DrugPolicyCases.com | |||
|
Authors ›› Blackmun
The fiction "that the thing is primarily considered the offender," Goldsmith-Grant Co., 254 U.S., at 511, has a venerable history in our case law. [...] Yet the Court has understood this fiction to rest on the notion that the owner who allows his property to become involved in an offense has been negligent.
[...]
The more recent cases have expressly reserved the question whether the fiction [that the thing is primarily considered the offender] could be employed to forfeit the property of a truly innocent owner. See, e. g., Goldsmith-Grant Co., 254 U.S., at 512; Calero-Toledo, 416 U.S., at 689-690 (noting that forfeiture of a truly innocent owner's property would raise "serious constitutional questions").
[...]
...Congress has chosen to tie forfeiture directly to the commission of drug offenses. Thus, under § 881(a)(4), a conveyance is forfeitable if it is used or intended for use to facilitate the transportation of controlled substances, their raw materials, or the equipment used to manufacture or distribute them. Under § 881(a)(7), real property is forfeitable if it is used or intended for use to facilitate the commission of a drug-related crime punishable by more than one year's imprisonment.
[...]
When it added subsection (a)(7) [providing for forfeiture of real property implicated in a drug-related crime] to § 881 in 1984, Congress recognized "that the traditional criminal sanctions of fine and imprisonment are inadequate to deter or punish the enormously profitable trade in dangerous drugs."
[...]
[Regarding the argument that "the forfeited assets serve to compensate the Government for the expense of law enforcement activity and for its expenditure on societal problems such as urban blight, drug addiction, and other health concerns resulting from the drug trade"] We previously have upheld the forfeiture of goods involved in customs violations as "a reasonable form of liquidated damages." One Lot Emerald Cut Stones v. United States, 409 U.S. 232, 237, 34 L. Ed. 2d 438, 93 S. Ct. 489 (1972). But the dramatic variations in the value of conveyances and real property forfeitable under §§ 881(a)(4) and (a)(7) [drug crimes asset forfeiture statutes] undercut any similar argument with respect to those provisions. The Court made this very point in Ward: the "forfeiture of property . . . a penalty that has absolutely no correlation to any damages sustained by society or to the cost of enforcing the law." 448 U.S., at 254.
[...]
|
|