Indiana has a bad law—a law so bad that almost everyone can agree it’s a bad law, from liberal to conservative. Here it is: Law enforcement can seize pretty much anything they can argue is connected to a defendant’s crime.
How does this extreme law play out?
Enter Tyson Timbs. He had a Land Rover and he had a heroin problem, so he turned to selling heroin to finance his heroin problem. Unfortunately for Timbs, he sold heroin to undercover cops. He was convicted, assigned $1,200 in court fees, and given “home detention” for five years. Then, separately, police initiated civil forfeiture proceedings and took his Land Rover, valued at $42,000. The maximum fine for Timbs’ crime was $10,000.
Had it been federal agents going after Timbs, he would have been protected by the Eighth Amendment’s “excessive fines” clause, thanks to a 1993 case. But Indiana claims the Eighth Amendment doesn’t apply to state proceedings.
Timbs challenged the seizure directly and won at both the local and appellate levels. Then the state supreme court reversed the ruling on the grounds that the Supreme Court hasn’t decided the Eighth Amendment’s excessive fines clause is incorporated against the states—that is, whether this part of the Eighth Amendment should apply to the states.
The law is with Timbs. Indiana’s supreme court holds a minority position: Two federal circuit courts and 14 state supreme courts have found that the excessive fines clause applies to states. The Supreme Court has, at a minimum, trended toward incorporation, as most of the Bill of Rights has been incorporated against the states. Granted, none of that would have mattered had Trump’s justices politicized the case. But that’s not what happened.
Oral argument was telling. Usually, justices ask questions and pose hypotheticals that explore multiple aspects of a given issue. Their leanings may be apparent in the questions they ask, but its far from the norm to step out and openly criticize or take a side. This time, even Justice Neil Gorsuch chimed in to directly challenge Indiana’s argument:
As Ian Millhiser pointed out, Indiana’s only real hope was getting the Trump conservatives on board. This case can now happily be voted unlikely to surprise, which is great news for state-level advocates eager to challenge oppressive fines and fees.