616
Opinion of the Court
at 14 ("The thing is here primarily considered as the offender, or rather the offence is attached primarily to the thing"); Harmony, 2 How., at 233 ("The vessel which commits the aggression is treated as the offender, as the guilty instrument or thing to which the forfeiture attaches, without any reference whatsoever to the character or conduct of the owner"); Dobbins's Distillery, 96 U. S., at 401 ("[T]he offence . . . is attached primarily to the distillery, and the real and personal property used in connection with the same, without any regard whatsoever to the personal misconduct or responsibility of the owner"). Yet the Court has understood this fiction to rest on the notion that the owner who allows his property to become involved in an offense has been negligent. Thus, in Goldsmith-Grant Co., the Court said that "ascribing to the property a certain personality, a power of complicity and guilt in the wrong," had "some analogy to the law of deodand." 254 U. S., at 510. It then quoted Blackstone's explanation of the reason for deodand: that " 'such misfortunes are in part owing to the negligence of the owner, and therefore he is properly punished by such forfeiture.' " Id., at 510-511, quoting 1 W. Blackstone, at *301.
In none of these cases did the Court apply the guilty-property fiction to justify forfeiture when the owner had done all that reasonably could be expected to prevent the unlawful use of his property. In The Palmyra, it did no more than reject the argument that the criminal conviction of the owner was a prerequisite to the forfeiture of his property. See 12 Wheat., at 15 ("[N]o personal conviction of the offender is necessary to enforce a forfeiture in rem in cases of this nature"). In Harmony, the owners' claim of "innocence" was limited to the fact that they "never contemplated
80, 87 (1992), which, particularly in admiralty proceedings, might have lacked in personam jurisdiction over the owner of the property. See also Harmony v. United States, 2 How. 210, 233 (1844). As is discussed in the text, forfeiture proceedings historically have been understood as imposing punishment despite their in rem nature.
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