No More Cruel and Unusual Punishments by Grace F.

On February 20, 2019, the Supreme Court decided that states aren’t allowed to issue excessive fines for criminal punishments. The case centered around a convicted Indiana drug dealer whose Land Rover was taken in rem pay off his $10,000 fines, though the vehicle was worth $40,000. The state justified the action because the asset was involved in the crime. The plaintiff asked the Supreme Court * “[w]hether the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause is incorporated against the States under the Fourteenth Amendment.” *

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered the court’s unanimous answer: protection against excessive economic sanctions is “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty.”  SCOTUS didn’t provide standards for settling whether a particular fine is unconstitutionally excessive. So, when is a confiscation exorbitant? Does Indiana’s seizure of Timbs’s Land Rover meet this measure?

This landmark incorporation case could have dramatic and far-reaching effects. The foundation of America is built on freedom from government oppression and civilians’ civil liberties being protected above all. Now that the excessive fines clause in the Eighth Amendment has been incorporated, what could this mean moving forward for perhaps the most excessive/cruel and unusual punishment of all, the death penalty?

https://www.jurist.org/news/2018/11/supreme-court-hears-arguments-on-whether-eighth-amendment-excessive-fines-clause-applies-to-states/