Supreme Court's October Term 2018 Contains Hints of Things to Come

In its recently ended October Term 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court decided several notable criminal law decisions. Although the Court refrained from reshaping criminal law in blockbuster opinions, the criminal cases from this term will have a meaningful impact on white-collar practitioners' work and, importantly, offer clues regarding the movement of the criminal law in subsequent terms. In this two-part article, we review several of the key decisions and consider their implications, both for practitioners in this area and for Court-watchers interested in future Court decisions.

Timbs v. Indiana: The Excessive Fines Clause Is Applicable to the States

In Timbs v. Indiana, 139 S. Ct. 682 (2019), the Supreme Court addressed whether the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment bars the states, in addition to the federal government, from imposing excessive fines on criminal defendants. After Timbs pleaded guilty in Indiana state court to a minor drug trafficking offense — a crime for which the maximum fine was $10,000 — the police seized his Land Rover SUV, worth $42,000. Although Timbs had purchased the Land Rover with legitimate funds, he then used it to transport drugs. The trial judge rejected the government's attempted forfeiture of the Land Rover, ruling that the seizure was grossly disproportionate to Timbs's crime in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The Indiana Supreme Court reversed, holding that the Excessive Fines Clause was not binding on Indiana, since the Supreme Court had never expressly held that it was incorporated by the due process guarantee in the Fourteenth Amendment.