Cite as: 509 U. S. 544 (1993)
Syllabus
Fort Wayne Books, Inc. v. Indiana, 489 U. S. 46, distinguished. His claim is also inconsistent with Arcara v. Cloud Books, Inc., 478 U. S. 697, in which the Court rejected a claim that the closure of an adult bookstore under a general nuisance statute was an improper prior restraint. His definition of prior restraint also would undermine the time-honored distinction between barring future speech and penalizing past speech. Pp. 549-554. (b) Since the RICO statute does not criminalize constitutionally protected speech, it is materially different from the statutes at issue in this Court's overbreadth cases. Cf., e. g., Board of Airport Comm'rs of Los Angeles v. Jews for Jesus, Inc., 482 U. S. 569, 574-575. In addition, the threat of forfeiture has no more of a "chilling" effect on free expression than threats of a prison term or large fine, which are constitutional under Fort Wayne Books. Nor can the forfeiture be said to offend the First Amendment based on Arcara's analysis that criminal sanctions with some incidental effect on First Amendment activities are subject to First Amendment scrutiny where it was the expressive conduct that drew the legal remedy, 478 U. S., at 706-707. While the conduct drawing the legal remedy here may have been expressive, "obscenity" can be regulated or actually proscribed consistent with the Amendment, see, e. g., Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 485. Pp. 554-558. 2. The case is remanded for the Court of Appeals to consider petitioner's claim that the forfeiture, considered atop his prison term and fine, is "excessive" within the meaning of the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment. The Court of Appeals rejected petitioner's Eighth Amendment challenge with a statement that applies only to the Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishments." The Excessive Fines Clause limits the Government's power to extract payments as punishment for an offense, and the in personam criminal forfeiture at issue here is clearly a form of monetary punishment no different, for Eighth Amendment purposes, from a traditional "fine." The question whether the forfeiture was excessive must be considered in light of the extensive criminal activities that petitioner apparently conducted through his enormous racketeering enterprise over a substantial period of time rather than the number of materials actually found to be obscene. Pp. 558-559. 943 F. 2d 825, vacated and remanded.
Rehnquist, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which White, O'Connor, Scalia, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Souter, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part, post, p. 559. Kennedy, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Blackmun and Stevens, JJ., joined, and in Part II of which Souter, J., joined, post, p. 560.
545
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