Amy Howe Independent Contractor and Reporter

Posted Wed, November 21st, 2018 10:58 am

Argument preview: Justices to consider whether Eighth Amendment ban on “excessive fines” applies to the states

Next week the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the case of Tyson Timbs, an Indiana man who lost his Land Rover after his conviction on state drug charges. A state trial court agreed with Timbs that requiring him to forfeit his car went too far, violating the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “excessive fines,” but that won’t be the issue before the justices. Instead, the question is whether the Eighth Amendment applies to state and local governments at all. The justices’ eventual answer will be important not only for Timbs, who hopes to get his $42,000 car back, but also for those state and local governments, for which fines and forfeitures have become a key source of revenue.

It may come as a surprise to readers that the entire Bill of Rights – the first 10 amendments to the Constitution – does not automatically apply to the states. But the Bill of Rights was originally interpreted as applying only to the federal government. Beginning in the 20th century, however, the Supreme Court ruled that some (and eventually most) provisions of the Bill of Rights apply to the states through the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which – among other things – bars states from depriving anyone “of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Most recently, in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms applies fully to the states because it is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition”; in a footnote, Justice Samuel Alito observed that the court had not decided whether the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines applies to the states.

Enter Tyson Timbs, who in 2015 pleaded guilty to drug charges after undercover police bought heroin from him. He received a six-year sentence: one year of home detention, living with his aunt, followed by five years on probation. Timbs was also ordered to forfeit his 2012 Land Rover, which he had purchased for approximately $42,000 with the proceeds of his father’s life insurance policy, on the theory that he had used the car to transport drugs. ... A state trial court ruled that requiring Timbs to forfeit the Land Rover would violate the excessive fines clause because the car was worth roughly four times more than the maximum monetary fine that the state could impose and therefore would be “grossly disproportional to the gravity” of his crime. ... An intermediate appeals court agreed with Timbs that the excessive fines clause applies to the states and that the forfeiture of the Land Rover was unconstitutional because it was an excessive fine. But the Indiana Supreme Court reversed, holding that the U.S. Supreme Court has never specifically said that the excessive fines clause applies to the states.
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This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.

Posted in Timbs v. Indiana, Featured, Merits Cases

Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Argument preview: Justices to consider whether Eighth Amendment ban on “excessive fines” applies to the states, SCOTUSblog (Nov. 21, 2018, 10:58 AM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/11/argument-preview-justices-to-consider-whether-eighth-amendment-ban-on-excessive-fines-applies-to-the-states/