## Facts

- Tyson Timbs used $42,000 from his father’s life-insurance proceeds to buy a Land Rover SUV in 2013.
- Over several months, Timbs used the Land Rover to transport heroin within Indiana.
- After controlled purchases involving a confidential informant, police stopped Timbs, arrested him, and seized the Land Rover.
- Timbs pleaded guilty to dealing in a controlled substance and conspiracy to commit theft; he received a six-year sentence (five years suspended) and was assessed about $1,200 in fees and costs.
- Indiana pursued a separate civil in rem forfeiture action against the Land Rover, alleging it was used to facilitate drug trafficking.
- The Land Rover’s value (about $42,000) exceeded by more than four times the maximum $10,000 criminal fine authorized for Timbs’s drug offense.
- The Indiana trial court and intermediate appellate court denied forfeiture as an excessive fine, but the Indiana Supreme Court reversed on the ground that the Excessive Fines Clause did not apply to the States.

## Issues

1. Whether the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause is incorporated against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether, if incorporated, the Excessive Fines Clause applies to state civil in rem forfeitures that are at least partly punitive.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court vacated the Indiana Supreme Court’s judgment and remanded.
- The Court held unanimously that the Excessive Fines Clause is incorporated against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
- The Court reaffirmed that civil in rem forfeitures fall within the Clause when they are at least partially punitive.
- The Court did not decide whether forfeiture of Timbs’s Land Rover was excessive, leaving proportionality to be addressed on remand under the incorporated Clause.
- Justice Gorsuch concurred, emphasizing that incorporation was clear under existing doctrine.
- Justice Thomas concurred in the judgment, agreeing with incorporation but grounding it in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause rather than due process.

## Legal Principles

- A Bill of Rights protection applies to the States if it is “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty” or “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”
- The Excessive Fines Clause is a fundamental protection with a long Anglo-American pedigree and therefore binds state and local governments.
- Once incorporated, the right has the same scope against States as against the federal government; States are not subject to a weaker version of the Clause.
- Civil in rem forfeitures are subject to the Excessive Fines Clause when they serve, at least in part, punitive purposes.

## Conclusion

The Court held that the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause applies to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment, requiring state forfeiture and monetary-penalty regimes to comply with the same constitutional limits that constrain federal action.


Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U.S. 146 (2019)