Extended discussion of the messy uncertainty of Excessive Fines jurisprudence from Ohio Supreme Court

Earlier this month, as well detailed in this lengthy courthouse news piece headlined "Court-Ordered Truck Forfeiture for Third Drunk-Driving Offense Found Constitutional," a split Ohio Supreme Court upheld the forfeiture of a 2014 Chevrolet Silverado for a repeat OVI offense. Here is how the ruling in State v. O'Malley, No. 2022-Ohio-3207 (Ohio Sept 25, 2022) (available here) gets started:

In this case, we are asked two separate questions about R.C. 4511.19(G)(1)(c)(v) and Ohio’s criminal-forfeiture scheme for vehicles owned and used by repeat drunk drivers.  First, we are asked whether that scheme violates the Equal Protection Clauses in the state and federal Constitutions by treating owners and nonowners differently.  Next, we are asked, more specifically, whether the forfeiture of appellant James O’Malley’s 2014 Chevrolet Silverado constituted an excessive fine in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We find that there was no equal-protection violation and that, as applied to O’Malley, the vehicle forfeiture mandated by R.C. 4511.19(G)(1)(c)(v) did not violate the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment because it was not grossly disproportional to the gravity of his offense.  Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Ninth District Court of Appeals affirming the trial court’s forfeiture order.

The equal protection discussion in O'Malley is relatively brief, but the Eighth Amendment analysis is extended and should be of interest to those still trying to figure out how excessive punishment are to be constitutionally assessed. There are many passages from the majority opinion that are notable, but this one particularly struck me as jurisprudentially interesting:

The application of these multifactor proportionality tests generally varies depending on whether the forfeiture is in personam or in rem and depending on whether the property to be forfeited is real property, personal property, or something else. The problem is that there does not appear to be any consensus.  Nevertheless, O’Malley and his amicus curiae ask us to do what other federal and state courts have done: set forth a multifactor test that would include in the proportionality analysis considerations of the defendant’s financial ability to pay and the extent to which the forfeiture would harm the defendant’s livelihood.  While we appreciate the allure of a seemingly airtight checklist that ideally would — but in practice may not — address all future contingencies, we do not believe — for both practical and principled reasons — that it is necessary or appropriate for us to establish the multifactor test sought in this case.  Instead, we rely on our decision in Hill and the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Bajakajian to evaluate the forfeiture imposed in this case.

The dissenting opinion criticizes this approach by claiming that we provide no additional guidance and merely engage in error correction.  The dissent is mistaken.  Rather, in this case, we have revisited an issue that is of great public interest, reviewed how the issue has developed over the past 30 years since we decided Hill, and have simply come to the same conclusion that we reached in Hill — a bright-line test analyzing an Eighth Amendment excessiveness challenge is not appropriate.  We must allow trial courts flexibility so that they may consider the situation before them and make a fully informed and reasoned decision about whether a forfeiture is unconstitutionally excessive.  We need not bind trial courts’ hands in these already difficult forfeiture cases.