Timbs v. Indiana: Excessive Fines Clause Applies to the States

The Supreme Court decided Timbs v. Indiana yesterday, holding that the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause is an incorporated protection applicable to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment. What does the decision mean for North Carolina? In Timbs, an Indiana state court defendant pleaded guilty to drug and theft crimes. He was ordered to pay costs and fees of $1,203. The State also brought a civil suit for forfeiture of his $42,000 Land Rover, alleging that it was used to facilitate the crime. The court hearing that suit agreed that the car had been used in the crime, but decided that forfeiture of a $42,000 SUV would be “grossly disproportionate to the gravity of Timbs’s offense, and hence unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause.” Slip op. at 2. The Indiana Supreme Court reversed—but not because it disagreed that the forfeiture was excessive. Rather, the court reversed because the trial court decision was premised on the Excessive Fines Clause of the United States Constitution. And that clause, the state high court said, had not been incorporated to the states and thus constrained only federal actions. Id. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari. A unanimous Court (unanimous in the result, at least) concluded that the Excessive Fines Clause is incorporated to the states. Writing for the court, Justice Ginsburg worked her way from Magna Carta to today to demonstrate that the prohibition on excessive fines is “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty.” The need to be vigilant [...]