574
Kennedy, J., dissenting
ments," ibid., the government must use measures that are sensitive to First Amendment concerns in its task of regulating or punishing speech. Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S., at 525.
Whatever one might label the RICO forfeiture provisions at issue in this case, be it effective, innovative, or Draconian, § 1963 was not designed for sensitive and exacting application. What is happening here is simple: Books and films are condemned and destroyed not for their own content but for the content of their owner's prior speech. Our law does not permit the government to burden future speech for this sort of taint. Section 1963 requires trial courts to forfeit not only the unlawful items and any proceeds from their sale, but also the defendant's entire interest in the enterprise involved in the RICO violations and any assets affording the defendant a source of influence over the enterprise. 18 U. S. C. §§ 1963(a)(1)-(3) (1988 ed. and Supp. III). A defendant's exposure to this massive penalty is grounded on the commission of just two or more related obscenity offenses committed within a 10-year period. Aptly described, RICO's forfeiture provisions "arm prosecutors not with scalpels to excise obscene portions of an adult bookstore's inventory but with sickles to mow down the entire undesired use." Fort Wayne Books, 489 U. S., at 85 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
What is at work in this case is not the power to punish an individual for his past transgressions but the authority to suppress a particular class of disfavored speech. The forfeiture provisions accomplish this in a direct way by seizing speech presumed to be protected along with the instruments of its dissemination, and in an indirect way by threatening all who engage in the business of distributing adult or sexually explicit materials with the same disabling measures. Cf. Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Comm'n on Human Relations, 413 U. S. 376, 390 (1973) (the special vice of the prior restraint is suppression of speech, either directly or by in-
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