Supreme Court to hear Alaska pilot’s airplane forfeiture fight
Kenneth Jouppi says Alaska’s bid to take his Cessna over beer on a dry-village flight violates the Eighth Amendment.
By Hana Yoshida · Markets Reporter
3 min read
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to review whether Alaska may take a bush pilot’s airplane after a passenger brought beer onto a flight headed for a community where alcohol was banned. The case matters because it asks how far states can go when using criminal forfeiture laws and whether the Eighth Amendment limits that punishment.
Kenneth Jouppi, an Alaska pilot, is challenging the state’s attempt to seize his 1969 Cessna, which his lawyers say is worth $95,000. According to his attorneys at the Institute for Justice, Alaska pursued forfeiture after Jouppi was convicted of a misdemeanor tied to alcohol transportation.
The Alaska Supreme Court sided with the state, ruling that Jouppi’s plane could be forfeited under state criminal law. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to take the case means the justices will consider Jouppi’s argument that the seizure would violate the Constitution’s ban on excessive fines. Arguments are expected in the fall.
The dispute began in April 2012, when Jouppi was preparing to fly a passenger from Fairbanks to Beaver, a remote Alaska village where alcohol was prohibited. According to court filings described by his lawyers, the passenger had packed a six-pack of Budweiser in a shopping bag with groceries.
Alaska State Troopers searched the plane before takeoff and found the beer, according to the case record cited by Jouppi’s attorneys. Prosecutors charged Jouppi, his company and the passenger with knowingly transporting alcohol into a dry community.
The passenger pleaded guilty, while Jouppi and his company went to trial and were convicted by a jury, according to the filings. A judge sentenced Jouppi to three days in jail.
Jouppi, who is now in his 80s, said in a statement released by the Institute for Justice that he has spent more than a decade fighting the state’s forfeiture effort because he believes constitutional protections must check government overreach.
His lawyers told the Supreme Court that Alaska’s courts treated his conduct too broadly and failed to weigh whether the offense was part of a larger course of criminal behavior. They said it was not. In their petition, the Institute for Justice argued that forfeiting an airplane over a six-pack presents a clear excessive-fines issue.
Lawyers for the Alaska Attorney General’s office urged the justices to leave the state Supreme Court’s ruling in place. In their brief, they said courts use multi-factor tests to decide whether a forfeiture is grossly out of proportion to an offense, and they argued that Jouppi was mostly disputing how Alaska’s high court weighed those factors.
Alaska’s lawyers also argued that Jouppi had not shown the proposed forfeiture was grossly disproportionate to his crime. They told the court that alcohol abuse is a serious issue in rural Alaska and that aircraft can be the practical means for illegal alcohol importation in remote communities.
Jouppi’s attorneys counter that the Alaska ruling conflicts with decisions from other courts, including Supreme Court precedent on the Excessive Fines Clause. The justices’ ruling could clarify how courts must measure the value of property against the seriousness of the offense when governments seek forfeiture.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.