Advocates have long railed against civil asset forfeiture—a practice that allows law enforcement to seize property and cash it believes was used in the commission of a crime, even if the person it belongs to is later found innocent—with such diverse organizations as the ACLU and the Heritage Foundation calling the policing practice “abusive,” and the Libertarian Party calling it “legalized theft.”Black communities have borne the brunt of the practice, with a 2019 news investigation in South Carolina revealing that 65 percent of people whose property was seized by police in Greenville from 2014 to 2016 were Black men, and a 2015 ACLU report finding that 71 percent of Philadelphians who had property seized between 2011 and 2013 were Black.Black Lives Matter has called for an end to the practice.
But in February, the Supreme Court handed people battling law enforcement over property seized by police a win when it held that the excessive fines clause contained in the Eighth Amendment applies to the states as well as the federal government.
In 2015, Tyson Timbs pleaded guilty to dealing in a controlled substance and conspiracy to commit theft.At the time of his 2013 arrest, Indiana State Police also seized his $42,000 Land Rover.The government has the power to take property like Timbs’s vehicle through a process called in rem (“against the thing itself”) forfeiture, a type of civil action that has become inextricably linked with criminal law in the United States.Even if a person is not convicted of a crime, assets that the police believe are involved in the commission of the crime can be seized and forfeited to the government through a civil court action.The maximum statutory fine that Timbs could have been required to pay as a consequence of his conviction was $10,000—less than a quarter of the value of the Land Rover; in fact, he paid only $1,200 in fees and court costs.
Timbs argued that the seizure constituted an excessive fine.Under the Eighth Amendment, fines must be proportional to the severity of the offense committed. Indiana countered that the Eighth Amendment’s excessive fines clause applied only to the federal government—not to states—so the vehicle could be seized and forfeited no matter what its value.The Supreme Court disagreed, stating in a unanimous opinion that the clause does, in fact, limit the power of the states as well as the federal government.(The Court didn’t, however, reach the question whether the seizure of Timbs’s Land Rover rose to the level of an excessive fine, but rather returned the case to Indiana courts to determine that issue. In October, the Indiana Supreme Court in turn sent the case back to the trial court for a ruling on whether the seizure of the vehicle was a “grossly disproportional” fine.)
Timbs was a blow to police: in 2018 alone, more than a billion dollars in seized assets were deposited to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Asset Forfeiture Fund, which pays for some law enforcement expenses and equipment.But the ruling was hailed by groups all along the political spectrum.Public opinion polls have found that a vast majority of Americans oppose civil asset forfeiture.
States will need to sort out the impact of Timbs on their asset forfeiture laws and practices, which vary widely. Under pressure from advocates and courts, many had begun that process even before the ruling, with varied effect. In July, the governor of Hawaii vetoed legislation that would have significantly limited the state’s power to use civil in rem actions, leaving intact a system that has already been criticized for mismanagement.In Michigan, however, bipartisan efforts resulted in significant reforms in May that virtually eliminated the state’s power to seize assets without an associated conviction.