How big of a fine is "excessive?"

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines and fees applies to states under the incorporation doctrine. In the underlying case that triggered the ruling, Indiana police had seized a Land Rover from Tyson Timbs for a minor drug crime.

But while the Supreme Court ruled that states are bound by the Eighth Amendment, the Justices left it up to state courts to determine what constitutes an excessive fine. Wesley Hottot, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, says the Timbs ruling revived the largely moribund Excessive Fines clause, especially regarding civil asset forfeiture, which allows police to seize property suspected of being connected to criminal activity.

“We see courts being more careful about this than they would have been prior to Timbs,” Hottot says. “We see people raising the [excessive fines] defense more frequently than they did prior to Timbs, and I think it’s a matter of time until it goes back to SCOTUS to decide for Eighth Amendment purposes when forfeitures are excessive.”