It's a good thing that we shy away from excessive punishments. The point here is simply that what is excessive may depend on the person being punished. In that

It's a good thing that we shy away from excessive punishments. The point here is simply that what is excessive may depend on the person being punished. In that sense, your premise is not a counter-argument against what tellarin wrote. A 1,000$ fine for somebody with 20,000$ yearly income is a catastrophe. A 1,000$ fine for somebody with 1,000,000$ yearly income is at most a small annoyance. Since the whole point of fines is (to a large extent) to act as a deterrent, you must take into account the fact that money has a decreasing marginal utility. Your point about due process is interesting, but similarly needs to be scaled to the defendants wealth: Once you go down the road of talking about different amounts of due process required based on the potential effects of the punishments, it is clear that the amount of due process must be based not on the absolute value of the fine, but rather on the punishment's effect on the utility/well-being of the defendant.