Cite as: 516 U. S. 442 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
application shall be made it will be time enough to pronounce upon it." 254 U. S., at 512.
Notwithstanding this well-established authority rejecting the innocent-owner defense, petitioner argues that we should in effect overrule it by importing a culpability requirement from cases having at best a tangential relation to the "innocent owner" doctrine in forfeiture cases. She cites Foucha v. Louisiana, 504 U. S. 71 (1992), for the proposition that a criminal defendant may not be punished for a crime if he is found to be not guilty. She also argues that our holding in Austin v. United States, 509 U. S. 602 (1993), that the Excessive Fines Clause 6 limits the scope of civil forfeiture judgments, "would be difficult to reconcile with any rule allowing truly innocent persons to be punished by civil forfeiture." Brief for Petitioner 18-19, n. 12.
In Foucha the Court held that a defendant found not guilty by reason of insanity in a criminal trial could not be thereafter confined indefinitely by the State without a showing that he was either dangerous or mentally ill. Petitioner argues that our statement that in those circumstances a State has no "punitive interest" which would justify continued detention, 504 U. S., at 80, requires that Michigan demonstrate a punitive interest in depriving her of her interest in the forfeited car. But, putting aside the extent to which a forfeiture proceeding is "punishment" in the first place, Foucha did not purport to discuss, let alone overrule, The Palmyra line of cases.
In Austin, the Court held that because "forfeiture serves, at least in part, to punish the owner," forfeiture proceedings are subject to the limitations of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against excessive fines. 509 U. S., at 618. There was no occasion in that case to deal with the validity of the "innocent-owner defense," other than to point out that if a forfeiture statute allows such a defense, the defense is
6 U. S. Const., Amdt. 8.
451
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