalties would make little sense in light of the Clause's purpose.

He disagreed with the majority's historical effort to show that traditional in rem forfeitures always rested on the property owner's culpability. In his view, the historical cases are ambiguous, and the traditional theory was that the property itself was guilty, whether or not its owner had committed a personal wrong. The Court should reserve, rather than resolve by broad historical claims, whether owner culpability is constitutionally required for all in rem forfeitures.

For this statutory forfeiture, however, culpability was clear enough. Sections 881(a)(4) and (a)(7) contain innocent-owner protections, so the Government may not take property from an owner wholly without fault. Because the statutes condition forfeiture on unlawful use of the property and some degree of owner culpability, while making no effort to compensate for a measured loss, they impose punishment.

Justice Scalia also offered an alternative view of excessiveness. For traditional in rem forfeiture, he thought the key inquiry should be instrumentality, not the property's dollar value measured against the offense. The question is whether the property bears a sufficiently close relationship to the crime to be considered tainted or guilty—for example, whether a building in which an isolated drug sale occurred was genuinely an instrumentality of that offense.

Justice Kennedy

Reasoning

Justice Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas, substantially agreed with Justice Scalia. He accepted that the forfeiture at issue was covered by the Excessive Fines Clause, but thought the majority's extended historical discussion of forfeiture unnecessary and unpersuasive.

He cautioned against reading a unified theory of personal punishment into historical forfeiture law. Some in rem forfeitures may have been designed to remove property causing injury or to bring an asset under a court's control, rather than to punish an owner for blameworthy conduct. The Court should reserve for a necessary future case the constitutional question whether the Government may forfeit property when its owner has committed no intentional or negligent wrong.

Like Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy would not decide whether all in rem forfeitures are intended to punish their owners. The owner-culpability and historical questions were not necessary to conclude that the drug-forfeiture statutes at issue imposed a fine.