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The important thing to understand about this case is the background and what the SCotUS actually ruled on. It's actually rather narrow ruling even if it is extr
by da_chicken 8y ago
The important thing to understand about this case is the background and what the SCotUS actually ruled on. It's actually rather narrow ruling even if it is extremely important. The court exercised judicial restraint here, and made the minimum ruling necessary.
Timbs was convicted of possession/sale/whatever, jailed for a year, and fined $1,200. The state confiscated his Range Rover as well.
Timbs sued or appealed the confiscation by Indiana, which he he could prove he didn't buy with drug money. The judge of the lower court of Indiana agreed.
The state appealed the judge's ruling. The Indiana Supreme Court reversed the lower court's decision, ruling that the 8th Amendment did not apply to the states.
The SCotUS unanimously disagreed and vacated the Indiana Supreme Court's ruling. The 8th Amendment does apply to the states. However, that's all that they ruled upon. They didn't not rule on whether or not confiscating the SUV was an excessive fine, and remanded the case back to the Indiana state courts.
Now the state of Indiana will be given an opportunity to prove in Indiana court that confiscating the SUV is not an excessive fine. That seems unlikely, however, since the charge Timbs was convicted of carried a statutory maximum fine of $10,000, well below the value of the SUV.
- TremendousJudge 8y agoUnrelated question, but who is paying for all these lawyers? Timbs himself out of his pocket?
- BurningFrog 8y agoInstitute for Justice: https://ij.org/about-us/ https://ij.org/about-us/ You can help out too: https://ij.org/support/give-now https://ij.org/support/give-now
- raincom 8y agopro bono. I think IJR is involved in this: https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/ https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/
- da_chicken 8y agoWikipedia says he was represented by the Institute for Justice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbs_v._Indiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbs_v._Indiana Otherwise, yes, Timbs would have to pay. You can file a petition to ask the court to waive your court costs (there's a Latin legal term for it that I believe means "with pockets turned out" or "with pockets empty" but I can't remember it), but your lawyer's time isn't covered by that.
- umanwizard 8y agoI think in forma pauperis is the phrase you're looking for (but its literal meaning isn't what you suggest).
- da_chicken 8y agoThat is it, yes.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoFor reference, in forma pauperis means "in the shape of a poor man"; pockets aren't mentioned. As far as I'm aware, the Romans didn't have pockets and so there would be no way to express the concept in Latin.
- umanwizard 8y agoLatin was the international language of Europe for almost a thousand years after the collapse of the Roman Empire, during which time many scientific advancements were made. There are plenty of Latin words for things that didn't exist in Antiquity.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoThere are tiny communities who use recreational Latin today. Here's the Vicipaedia article on the telephonum: https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephonum https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephonum But that doesn't really constitute a good argument that there is a Latin word for telephones.
- jessriedel 8y agoMore generally, I believe that by the time a cases nears the level of the Supreme Court, legal fees typically become less of an issue in practice. There are many orgs on bath sidee that fund cases with important precedent, and plenty of great lawyers willing to argue for free since it's so prestigious.
- TheGRS 8y agoOthers have more specific answers, but more broadly if you have a case that's Supreme Court worthy there are numerous organizations willing to step in to represent your side. The ACLU is sort of built on this principle.
- slowmovintarget 8y agoYou are correct that they didn't rule on it. But they did write an opinion that was highly suggestive of what the particular finding in this case should have been. It doesn't carry the weight of law, but it isn't nothing, either.
- elizabeth_olu 8y agowww.elizabethblog.com.ng
- da_chicken 8y agoOh, definitely. It was a minimal ruling, but it's still a landmark. Honestly, though, this case is so perfect that I almost wonder if the Supreme Court of Indiana didn't rule the way they did just to force the issue.
- jecxjo 8y agoThe more I follow SCOTUS rulings the more I think this happens quite often.
- rhizome 8y agoThere's a thing called "forcing a circuit split," which is a precondition for SCOTUS cert, but AFAIK it's usually a strategy by parties to a case (see: forced-birth organizations), not judges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_split https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_split
- clucas 8y agoThat's roughly what they did, though they also said "hey, we're the Supreme Court of this state, and we're not just going to give it to them." Here is the money shot from the Indiana Supreme Court opinion: > A second option is to await guidance from the Supreme Court and decline to find or assume incorporation until the Supreme Court decides the issue authoritatively. We choose this latter, more cautious approach for two reasons. First, although the Supreme Court has addressed this issue only in dicta, its statement in McDonald that the Clause has not been incorporated is entitled to more weight because it is the Court’s most recent. Second, Indiana is a sovereign state within our federal system, and we elect not to impose federal obligations on the State that the federal government itself has not mandated. An important corollary is that Indiana has its own system of legal, including constitutional, protections for its citizens and other persons within its jurisdiction. Absent a definitive holding from the Supreme Court, we decline to subject Indiana to a federal test that may operate to impede development of our own excessive-fines jurisprudence under the Indiana Constitution.
- KorematsuFred 8y agoI find this very remarkable about American legal system. The supreme court could have technically showed some bleeding heart by not showing judicial restraint. Instead they just did their job. Americans must thank this judicial culture.
- milesvp 8y agoYes actually. The courts aren’t there to set law, that is for the legislature. Also by limiting their ruling to the narrowest ruling they can, they keep decisions as local as possible. Courts handle exceptional circumstances, and it’s important they not rule too broadly, else there can be huge overarching unintended side effects of their ruling. The parallel in programming would be some god class that handles every exception, vs handling exceptions as close to the exception as possible. Generally global exception handling is a bad idea, you want to handle exceptions as close to the context as possible since that is where the most pertinent information in the system lives, and also has the least impact on the rest of the system if the exception can be resolved at a local level.
- KorematsuFred 8y agoThat is excellent analogy. This then boils down to globalism vs fractal localism.
- xxpor 8y ago>The courts aren’t there to set law, that is for the legislature I hate this meme. This is explicitly not true in the American legal system, as well as similar systems evolved from the British one. Case law is just as much part of the law as statutes are. This is the fundamental difference between common law systems and civil law systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Common_law_legal_systems_as_opposed_to_civil_law_legal_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Common_law_legal_sy...
- pvg 8y agoIt's not really a 'meme', it just uses a shorthand for 'statutory law' which is what most people think of when they they see 'law'.
- writepub 8y ago> Timbs sued or appealed the confiscation by Indiana, which he he could prove he didn't buy with drug money. Shouldn't the burden of proof of financing lie with the state before property possession is carried out? It is unfair for the defendant to prove the source of funds for his own property
- manicdee 8y agoThis is why evil will always win, because good is dumb. Or more precisely, evil people will happily violate entire tranches of law while the good people are stuck prosecuting one case at a time, painfully establishing precedent by precedent, and in the meantime the world has moved on.
- dclowd9901 8y agoBlame it on police and military fetishization. At the end of the day, if you resist authority trying to take your shit illegally, it will come to blows. If you choose to defend yourself against them, you are now very much on the wrong side of the law. It has to be less illegal to defend yourself from authority if you feel you're in danger.
- Nasrudith 8y agoOn a practical level that doesn't seem very viable in a "mountain lion vs housecat" way. Accountability is certainly needed though.
- Broken_Hippo 8y agoPeople have been saying that stuff for years. Unfortunately, this affects mostly folks doing illegal things or those accused of them, making the public at large have little incentive to fix it.
- adrianratnapala 8y agoThe state did prove that Timbs and committed the crime he was being fined for, the question at hand is whether the state can take away his car. One reason might have been if it was the proceeds of drug-dealing. But that reason is not relevant since he could prove otherwise (let alone whether the burden of proof is/should be on him). The other reason is simpler: States can fine people for stuff, but (according to the USSC) the fine can't be excessive.
- njovin 8y agoI am surprised that the Indiana Supreme Court ruling basically upheld that the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to states in the absence of specific SCOTUS rulings. Can you imagine if individual states felt they have the right to suppress free speech or the press? I read the official decision from the state court[0] but it's a bit dense for me to get through. It seems like a legal punt, of sorts, in the hopes that SCOTUS would pick up the case. I'd love to hear someone more qualified break down the state decision. [0] https://www.leagle.com/decision/ininco20171102267 https://www.leagle.com/decision/ininco20171102267
- intopieces 8y agoState Supreme Courts can't incorporate parts of the constitution against their own laws, this is the role of SCOTUS. It's not a matter of will or desire; it's a matter of jurisprudence.
- bradleyjg 8y agoThe US Supreme Court decided many decades ago that the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply wholesale to the states. Instead they held that each right has to be analyzed separately to determine if it should apply to the states. This principle is called “selective incorporation”. At this point most of the rights have been incorporated and only a few have specifically not been incorporated, most notably the right to a grand jury indictment. The excessive fines clause was one of the stragglers that hadn’t been decided either way. (The third amendment probably never will be decided.)
- masonic 8y agoHad the 8th Amendment not been considered to have been incorporated before this?
- perpetualpatzer 8y agoThe excessive fines clause hadn't, probably in no small part because states would argue "this is a reasonable fine" rather than "we're allowed to give unreasonable fines." I believe cruel and unusual punishment would have come up in method of execution cases, but not sure of the case.
- grappler 8y agoSounds like they made a very broad ruling (that the 8th Amendment does apply to the states) and left the narrow rulings (about the specifics of the case) to other courts.