The Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Timbs v. Indiana is the sort that could either be easily overlooked, dealing with the generally unsexy Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause, or misunderstood. The ruling “incorporated” the clause, meaning applied it to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment. That’s a big deal. But Tyson Timbs won a battle, not yet the war.
The case before the Supreme Court, Timbs v. Indiana, involved the seizure of a $42,000 Land Rover SUV from Tyson Timbs, who was arrested in 2015 for selling heroin to undercover police officers. He pleaded guilty to his crimes and was sentenced to one year of house arrest and five years of probation. On top of that, the state of Indiana seized his 2012 Land Rover—which he had purchased with money received from his late father’s life insurance payout, not with the proceeds of drug sales—on the ground that it had been used to commit a crime.
Timbs challenged that seizure, arguing that taking his vehicle amounted to an additional fine on top of the sentence he had already received. The Indiana Supreme Court rejected that argument, solely because the U.S. Supreme Court had never explicitly stated that the Eighth Amendment applied to the states.
