The Excessive Fines Clause: Assessing Proportionality of Fines Through Civil Asset Forfeiture by Multi-Factor Tests in the Wake of Timbs v. Indiana

This article analyzes the approaches to assessing the proportionality of fines imposed by civil asset forfeiture. In many cases, fines imposed by civil asset forfeiture consist of property. Without clear Supreme Court guidance on the matter of evaluating just what makes a fine “excessive,” I turned to the proportionality jurisprudence from the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. While many circuits have proposed their own tests for excessive fines imposed through forfeiture, I propose an objective multi-factor test that will measure a fine’s proportionality to avoid excessiveness