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Please don't editorialize the title. It should be "Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property"
I think the NYT updated the title. Unfortunately, http://newsdiffs.org/ seems to be broken right now.
A swipe against excessive civil forfeitures succeeds. These aggressive actions require citizens to forfeit property far in excess of any harm committed. In the court case, a man had his car seized when caught selling a few hundred dollars of heroine. We have laws to punish illegal behavior, but it’s not right that all your property get snatched up too. The most egregious of these cases often involve no due process at…
That was 4x the maximum penalty, and almost 20x the fine. How that was ever legal remains confusing to me.
Non-paywalled press release from the Institute for Justice, who worked on this case as part of their mission to fight civil forfeiture: https://ij.org/press-release/u-s-supreme-court-rules-unanimo...
"Ruling Requires Cities and States—Not Just the Federal Government— To Abide by the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause" Wow, this is pretty big. They just extended constitutional protection of this clause to lower levels of government.
Sadly they haven't updated with the decision yet.
This article has left me confused. Does this mean civil forfeiture is unconstitutional? Or just that it can only be used if it does not constitute an "excessive" fine?
This it's possible for massive injustice to happen for decades before we have a resolution.
This is one of the reasons technology can be so frightening because there's no case law and the rate of technology is exponential which means there is the potential for GREAT evil to happen without any resolution except to fight it out and get it in front of the Supreme course.
It will be interesting to see exactly how this ruling is applied in the field. My guess is that not much will change, as the most problematic and widespread applications of civil forfeiture don’t involve a crime where a monetary fine would be allowed as a penalty. Rather, the police simply steal (they prefer the term “seize,” but it’s just stealing) the money/assets claiming that they suspect it to be the fruit of a…
The whole asset forfeiture without any charges being filed always seemed really sketchy because in the end you're still taking assets from a person (so long as they're claimed, eg maybe if they find a pile of money in an abandoned drug lab a seizure would be valid if no one comes forward saying it's theirs at which point they should charge the person with crimes and seize the money after trial).
> Justice Thomas agreed with the result in the case, Timbs v. Indiana, No. 17-1091, but said he would have gotten to the same place by a different route. While the majority relied on the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, Justice Thomas said he would have ruled “the right to be free from excessive fines is one of the ‘privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States’ protected by the 14th Amendment.”…
That’s not quite right. The Bill of Rights originally only applied to the federal government, until after the civil war when the 14th amendment was passed. Since then the clause in that amendment saying no one can be deprived of life or liberty without due process has been interpreted to mean most of the bill of rights also applies to the states. This ruling said as much for the 8th amendment prohibitions on excessiv…
> Justice Thomas agreed with the result in the case, Timbs v. Indiana, No. 17-1091, but said he would have gotten to the same place by a different route. While the majority relied on the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, Justice Thomas said he would have ruled “the right to be free from excessive fines is one of the ‘privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States’ protected by the 14th Amendment.”…
That’s not quite right. The Bill of Rights originally only applied to the federal government, until after the civil war when the 14th amendment was passed. Since then the clause in that amendment saying no one can be deprived of life or liberty without due process has been interpreted to mean most of the bill of rights also applies to the states. This ruling said as much for the 8th amendment prohibitions on excessiv…
Do you read anything into this? Is there a reason a justice would prefer to highlight the excessive fines provision over the due process protections?
A swipe against excessive civil forfeitures succeeds. These aggressive actions require citizens to forfeit property far in excess of any harm committed. In the court case, a man had his car seized when caught selling a few hundred dollars of heroine. We have laws to punish illegal behavior, but it’s not right that all your property get snatched up too. The most egregious of these cases often involve no due process at…
Glad this overreach was rectified but it took a good while to get corrected.