Concurrence Opinion
concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the Court that petitioner has not demonstrated that the forfeiture at issue here qualifies as a prior restraint as we have traditionally understood that term. I
Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court.
After a full criminal trial, petitioner Ferris J. Alexander, owner of more than a dozen stores and theaters dealing in sexually explicit materials, was convicted on, inter alia, 17 obscenity counts and 3 counts of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The obscenity convictions, based on the jury’s findings that four magazines and three videotapes sold at several of petitioner’s stores were obscene, served as the predicates for his three RICO convictions. In addition to imposing a prison term and fine, the District Court ordered petitioner to forfeit, pursuant to 18 U. S. C. § 1963 (1988 ed. and Supp. Ill), certain assets that were directly related to his racketeering activity as punishment for his RICO violations. Petitioner argues that this forfeiture violated the First and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution. We reject petitioner’s
Petitioner was in the so-called “adult entertainment” business for more than 30 years, selling pornographic magazines and sexual paraphernalia, showing sexually explicit movies, and eventually selling and renting videotapes of a similar nature. He received shipments of these materials at a warehouse in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they were wrapped in plastic, priced, and boxed. He then sold his products through some 13 retail stores in several different Minnesota cities, generating millions of dollars in annual revenues. In 1989, federal authorities filed a 41-count indictment against petitioner and others, alleging, inter alia, operation of a racketeering enterprise in violation of RICO. The indictment charged 34 obscenity counts and 3 RICO counts, the racketeering counts being predicated on the obscenity charges. The indictment also charged numerous counts of tax evasion and related offenses that are not relevant to the questions before us.
Following a 4-month jury trial in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, petitioner was convicted of 17 substantive obscenity offenses: 12 counts of transporting obscene material in interstate commerce for the purpose of sale or distribution, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1465; and 5 counts of engaging in the business of selling obscene material, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1466 (1988 ed. and Supp. III). He also was convicted of 3 RICO offenses that were predicated on the obscenity convictions: one count of receiving and using income derived from a pattern of racketeering activity, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1962(a); one count of conducting a RICO enterprise, in violation of § 1962(c); and one count of conspiring to conduct a RICO enterprise, in violation of § 1962(d). As a basis for the obscenity and RICO convictions, the jury determined that four magazines and three videotapes were obscene. Multiple copies of these magazines and videos, which graphically de
Petitioner was sentenced to a total of six years in prison, fined $100,000, and ordered to pay the cost of prosecution, incarceration, and supervised release. In addition to these punishments, the District Court reconvened the same jury and conducted a forfeiture proceeding pursuant to § 1963(a)(2). At this proceeding, the Government sought forfeiture of the businesses and real estate that represented petitioner’s interest in the racketeering enterprise, § 1963(a) (2)(A), the property that afforded petitioner influence over that enterprise, § 1963(a)(2)(D), and the assets and proceeds petitioner had obtained from his racketeering offenses, §§ 1963(a)(1), (3). The jury found that petitioner had an interest in 10 pieces of commercial real estate and 31 current or former businesses, all of which had been used to conduct his racketeering enterprise. Sitting without the jury, the District Court then found that petitioner had acquired a variety of assets as a result of his racketeering activities. The court ultimately ordered petitioner to forfeit his wholesale and retail businesses (including all the assets of those businesses) and almost $9 million in moneys acquired through racketeering activity.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s forfeiture order. Alexander v. Thornburgh,
Petitioner first contends that the forfeiture in this case, which effectively shut down his adult entertainment business, constituted an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech, rather than a permissible criminal punishment. According to petitioner, forfeiture of expressive materials and the assets of businesses engaged in expressive activity, when predicated solely upon previous obscenity violations, operates as a prior restraint because it prohibits future presumptively protected, expression in retaliation for prior unprotected speech. Practically speaking, petitioner argues, the effect of the RICO forfeiture order here was no different from the injunction prohibiting the publication of expressive material found to be a prior restraint in Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson,
The term “prior restraint” is used “to describe administrative and judicial orders forbidding certain communications when issued in advance of the time that such communications are to occur.” M. Nimmer, Nimmer on Freedom of Speech § 4.03, p. 4-14 (1984) (emphasis added). Temporary restraining orders and permanent injunctions — i. e., court orders that actually forbid speech activities — are classic examples of prior restraints. See id., §4.03, at 4-16. This understanding of what constitutes a prior restraint is borne out by our cases, even those on which petitioner relies. In Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, supra, we invalidated a court order that perpetually enjoined the named party, who had published a newspaper containing articles found to violate a state nuisance statute, from producing any future “malicious, scandalous or defamatory” publication. Id., at 706. Near, therefore, involved a true restraint on future speech — a permanent injunction. So, too, did Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe,
By contrast, the RICO forfeiture order in this case does not forbid petitioner to engage in any expressive activi
The constitutional infirmity in nearly all of our prior restraint cases involving obscene material, including those on which petitioner and the dissent rely, see post, at 570-571, 577, was that the government had seized or otherwise restrained materials suspected of being obscene without a prior judicial determination that they were in fact so. See, e. g., Marcus v. Search Warrant of Kansas City, Mo., Property,
Nor were the assets in question ordered forfeited without according petitioner the requisite procedural safeguards, another recurring theme in our prior restraint cases. Contrasting this case with Fort Wayne Books, Inc. v. Indiana,
Petitioner’s claim that the RICO forfeiture statute operated as an unconstitutional prior restraint in this case is also inconsistent with our decision in Arcara v. Cloud Books, Inc.,
*553 “The closure order sought in this case differs from a prior restraint in two significant respects. First, the order would impose no restraint at all on the dissemination of particular materials, since respondents are free to carry on their bookselling business at another location, even if such locations are difficult to find. Second, the closure order sought would not be imposed on the basis of an advance determination that the distribution of particular materials is prohibited — indeed, the imposition of the closure order has nothing to do with any expressive conduct at all.” Id., at 705-706, n. 2.
This reasoning applies with equal force to this case, and thus confirms that the RICO forfeiture order was not a prior restraint on speech, but a punishment for past criminal conduct. Petitioner attempts to distinguish Arcara on the ground that obscenity, unlike prostitution or lewdness, has “ ‘a significant expressive element.’ ” Brief for Petitioner 16 (quoting Arcara, supra, at 706). But that distinction has no bearing on the question whether the forfeiture order in this case was an impermissible prior restraint.
Finally, petitioner’s proposed definition of the term “prior restraint” would undermine the time-honored distinction between barring speech in the future and penalizing past speech. The doctrine of prior restraint originated in the common law of England, where prior restraints of the press were not permitted, but punishment after publication was. This very limited application of the principle of freedom of speech was held inconsistent with our First Amendment as long ago as Grosjean v. American Press Co.,
In sum, we think that fidelity to our cases requires us to analyze the forfeiture here not as a prior restraint, but under normal First Amendment standards. So analyzing it, we find that petitioner’s claim falls well short of the mark. He does not challenge either his 6-year jail sentence or his $100,000 fine as violative of the First Amendment. The first inquiry that comes to mind, then, is why, if incarceration for six years and a fine of $100,000 are permissible forms of punishment under the RICO statute, the challenged forfeiture of certain assets directly related to petitioner’s racketeering activity is not. Our cases support the instinct from which
We have in the past rejected First Amendment challenges to statutes that impose severe prison sentences and fines as punishment for obscenity offenses. See, e. g., Ginzburg v. United States,
Petitioner’s real complaint is not that the RICO statute is overbroad, but that applying RICO’s forfeiture provisions to businesses dealing in expressive materials may have an improper “chilling” effect on free expression by deterring others from engaging in protected speech. No doubt the monetarily large forfeiture in this case may induce cautious booksellers to practice self-censorship and remove marginally protected materials from their shelves out of fear that
“[D]eterrence of the sale of obscene materials is a legitimate end of state antiobscenity laws, and our cases have long recognized the practical reality that ‘any form of criminal obscenity statute applicable to a bookseller will induce some tendency to self-censorship and have some inhibitory effect on the dissemination of material not obscene.’”489 U. S., at 60 (quoting Smith v. California,361 U. S. 147 , 154-155 (1959)).
Fort Wayne Books is dispositive of any chilling argument here, since the threat of forfeiture has no more of a chilling effect on free expression than the threat of a prison term or a large fine. Each racketeering charge exposes a defendant to a maximum penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000. 18 U. S. C. § 1963(a) (1988 ed. and Supp. III). See Brief for United States 19. Needless to say, the prospect of such a lengthy prison sentence would have a far more powerful deterrent effect on protected speech than the prospect of any sort of forfeiture. Cf. Blanton v. North Las Vegas,
We also have rejected a First Amendment challenge to a court order closing down an entire business that was engaged in expressive activity as punishment for criminal conduct. See Arcara,
Confronted with our decisions in Fort Wayne Books and Arcara — neither of which he challenges — petitioner’s position boils down to this: Stiff criminal penalties for obscenity offenses are consistent with the First Amendment; so is the forfeiture of expressive materials as punishment for criminal conduct; but the combination of the two somehow results
Petitioner also argues that the forfeiture order in this case — considered atop his 6-year prison term and $100,000 fine — is disproportionate to the gravity of his offenses and therefore violates the Eighth Amendment, either as a “cruel and unusual punishment” or as an “excessive fine.”
Petitioner contends that forfeiture of his entire business was an “excessive” penalty for the Government to exact “[o]n the basis of a few materials the jury ultimately decided were obscene.” Brief for Petitioner 40. It is somewhat misleading, we think, to characterize the racketeering crimes for which petitioner was convicted as involving just a few materials ultimately found to be obscene. Petitioner was convicted of creating and managing what the District Court described as “an enormous racketeering enterprise.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 160. It is in the light of the extensive criminal activities which petitioner apparently conducted through this racketeering enterprise over a substantial period of time that the question whether the forfeiture was “excessive” must be considered. We think it preferable that this question be addressed by the Court of Appeals in the first instance.
For these reasons, we hold that RICO’s forfeiture provisions, as applied in this case, did not violate the First Amendment, but that the Court of Appeals should have considered whether they resulted in an “excessive” penalty within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause. Accordingly, we vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Notes
Not wishing to go into the business of selling pornographic materials— regardless of whether they were legally obscene — the Government decided that it would be better to destroy the forfeited expressive materials than sell them to members of the public. See Brief for United States 26-27, n. 11.
The doctrine of prior restraint has its roots in the 16th- and 17th-century English system of censorship. Under that system, all printing presses and printers were licensed by the government, and nothing could lawfully be published without the prior approval of a government or
This sense of disproportionality animates much of petitioner’s First Amendment arguments as well. Questions of proportionality, however, should be dealt with directly and forthrightly under the Eighth Amendment and not be allowed to influence sub silentio courts’ First Amendment analysis.
Unlike Austin, this ease involves in personam criminal forfeiture not in rem civil forfeiture, so there was no threshold question concerning the applicability of the Eighth Amendment.
Dissenting Opinion
with whom
The Court today embraces a rule that would find no affront to the First Amendment in the Government’s destruction of a book and film business and its entire inventory of legitimate expression as punishment for a single past speech offense. Until now I had thought one could browse through any book or film store in the United States without fear that the proprietor had chosen each item to avoid risk to the whole inventory and indeed to the business itself. This ominous, onerous threat undermines free speech and press principles essential to our personal freedom.
Obscenity laws would not work unless an offender could be arrested and imprisoned despite the resulting chill on his own further speech. But, at least before today, we have understood state action directed at protected books or other expressive works themselves to raise distinct constitutional concerns. The Court’s decision is a grave repudiation of First Amendment principles, and with respect I dissent.
I
A
The majority believes our cases “establish quite clearly that the First Amendment does not prohibit either stringent criminal sanctions for obscenity offenses or forfeiture of expressive materials as punishment for criminal conduct.”
The fundamental defect in the majority’s reasoning is a failure to recognize that the forfeiture here cannot be equated with traditional punishments such as fines and jail terms. Noting that petitioner does not challenge either the 6-year jail sentence or the $100,000 fine imposed against him as punishment for his convictions under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), the majority ponders why RICO’s forfeiture penalty should be any different. See ante, at 554. The answer is that RICO’s forfeiture penalties are different from traditional punishments by Congress’ own design as well as in their First Amendment consequences.
The federal RICO statute was passed to eradicate the infiltration of legitimate business by organized crime. Pub. L. 91-452, Title IX, 84 Stat. 941, as amended, 18 U. S. C. §§ 1961-1968 (1988 ed. and Supp. III). Earlier steps to combat organized crime were not successful, in large part because traditional penalties targeted individuals engaged in racketeering activity rather than the criminal enterprise itself. Punishing racketeers with fines and jail terms failed to
“What is needed here . . . are new approaches that will deal not only with individuals, but also with the economic base through which those individuals constitute such a serious threat to the economic well-being of the Nation. In short, an attack must be made on their source of economic power itself, and the attack must take place on all available fronts.” S. Rep. No. 91-617, p. 79 (1969).
Criminal liability under RICO is premised on the commission of a “pattern of racketeering activity,” defined by the statute as engaging in two or more related predicate acts of racketeering within a 10-year period. 18 U. S. C. § 1961(5). A RICO conviction subjects the violator not only to traditional, though stringent, criminal fines and prison terms, but also mandatory forfeiture under § 1963.
As enacted in 1970, RICO targeted offenses then thought endemic to organized crime. 18 U. S. C. § 1961(1). When RICO was amended in 1984 to include obscenity as a predicate offense, there was no comment or debate in Congress on the First Amendment implications of the change. Act of Oct. 12, 1984, Pub. L. 98-473, 98 Stat. 2143. The consequence of adding a speech offense to a statutory scheme de
The Court says that, taken together, our decisions in Fort Wayne Books and Arcara v. Cloud Books, Inc.,
In Arcara, we upheld against First Amendment challenge a criminal law requiring the temporary closure of an adult bookstore as a penal sanction for acts of prostitution occurring on the premises. We did not subject the closure penalty to First Amendment scrutiny even though the collateral consequence of its imposition would be to affect interests of traditional First Amendment concern. We said that such scrutiny was not required when a criminal penalty followed conduct “manifesting] absolutely no element of protected expression.”
B
The majority tries to occupy the high ground by assuming the role of the defender of the doctrine of prior restraint. It warns that we disparage the doctrine if we reason from it. But as an analysis of our prior restraint cases reveals, our application of the First Amendment has adjusted to meet new threats to speech. The First Amendment is a rule of substantive protection, not an artifice of categories. The admitted design and the overt purpose of the forfeiture in this case are to destroy an entire speech business and all its pro
Relying on the distinction between prior restraints and subsequent punishments, ante, at 548, 553-554, the majority labels the forfeiture imposed here a punishment and dismisses any further debate over the constitutionality of the forfeiture penalty under the First Amendment. Our cases do recognize a distinction between prior restraints and subsequent punishments, but that distinction is neither so rigid nor so precise that it can bear the weight the Court places upon it to sustain the destruction of a speech business and its inventory as a punishment for past expression.
In its simple, most blatant form, a prior restraint is a law which requires submission of speech to an official who may grant or deny permission to utter or publish it based upon its contents. See Staub v. City of Baxley,
It has been suggested that the distinction between prior restraints and subsequent punishments may have slight utility, see Nimmer, supra, § 4.04, at 4-18 to 4-25, for in a certain sense every criminal obscenity statute is a prior restraint because of the caution a speaker or bookseller must exercise to avoid its imposition. See Vance v. Universal Amusement Co.,
Early in our legal tradition the source of the distinction was the English common law, in particular the oft cited passage from William Blackstone’s 18th-century Commentaries on the Laws of England. He observed as follows:
“The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state; but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to*568 destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity.” 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *151-*152.
The English law which Blackstone was compiling had come to distrust prior restraints, but with little accompanying condemnation of subsequent punishments. Part of the explanation for this lies in the circumstance that, in the centuries before Blackstone wrote, prior censorship, including licensing, was the means by which the Crown and the Parliament controlled speech and press. See Siebert, supra, at 56-63, 68-74. As those methods were the principal means used by government to control speech and press, it follows that an unyielding populace would devote its first efforts to avoiding or repealing restrictions in that form.
Even as Blackstone wrote, however, subsequent punishments were replacing the earlier censorship schemes as the mechanism for government control over disfavored speech in England. Whether Blackstone’s apparent tolerancé of subsequent punishments resulted from his acceptance of the English law as it then existed or his failure to grasp the potential threat these measures posed to liberty, or both, subsequent punishment in the broad sweep that he commented upon would be in flagrant violation of the principles of free speech and press that we have come to know and understand as being fundamental to our First Amendment freedoms. Indeed, in the beginning of our Republic, James Madison argued against the adoption of Blackstone’s definition of free speech under the First Amendment. Said Madison: “[T]his idea of the freedom of the press can never be admitted to be the American idea of it” because a law inflicting penalties would have the same effect as a law authorizing a prior restraint. 6 Writings of James Madison 386 (G. Hunt ed. 1906).
The enactment of the alien and sedition laws early in our own history is an unhappy testament to the allure that re
As our First Amendment law has developed, we have not confined the application of the prior restraint doctrine to its simpler forms, outright licensing or censorship before speech takes place. In considering governmental measures deviating from the classic form of a prior restraint yet posing many of the same dangers to First Amendment freedoms, we have extended prior restraint protection with some latitude, toward the end of declaring certain governmental actions to fall within the presumption of invalidity. This approach is evident in Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson,
In Near, a Minnesota statute authorized judicial proceedings to abate as a nuisance a “ ‘malicious, scandalous and defamatory newspaper, magazine or other periodical.’ ” Id., at 701-702. In a suit brought by the attorney for Hennepin County it was established that Near had published articles in various editions of The Saturday Press in violation of the statutory standard. Id., at 703-705. Citing the instance of these past unlawful publications, the court enjoined any fu
Indeed the Court has been consistent in adopting a speech-protective definition of prior restraint when the state attempts to attack future speech in retribution for a speaker’s past transgressions. See Vance v. Universal Amusement Co.,
One wonders what today’s majority would have done if faced in Near with a novel argument to extend the traditional conception of the prior restraint doctrine. In view of the formalistic approach the Court advances today, the Court likely would have rejected Near’s pleas on the theory that to accept his argument would be to “blur the line separating prior restraints from subsequent punishments to such a degree that it would be impossible to determine with any certainty whether a particular measure is a prior restraint or not.” Ante, at 554. In so holding the Court would have ignored, as the Court does today, that the applicability of First Amendment analysis to a governmental action depends not alone upon the name by which the action is called, but upon its operation and effect on the suppression of speech. Near, supra, at 708 (“[T]he court has regard to substance and not to mere matters of form, and ... in accordance with familiar principles . . . statute[s] must be tested by [their] operation and effect”). See also Smith v. Daily Mail Publishing Co.,
The cited cases identify a progression in our First Amendment jurisprudence which results from a more fundamental principle. As governments try new ways to subvert essential freedoms, legal and constitutional systems respond by making more explicit the nature and the extent of the liberty in question. First in Near, and later in Bantam Books and Vance, we were faced with official action which did not fall within the traditional meaning of the term “prior restraint,” yet posed many of the same censorship dangers. Our response was to hold that the doctrine not only includes licensing schemes requiring speech to be submitted to a censor for review prior to dissemination, but also encompasses injunctive systems which threaten or bar future speech based on some past infraction.
Although we consider today a new method of government control with unmistakable dangers of official censorship, the majority concludes that First Amendment freedoms are not endangered because forfeiture follows a lawful conviction for obscenity offenses. But this explanation does not suffice. The rights of free speech and press in their broad and legitimate sphere cannot be defeated by the simple expedient of punishing after in lieu of censoring before. See Smith v. Daily Mail Publishing Co., supra, at 101-102; Thornhill v. Alabama,
The operation and effect of RICO’s forfeiture remedies are different from a heavy fine or a severe jail sentence because
Assuming the constitutionality of the mandatory forfeiture under § 1963 when applied to nonspeech-related conduct, the constitutional analysis must be different when that remedy is imposed for violations of the federal obscenity laws. “Our decisions furnish examples of legal devices and doctrines, in most applications consistent with the Constitution, which cannot be applied in settings where they have the collateral effect of inhibiting the freedom of expression.” Smith v. California,
Whatever one might label the RICO forfeiture provisions at issue in this case, be it effective, innovative, or Draconian, § 1963 was not designed for sensitive and exacting application. What is happening here is simple: Books and films are condemned and destroyed not for their own content but for the content of their owner’s prior speech. Our law does not permit the government to burden future speech for this sort of taint. Section 1963 requires trial courts to forfeit not only the unlawful items and any proceeds from their sale, but also the defendant’s entire interest in the enterprise involved in the RICO violations and any assets affording the defendant a source of influence over the enterprise. 18 U. S. C. §§ 1963(a)(1) — (3) (1988 ed. and Supp. III). A defendant’s exposure to this massive penalty is grounded on the commission of just two or more related obscenity offenses committed within a 10-year period. Aptly described, RICO’s forfeiture provisions “arm prosecutors not with scalpels to excise obscene portions of an adult bookstore’s inventory but with sickles to mow down the entire undesired use.” Fort Wayne Books,
What is at work in this case is not the power to punish an individual for his past transgressions but the authority to suppress a particular class of disfavored speech. The forfeiture provisions accomplish this in a direct way by seizing speech presumed to be protected along with the instruments of its dissemination, and in an indirect way by threatening all who engage in the business of distributing adult or sexually explicit materials with the same disabling measures. Cf. Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Comm’n on Human Relations,
In a society committed to freedom of thought, inquiry, and discussion without interference or guidance from the state, public confidence in the institutions devoted to the dissemination of written matter and films is essential. That confidence erodes if it is perceived that speakers and the press are vulnerable for all of their expression based on some errant expression in the past. Independence of speech and press can be just as compromised by the threat of official intervention as by the fact of it. See Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, supra, at 70. Though perhaps not in the form of a classic prior restraint, the application of the forfeiture statute here bears its censorial cast.
Arcara recognized, as the Court today does not, the vital difference between a punishment imposed for a speech offense and a punishment imposed for some other crime. Where the government seeks forfeiture of a bookstore because of its owner’s drug offenses, there is little reason to surmise, absent evidence of selective prosecution, that abolishing the bookstore is related to the government’s disfavor of the publication outlet or its activities. Where, however, RICO forfeiture stems from a previous speech offense, the punishment serves not only the Government’s interest in purging organized-crime taint, but also its interest in deterring the activities of the speech-related business itself. The threat of a censorial motive and of ongoing speech supervision by the state justifies the imposition of First Amendment protection. Free speech principles, well established by our cases, require in this case that the forfeiture of the inventory and of the speech distribution facilities be held invalid.
The distinct concern raised by § 1963 forfeiture penalties is not a proportionality concern; all punishments are subject to analysis for proportionality and this concern should be addressed under the Eighth Amendment. See Austin v.
II
Quite apart from the direct bearing that our prior restraint cases have on the entire forfeiture that was ordered in this case, the destruction of books and films that were not obscene and not adjudged to be so is a remedy with no parallel in our cases. The majority says that our cases “establish quite clearly that the First Amendment does not prohibit... forfeiture of expressive materials as punishment for criminal conduct.” See ante, at 555. But the single case cited in support of this stark new threat to all speech enterprises is Arcara v. Cloud Books, Inc. Arcara, as discussed, supra, at 565, is quite inapposite. There we found unconvincing the argument that protected bookselling activities were burdened by the closure, saying that the owners “remain free to sell [and the public remains free to acquire] the same materials at another location.”
In Marcus v. Search Warrant,
It follows from the search cases in which the First Amendment required exacting protection, that one title does not become seizable or tainted because of its proximity on the shelf to another. And if that is the rule for interim seizures, it follows with even greater force that protected materials cannot be destroyed altogether for some alleged taint from an owner who committed a speech violation. In attempting
* * *
Given the Court’s principal holding, I can interpose no objection to remanding the case for further consideration under the Eighth Amendment. But it is unnecessary to reach the Eighth Amendment question. The Court’s failure to reverse this flagrant violation of the right of free speech and expression is a deplorable abandonment of fundamental First Amendment principles. I dissent from the judgment and from the opinion of the Court.
Section 1963(a) provides that in imposing sentence on one convicted of racketeering offenses under § 1962, the district court shall order forfeiture of three classes of assets:
“(1) any interest the person has acquired or maintained in violation of section 1962;
“(2) any—
“(A) interest in;
“(B) security of;
“(C) claim against; or
“(D) property or contractual right of any kind affording a source of influence over;
“any enterprise which the person has established, operated, controlled, conducted, or participated in the conduct of, in violation of section 1962; and
“(3) any property constituting, or derived from, any proceeds which the person obtained, directly or indirectly, from racketeering activity or