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Opinion of the Court
Inc., 492 U. S. 257, 265 (1989). The Excessive Fines Clause thus "limits the government's power to extract payments, whether in cash or in kind, 'as punishment for some offense.' " Austin v. United States, 509 U. S. 602, 609-610 (1993) (emphasis deleted). Forfeitures—payments in kind— are thus "fines" if they constitute punishment for an offense.
We have little trouble concluding that the forfeiture of currency ordered by § 982(a)(1) constitutes punishment. The statute directs a court to order forfeiture as an additional sanction when "imposing sentence on a person convicted of" a willful violation of § 5316's reporting requirement. The forfeiture is thus imposed at the culmination of a criminal proceeding and requires conviction of an underlying felony, and it cannot be imposed upon an innocent owner of unreported currency, but only upon a person who has himself been convicted of a § 5316 reporting violation.3 Cf. id., at 619 (holding forfeiture to be a "fine" in part because the forfeiture statute "expressly provide[d] an 'innocent owner' defense" and thus "look[ed] . . . like punishment").
3 Although the currency reporting statute provides that "a person or an agent or bailee of the person shall file a report," 31 U. S. C. § 5316(a), the statute ordering the criminal forfeiture of unreported currency provides that "[t]he court, in imposing sentence on a person convicted of" failure to file the required report, "shall order that the person forfeit to the United States" any property "involved in" or "traceable to" the offense, 18 U. S. C. § 982(a)(1). The combined effect of these two statutes is that an owner of unreported currency is not subject to criminal forfeiture if his agent or bailee is the one who fails to file the required report, because such an owner could not be convicted of the reporting offense. The United States endorsed this interpretation at oral argument in this case. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 24-25.
For this reason, the dissent's speculation about the effect of today's holding on "kingpins" and "cash couriers" is misplaced. See post, at 352, 354. Section 982(a)(1)'s criminal in personam forfeiture reaches only currency owned by someone who himself commits a reporting crime. It is unlikely that the Government, in the course of criminally indicting and prosecuting a cash courier, would not bother to investigate the source and true ownership of unreported funds.
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