Com. v. 5043 Anderson Road

• Decision Date: 20 April 1999
• Citation: 556 Pa. 335,728 A.2d 907
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. 5043 ANDERSON ROAD, BUCKINGHAM TOWNSHIP, BUCKS COUNTY, Pennsylvania, a/k/a Tax Map Parcel 6-14-99 as Recorded in Deed Book 2605, Page 228, Bucks County Recorder of Deeds, Appellee.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

556 Pa. 335

728 A.2d 907

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. 5043 ANDERSON ROAD, BUCKINGHAM TOWNSHIP, BUCKS COUNTY, Pennsylvania, a/k/a Tax Map Parcel 6-14-99 as Recorded in Deed Book 2605, Page 228, Bucks County Recorder of Deeds, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued October 21, 1998.

Decided April 20, 1999.

T. Gary Gambardella, Chief Dep. Dist. Atty., Stephen E. Harris, Warrington, for Com.

Albert J. Cepparulo, Philadelphia, for Cyrus T. Kinney.

Before FLAHERTY, C.J., and ZAPPALA, CAPPY, CASTILLE, NIGRO, NEWMAN and SAYLOR, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT

FLAHERTY, Chief Justice.

The facts in this appeal are undisputed and present an issue of first impression relating to in rem forfeiture proceedings. Cyrus Kinney owned and lived in a residence on an approximately twenty-four-acre parcel of land, described in a single recorded deed, which he had inherited from his mother. For several years, he had conducted a lucrative business selling marijuana from the residence and a detached garage adjacent to the house. Following an undercover investigation, police obtained a search warrant and searched Kinney's house. In the house, they discovered Kinney, his wife and two-month-old son, and several quantities of marijuana, along with sales records, cash, and paraphernalia normally associated with drug transactions and use.

Kinney was arrested and charged with offenses related to the possession and sale of controlled substances. He pled guilty to all charges and was sentenced to one to two years incarceration plus court costs. The commonwealth then filed a forfeiture petition pursuant to the Controlled Substances Forfeiture Act, 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 6801 et seq., which requires the forfeiture of real property used or intended to be used to facilitate violations of 35 P.S. § 780-101, the Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act. The matter was submitted to the trial court on stipulated facts and the court granted the forfeiture petition, but limited the forfeiture to the property directly related to the criminal activity and excluded twenty-two acres deemed unrelated. Both parties appealed to Commonwealth Court. That court affirmed. The commonwealth filed a petition for allowance of appeal to this court which we have granted.

We granted allocatur in this case to determine whether, pursuant to the forfeiture act, a trial court may order a partial forfeiture of property when the court determines that a forfeiture of the entire property would constitute an excessive fine. Section 6801 of the act provides:

(a) Forfeitures generally. — The following shall be subject to forfeiture to the Commonwealth and no property right shall exist in them:

....

(6) (i) All of the following:

....

(C) Real property used or intended to be used to facilitate any violation of The Controlled Substance ... Act, including structures or other improvements thereon, and including any right, title and interest in the whole or any lot or tract of land and any appurtenances and improvements, which is used or intended to be used, in any manner or part, to commit, or to facilitate the commission of, a violation of [the act], and things growing on, affixed to and found in the land.

42 Pa.C.S. § 6801(a)(6)(i)(C)(emphasis added). Additionally, section 6802 of the act provides that if the commonwealth produces evidence that property was used to facilitate commission of the crime, the burden shifts to the owner to show that the property was not so used. 42 Pa.C.S. § 6802(j).

We determined that the excessive fines provision of the Pennsylvania constitution applied to the forfeiture act in In re King Properties, 535 Pa. 321, 635 A.2d 128 (1993). King set forth the standard for determining whether a forfeiture violates the Pennsylvania constitution, stating:

[I]n determining whether a forfeiture is an excessive fine, and therefore disproportionate, the inquiry does not concern the value of the thing forfeited, but the relationship of the offense to the property which is forfeited. If the forfeited property was significantly used in the commission of the offense, the item may be forfeited regardless of its value.

Where the evidence is that the criminal incident on which the forfeiture is based is not a part of a pattern of similar incidents, there is no "significant" relationship between the property sought to be forfeited and the offense. Otherwise, significant property interests might become forfeit based on an unusual and unaccustomed incident.

King, supra, at 133.¹ Furthermore, in Commonwealth v. Wingait Farms, 547 Pa. 332, 690 A.2d 222 (1997), we stated that a "constitutionally `excessive' forfeiture, therefore, would be one in which the property was not significantly utilized in the commission of the drug-related offense." Id. at 227. In other words, for a property to bear a sufficiently significant relationship to the crime to be subject to forfeiture pursuant to this section of the statute, it must have played some role in the commission of the crime.

Appellant argues that because the statute does not explicitly...