284
Opinion of the Court
Government as a result of a defendant's conduct. See Rex Trailer, supra, at 153-154. The civil penalty involved in Halper, for example, provided for a fixed monetary penalty for each false claim count on which the defendant was convicted in the criminal proceeding. Whether a "fixed-penalty provision" that seeks to compensate the Government for harm it has suffered is "so extreme" and "so divorced" from the penalty's nonpunitive purpose of compensating the Government as to be a punishment may be determined by balancing the Government's harm against the size of the penalty. Civil forfeitures, in contrast to civil penalties, are designed to do more than simply compensate the Government. Forfeitures serve a variety of purposes, but are designed primarily to confiscate property used in violation of the law, and to require disgorgement of the fruits of illegal conduct. Though it may be possible to quantify the value of the property forfeited, it is virtually impossible to quantify, even approximately, the nonpunitive purposes served by a particular civil forfeiture. Hence, it is practically difficult to determine whether a particular forfeiture bears no rational relationship to the nonpunitive purposes of that forfeiture. Quite simply, the case-by-case balancing test set forth in Halper, in which a court must compare the harm suffered by the Government against the size of the penalty imposed, is inapplicable to civil forfeiture.2
2 Justice Stevens' dissent is grounded in the different interpretation that he gives Halper. He finds that Halper announced "two different rules": a general rule, applicable to all civil sanctions, useful for determining whether a sanction is "of a punitive character"; and a "narrower rule," similar to our understanding of the case, that requires "an accounting of the Government's damages and costs." Post, at 308. Justice Stevens faults us in these cases for failing to apply the "general rule" of Halper.
The problem with Justice Stevens' interpretation of Halper, of course, and therefore with his entire argument, is that Halper did not announce two rules. Nowhere in Halper does the Court set forth two distinct rules or purport to apply a two-step analysis. Justice Stevens finds his "general rule" in a dictum from Halper: " '[A] civil sanction that
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