Supreme Court to review Alaska pilot’s airplane forfeiture fight
Kenneth Jouppi says Alaska’s bid to take his $95,000 Cessna over a passenger’s beer violates the Eighth Amendment.
By Sofia Marchetti · World Affairs Correspondent
3 min read
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear an Alaska pilot’s challenge to the state’s attempt to take his airplane after a passenger brought beer onto a flight headed for a dry village. The case gives the justices a new chance to examine when criminal forfeiture becomes an excessive fine under the Eighth Amendment.
Kenneth Jouppi is fighting Alaska’s effort to seize his 1969 Cessna, valued at $95,000, after his conviction on an alcohol-related misdemeanor. The Alaska Supreme Court sided with the state, ruling that the plane could be forfeited under criminal forfeiture laws.
Jouppi, represented by the Institute for Justice, argues that losing the aircraft would be far out of proportion to the conduct at issue. The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments 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 banned, according to the case record described by his lawyers. The passenger had placed a six-pack of Budweiser in a shopping bag with other groceries, and Alaska State Troopers found the beer when they searched Jouppi’s plane before takeoff.
Jouppi, his company and the passenger were charged with knowingly transporting alcohol into a dry community, a misdemeanor offense. The passenger pleaded guilty, while a jury convicted Jouppi and his company after trial. A judge sentenced Jouppi to three days in jail.
In a statement released by the Institute for Justice, Jouppi said he has spent more than a decade contesting the forfeiture because he believes the Bill of Rights should protect people from government overreach. His lawyers told the justices that the Alaska Supreme Court treated his conduct too abstractly and failed to assess whether it reflected a wider course of criminal behavior, which they said it did not.
In their petition, Jouppi’s attorneys said a case involving forfeiture of an aircraft over a six-pack presented a clear test of the Excessive Fines Clause. They also argued that Alaska’s ruling conflicts with decisions from other courts, including U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
Lawyers for the Alaska Attorney General’s office urged the justices to leave the state ruling intact. In their response, they described the Alaska Supreme Court’s decision as tied to the facts of the case and said lower courts already use a multi-factor test to decide whether a fine or forfeiture is grossly disproportionate to an offense.
The state’s lawyers said Jouppi was not challenging the legal standard applied by Alaska’s high court, but instead disputing how the court weighed the factors. They argued that he had not shown that forfeiture of the plane was grossly disproportionate, and they said alcohol abuse is a serious issue in rural Alaska, where aircraft can be the practical means of bringing alcohol into dry communities.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.