Austin v. United States, 509 U.S. 602, 7 (1993)

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608

AUSTIN v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

against himself." The protections provided by the Sixth Amendment are explicitly confined to "criminal prosecutions." See generally Ward, 448 U. S., at 248.4 The text of the Eighth Amendment includes no similar limitation. See n. 2, supra.

Nor does the history of the Eighth Amendment require

such a limitation. Justice O'Connor noted in Browning-Ferris: "Consideration of the Eighth Amendment immediately followed consideration of the Fifth Amendment.

4 As a general matter, this Court's decisions applying constitutional protections to civil forfeiture proceedings have adhered to this distinction between provisions that are limited to criminal proceedings and provisions that are not. Thus, the Court has held that the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures applies in forfeiture proceedings, see One 1958 Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania, 380 U. S. 693, 696 (1965); Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 634 (1886), but that the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause does not, see United States v. Zucker, 161 U. S. 475, 480-482 (1896). It has also held that the due process requirement that guilt in a criminal proceeding be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, see In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358 (1970), does not apply to civil forfeiture proceedings. See Lilienthal's Tobacco v. United States, 97 U. S. 237, 271-272 (1878). The Double Jeopardy Clause has been held not to apply in civil forfeiture proceedings, but only in cases where the forfeiture could properly be characterized as remedial. See United States v. One Assortment of 89 Firearms, 465 U. S. 354, 364 (1984); One Lot Emerald Cut Stones v. United States, 409 U. S. 232, 237 (1972); see generally United States v. Halper, 490 U. S. 435, 446-449 (1989) (Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits second sanction that may not fairly be characterized as remedial). Conversely, the Fifth Amendment's Self-Incrimination Clause, which is textually limited to "criminal case[s]," has been applied in civil forfeiture proceedings, but only where the forfeiture statute had made the culpability of the owner relevant, see United States v. United States Coin & Currency, 401 U. S. 715, 721-722 (1971), or where the owner faced the possibility of subsequent criminal proceedings, see Boyd, 116 U. S., at 634; see also United States v. Ward, 448 U. S. 242, 253-254 (1980) (discussing Boyd).

And, of course, even those protections associated with criminal cases may apply to a civil forfeiture proceeding if it is so punitive that the proceeding must reasonably be considered criminal. See Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U. S. 144 (1963); Ward, supra.

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