Ohio Supreme Court Upholds Confiscating Man’s Entire Net Worth Over A Misdemeanor

An Ohio man who lost his entire fortune when police forfeited his car did not have his Eighth Amendment rights violated, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled earlier this month. The decision, issued by a fiercely split court, severely weakens the protective power of the Excessive Fines Clause in the Buckeye State.

In the early hours of July 4, 2018, an Ohio State Highway trooper pulled over James O’Malley for suspected drunk driving. Those suspicions were justified: When asked for his license, O’Malley handed over his credit card. Unsurprisingly, O’Malley was arrested for operating a vehicle while intoxicated (OVI).

O’Malley pled guilty to the misdemeanor. He served 30 days in jail, had his license suspended for four years, and was ordered to pay the minimum fine of $850, plus court costs. But since O’Malley had two prior OVI convictions in the past decade, police cited a state law to seize his car, a 2014 Chevrolet Silverado.

Valued at $31,000, the truck was O’Malley’s “only significant asset” and his “primary means of transportation.” Not only did the Silverado account for O’Malley’s entire net worth, it was also personally valuable to him. Back in 2014, his grandparents bought him the truck as a gift. That let O’Malley assist and take care of his grandparents, since at the time, his grandfather was dying of cancer.

Yet in Ohio, the maximum fine for a third-time OVI offender is $2,750. In other words, O’Malley’s truck was valued at more than 11 times the maximum fine and 36 times the fine actually imposed on O’Malley. Based on that disparity, O’Malley argued that forfeiting the truck would violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines.

This should have been an easy win for O’Malley. In 2019—the same year as the forfeiture hearing for O’Malley’s truck—the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Timbs v. Indiana, a landmark decision on excessive fines.

After Tyson Timbs was convicted on drug charges, law enforcement tried to permanently confiscate his Land Rover, which was his most valuable asset at the time. Represented by the Institute for Justice, Timbs argued the forfeiture was unconstitutionally excessive: Although his car was valued at $35,000, he only paid $1,200 in court costs and fees.

In a unanimous decision, the High Court firmly ruled that cities and states must abide by the Excessive Fines Clause. Following that decision, the Indiana Supreme Court then issued two separate rulings that sided with Timbs. First, the court that ruled in excessive fines cases, Hoosier judges must consider “the owner’s economic means—relative to the property’s value.”

“To hold the opposite,” the Indiana Supreme Court held, “would generate a new fiction: that taking away the same piece of property from a billionaire and from someone who owns nothing else punishes each person equally.” Based on that analysis, the court later ruled that forfeiting the Land Rover would be “overly harsh” and impose an unconstitutionally excessive fine on Timbs.

Despite the clear parallels between the two cases, the Ohio Supreme Court nevertheless concluded that forfeiting O’Malley’s truck was “not grossly disproportional” to his crime. Unlike the Indiana Supreme Court, the Ohio Supreme Court saw “limited relevance” in comparing a fine to the value of a forfeited property.

Although the Silverado was the only major asset O’Malley owned and was the only way he got to work, the Ohio Supreme Court “did not believe that the forfeiture would significantly affect him.” Since O’Malley was unemployed and lived with his grandmother, losing his car would not be a “hardship” in the eyes of the court.

That prompted a fierce dissent. “Surely, if the Excessive Fines Clause means anything,” Justice Michael Donnelly wrote, “it means that the government cannot confiscate a defendant’s entire net worth when the maximum fine set by the legislature is less than one-tenth of the value of the forfeited asset.”

Justice Donnelly slammed the majority for being of “two minds when weighing the hardship of high-value forfeitures on the poor as opposed to the wealthy.” On the one hand, the court said it was concerned that simply comparing the fine-to-forfeiture ratio “produces inequitable results by punishing the poor, whose vehicles are likely less valuable, far more heavily than the rich, whose likely more expensive vehicles may be shielded from forfeiture.”

But as Donnelly countered, that same court still rubber-stamped the state’s attempt “to confiscate a poor man’s entire fortune, such as it is—a fate not even remotely threatening the wealthy.”