property was an integral part of the illicit activity, and (3) whether the illicit activity involving the property 
was extensive. 
1 Federally, a $357,144 forfeiture for failing to report to U.S. Customs that more than $10,000 
was being taken out of the country was found to be “grossly disproportionate” to the offense. 
2 In one 
Pennsylvania case, the court found that forfeiture of a house used as a base of operations in an ongoing drug 
business was not excessive. 
3 
Defendants, whose property has been taken through civil forfeiture, have argued that either the forfeiture 
hearing or the criminal trial (whichever happened last) violated their rights to be free from double jeopardy. 
However, the courts have not agreed. Instead, they hold that the double jeopardy prohibition is not triggered 
because forfeiture is a civil sanction and not considered a new criminal action. United States v. Ursery 518 
U.S. 267 (1996). On February 20th, 2019, the Court perhaps provided a different form of attack on civil 
forfeitures. In a unanimous opinion in Timbs v. Indiana, ___ U.S. ___ (2019),  Justice Ginsberg wrote that the 
Eighth Amendment’s excessive fines clause applies to the states as well as the federal government, and that 
when Indiana civilly forfeited Timbs’ $42,000 land rover after he sold a couple of hundred dollars worth of 
heroin, it was imposing an excessive fine. 
In order to satisfy due process, the owner is entitled to a hearing before the property can be forfeited. 
United States v. James Daniel Good Real Property, 510 U.S. 43 (1993). Courts have found that civil forfeiture is 
constitutional even when the owner was not aware of the property’s criminal use. For example, in Bennis v. 
Michigan, 516 U.S. 442 (1996), the Court upheld the government’s seizure and forfeiture of Mrs. Bennis’s car, 
even though she claimed she did not know that her husband was using their car to engage in prostitution. 
In 2000, Congress approved the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act. This Act curbed the government’s asset 
forfeiture authority and added additional due process guarantees to ensure that property is not unjustly taken 
from innocent owners. Under the Act, the government must show by a preponderance of the evidence that 
the property was used in some criminal venture. The Act also limited the statute of limitations to five years 
and made it a crime to move or destroy property to prevent seizure for forfeiture. In a similar vein, Oregon 
voters passed Ballot Measure 3, the Oregon Property Protection Act of 2000, in the November election. This 
constitutional amendment imposed limits on government forfeiture, allowing forfeiture only if the person 
from whom the property was seized had been already convicted of the crime, and only if the government 
could prove by a clear and convincing evidence standard that the property was a proceed or instrument of 
the crime. 
Link to http://www.osbar.org/publications/bulletin/06nov/forfeiture.html, for a discussion of the recent 
history of asset forfeiture in Oregon and the debate about Ballot Measure 3 and subsequent forfeiture cases 
and statutes. 
Restitution and Compensatory Fines 
Restitution refers to the “return of a sum of money, an object, or the value of an object that the 
1. Waller v. 1989 Ford F350 Truck, 642 N.E. 2d 460 (Ill. 1994). 
2. United States v. Bajakajian, 524 U.S. 321 (1998). 
3. In re King Properties, 6235 A.2d 128 (Pa 1983). 
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