The Eighth Amendment in the United States Constitution provides that criminal defendants should not be subjected to excessive fines, excessive bail, or cruel and unusual punishment. The amendment followed the 1689 Bill of Rights of England (Ryan, 2010). It prevents the federal government from imposing hefty penalties on criminal defendants as punishment for convicted crimes or pretrial release. This limits the power of the government to demand payment as punishment for an offense, whether in cash or other forms of payment. A fine is considered excessive if it is grossly disproportionate to the alleged crime committed.
Fines and the 8 th Amendment
For quite some time, the U.S. Supreme Court had little say about excessive penalties. In E x parte Watkins, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 568, 574 (1833) , the court had to rule that it had no appellate jurisdiction to revise a sentence that had been imposed by an inferior court as much as it was apparent that the fines were excessive (Stevenson & Stinneford , N.d). The issue of excessive fines would later be defined in 1791 in the eighth amendment, where the powers of the new government were limited (Ryan, 2010). The excessive fines clause was meant to apply to only those fines that are payable to or imposed by the government. However, the court would later on hold that the clause could as well be applied to civil forfeiture cases (Rolland, 1999). In 1998, the court further defined the clause by stating that the main point in the excessive fines clause is the principle of proportionality whereby what one pays for forfeiture should bear some relationship to the gravity of the offense committed (Rolland, 1999).
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The Founding Father Rationale for Fines
After the declaration of independence in 1776, American states resorted to the writing of state constitutions and state bills of rights. George Mason drafted a Declaration of Rights for the commonwealth of Virginia which borrowed from the Bill of Rights adopted in England in 1689 (Hyland, 2019). This Bill of Rights placed prohibition against some specific abuses like Excessive fines, Excessive Bail, and cruel and unusual punishment. Excessive fines were to be prohibited to prevent the government from imposing fines that tend to take a considerable share of a person's property without proper consideration of the crime committed. Mason's Declaration would be the model of implementation in other states as well as that of the federal government.
In December 1791, when the Bill of Rights became part of the Constitution, it had ten amendments. The eighth amendment stated that criminal defendants should not be subjected to excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual behavior. The issue of excessive fines was not clearly defined as it was left to the court to determine whether or not the fine payable exceeded the proportion of the crime committed. Such cases were rare to the point that the first Supreme court ruling to overturn a case based on excessive fines was in 1998 in United States v. Bajakajian, 524 U.S. 321, 334 (1998) (Rolland, 1999) .
The Commonality of Fines
Fines are monetary punishments for a convicted criminal, and they are meant to compensate victims, deter crimes, or punish the convicted person. The fine payable should be proportionate to the crime committed (Rolland, 1999). Inability to pay fines is substituted by a jail term or other acceptable punishment as stipulated by the laws of the state. Each crime has its own specified fine to be paid, but some serious crimes such as murder are not subject to a fine consideration. Fines are mostly used to punish lesser day-to-day offenses, for example, traffic misdemeanors like speeding. A person is limited to the number of times fines will be imposed for committing the same crime after which the person must face some other form of punishment specified by law.
Fines and the Poor
According to the court's interpretation of the eighth amendment, the fine is proportionate to the crime and not the social status of the defendant. Consider that the poor are at times unable to pay their fines either in time or in totality. Delayed payment of fines is subject to additional fees while the inability to pay is subject to other forms of punishment such as a jail term. This means that the poor are punished more than the rich for some crimes as their inability to pay in time or totality increases the severity of the fine. It also increases their debt burden, thereby further impoverishing the poor even further.
If an offense is subject to a fine that is beyond the means of a person, it is deemed as excess, and thus some fines might violate the eighth amendment when a defendant is a poor person but at the same time be reasonable for a rich person. At this juncture, the punishment by fine would have victimized the poor defendant. However, it is difficult to specify different fines for the poor for some crimes committed since fairness too has to be preserved. The poor would be left victimized but at the same time fairly sentenced the same way a wealthy defendant would be. This is a source of ambiguity as to how excessive the fine is to a defendant for crimes committed, considering that crimes are not limited to specific social classes.
Conclusion
A fine is considered to be excessive or not depending on the proportion of the crime. There are no clear guidelines on how to determine if a fine is excessive or not. Therefore, the court is left with the power to determine whether or not a fine is excessive. This decision is circumstantial. As such, it is rare for a court to overturn a fine imposed by a junior court. A fine is imposed regardless of the financial status of the defendant but based on the alleged crime. This will, at times, victimize the poor and in some way, violate the eighth amendment.
References
Hyland, W. (2019). George Mason: The founding father who gave us the Bill of Rights. New Jersey: Washington, Regnery History.
Stevenson, B., & Stinneford, J. (N.d). Amendment VIII: Excessive fines, cruel and unusual punishment. [Online]. Retrieved from: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-viii . Accessed 26 th August 2019.
Rolland, M. (1999). Forfeiture law, the Eight Amendment’s excessive fines clause and United States v. Bajakajian. Notre Dame Law Review, Vol. 74 (4); 1370-1401.
Ryan, M. (2010). Does the Eight Amendment punishments clause prohibit only punishments that are both cruel and unusual? Washington University Law Review, Vol. 8 7(3); 566-624.
