3.10. Substantive Law: Monetary Punishment Sentences 
LORE RUTZ-BURRI 
Monetary Punishments 
Fines 
Fines, or a sum of money the offender has to pay as punishment for the crime, are generally viewed as 
the least severe of all possible punishments. Fines may either supplement imprisonment or probation, or they 
may be the sole punishment. Criminal codes generally authorize fines as punishment for most crimes, but 
some of the older criminal codes did not authorize fines for murder. 
The Model Penal Code proposed legislative guidelines on the use of fines, but states have generally 
rejected this provision. Instead, judges are given extremely broad discretion in setting the fine amounts, 
and there are few limits on the judge’s ability to impose a fine. Frequently, the criminal statute will specify 
the highest permissible fine. The Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause prohibits 
excessive fines, but courts rarely have found a fine to violate this provision. In Tate v. Short, 401 U.S. 395 
(1971), the Court found that fines that punish poor people more harshly than rich people, and thus, violate 
the Equal Protection Clause. Historically, magistrates had given offenders the option of paying a fine or 
serving a jail sentence. Sentences were frequently “thirty dollars or thirty days”. If defendants were too poor 
to pay the fine, they went to jail. The Tate Court reasoned that the state could imprison Tate for committing 
the crime, but by requiring either time or a fine, the state was really incarcerating Tate because he was too 
poor to pay the fine. After Tate, courts began using installment plans that permit poor defendants to pay fines 
over a period of several months. This practice may nonetheless subject the poor to an increased punishment 
if the court administration requires interest or some fee associated with a payment plan. 
Civil Forfeiture 
Federal law allows civil forfeiture, the process by which the government confiscates the proceeds 
(property or money) of criminal activities. See,18 USCA §§981-982. Laws that allow the state to forfeit the 
property used in illicit drug activity are particularly controversial. In deciding whether forfeiture is legal, 
state courts generally look to constitutional provisions dealing with excessive fines. In Austin v. United States, 
509 US 602, at 622 (1993), the Supreme Court said that civil forfeiture “constitutes payment to a sovereign 
as punishment for some offense’ . . . and, as such, is subject to the limitations of the Eighth Amendment’s 
Excessive Fines Clause.”  However, the court left it to state and lower federal courts to determine the test 
of “excessiveness” in the context of forfeiture. The Illinois Supreme Court said that three factors should be 
considered in this regard:  (1) the gravity of the offense relative to the value of the forfeiture, (2) whether the 
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