6.7. Other Sentences: Monetary Punishment
Lore Rutz-Burri and Kate McLean
Fines
Fines, or a sum of money the offender has to pay as punishment for the crime, are generally viewed as the least severe of all possible punishments. Fines may either supplement imprisonment or probation, or they may be the sole punishment. The Model Penal Code proposes legislative guidelines on the use of fines, but states have generally rejected this provision. Instead, judges are given extremely broad discretion in setting fine amounts, and there are few limits on the judge’s ability to impose a fine. Frequently, the criminal statute will specify the highest permissible fine. The Eighth Amendment’s “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” Clause prohibits excessive fines, but courts rarely have found a fine to violate this provision.
In Tate v. Short, 401 U.S. 395 (1971), the Court found that fines that punish poor people more harshly than rich people violate the Equal Protection Clause. Historically, magistrates had given offenders the option of paying a fine or serving a jail sentence. Sentences were frequently “thirty dollars or thirty days”. If defendants were too poor to pay the fine, they went to jail. The Tate Court reasoned that the state could imprison Tate for committing the crime, but by requiring either time or a fine, the state was really incarcerating Tate because he was too poor to pay the fine. After Tate, courts began using installment plans that permit poor defendants to pay fines over a period of several months. This practice may nonetheless subject the poor to an increased punishment if the court administration requires interest or some fees associated with a payment plan.
Civil Forfeiture
Federal law allows civil forfeiture, the process by which the government confiscates the proceeds (property or money) of criminal activities (See,18 USCA §§981-982). Laws that allow the state to forfeit the property used in illicit drug activity are particularly controversial. In deciding whether forfeiture is legal, state courts generally look to constitutional provisions dealing with excessive fines. In Austin v. United States, 509 US 602, at 622 (1993), the Supreme Court said that civil forfeiture “constitutes payment to a sovereign as punishment for some offense’ . . . and, as such, is subject to the limitations of the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause.” However, the court left it to state and lower federal courts to determine the test of “excessiveness” in the context of forfeiture. The Illinois Supreme Court said that three factors should be considered in this regard: (1) the gravity of the offense relative to the value of the forfeiture, (2) whether the property was an integral part of the illicit activity, and (3) whether the illicit activity involving the property was extensive. [1] Federally, a $357,144 forfeiture for failing to report to U.S. Customs that more than $10,000 was being taken out of the country was found to be “grossly disproportionate” to