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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

What I've learned recently is that most people only read headlines when it comes to Supreme Court cases, and the headlines are written to be intentionally misleading. Most Supreme Court cases have a lot of nuance to them that most people miss.

For example, in this thread, people keep saying that United States v. Ursery upheld Civil Forfeiture, but it did no such thing. The case was about whether CF is a criminal punishment for double-jeopardy, but it did not address the legality of CF itself.

In this case, they are also not directly deciding on CF. They are deciding on whether the 8th amendment applies to the States based on the 14th amendment. If they decide that it does, then the case goes back to the Indiana Supreme Court, who will have to decide if the fine is excessive, like the lower courts found.

But every other civil forfeiture case will still have to argue in a court whether the forfeiture counts as an excessive fine.

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You seem to have a more accurate perspective on this case than most of the comments. Thank you for posting.

But I'm still confused on one point: It seems like the supreme court has already ruled that the 8th Amendment applies to the states in Roper v. Simmons[0], Robinson v. California [1], and others. To me this pretty directly means that a state law dictating a cruel and unusual punishment is unconstitutional.

So if supreme court isn't deciding whether cruel and unusual punishments at the state level are unconstitutional in general (a previous ruling), and it isn't deciding whether this specific civil forfeiture was cruel and unusual (a decision to be made by the state court), what exactly are they deciding? Is there some unplugged hole in the middle, like whether any CF case (regardless of details) could be cruel and unusual? Or is there some other reason that the previous rulings don't apply here?

[0] https://www.oyez.org/cases/2004/03-633

[1] https://www.oyez.org/cases/1961/554

You can track the progress of the case through SCOTUSBlog [1] with associated filings like the writ of certiorari [2]. The precise question presented in this case is:

> Whether the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause is incorporated against the States under the Fourteenth Amendment

[1] http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/timbs-v-indiana/

[2] http://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/17/17-1091/33939/20180...

Apparently[1] it is not about the 8th amendment as a whole, but only about the excessive-fines clause. Everyone seems to agree that the rest of the amendment has already been incorporated.

[1]: http://reason.com/volokh/2018/06/19/supreme-court-will-hear-...

It will be interesting how they determine if the fines were excessive in all the cases where there were never any charges filed and the government simply seized property under the presumption of guilt.

To my untrained eye a $27,000 fine for failing to properly signal a lane change is a little bit on the excessive side.

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