Cite as: 518 U. S. 267 (1996)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
The pedantic distinction between in rem and in personam actions is ultimately only a cover for the real basis for the Court's decision: the idea that the property, not the owner, is being "punished" for offenses of which it is "guilty." Although the Court prefers not to rely on this notorious fiction too blatantly, its repeated citations to Various Items make clear that the Court believes respondent's home was "guilty" of the drug offenses with which he was charged. See ante, at 283. On that rationale, of course, the case is easy. The owner of the property is not being punished when the Government confiscates it, just the property. The same sleight-of-hand would have worked in Austin, too: The owner of the property is not being excessively fined, just the property itself. Despite the Government's heavy reliance on that fiction in Austin, we did not allow it to stand in the way of our holding that the seizure of property may punish the owner.15
Even if the point had not been settled by prior decisions, common sense would dictate the result in this case. There is simply no rational basis for characterizing the seizure of this respondent's home as anything other than punishment for his crime. The house was neither proceeds nor contraband and its value had no relation to the Government's authority to seize it. Under the controlling statute an essential predicate for the forfeiture was proof that respondent
15 Long ago the Court cast doubt on this fiction: "But where the owner of the property has been admitted as a claimant, we cannot see the force of this distinction; nor can we assent to the proposition that the proceeding is not, in effect, a proceeding against the owner of the property, as well as against the goods; for it is his breach of the laws which has to be proved to establish the forfeiture, and it is his property which is sought to be forfeited . . . . In the words of a great judge, 'Goods, as goods, cannot offend, forfeit, unlade, pay duties, or the like, but men whose goods they are.'*
"* . . . Vaughan, C. J., in Sheppard v. Gosnold, Vaugh. 159, 172, approved by Ch. Baron Parker in Mitchell qui tam v. Torup, Parker, 227, 236." Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S., at 637, and n.
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