The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review Ken Jouppi’s confiscation fight over Alaska’s seizure of his $95,000 airplane. The case centers on whether taking a 1969 Cessna for illegally transporting beer is an unconstitutionally excessive fine under the Eighth Amendment.
Jouppi was set to fly a passenger to a dry village that banned alcohol, and the passenger had beer in her luggage. His lawyers said an airplane forfeited for a six-pack violates the excessive fines clause, while Jouppi argued the Constitution’s ban on excessive fines was “built for cases like” his.
Alaska Supreme Court ruling
The Alaska Supreme Court ruled against Jouppi and upheld the forfeiture. It said the seizure was constitutional because it was not “grossly disproportional to the gravity of the harm caused by Jouppi’s alcohol importation offense.”
The state high court also said the plane’s value was only 9.5 times the maximum fine that could have been imposed against him. In April 2012, the court said, Jouppi loaded the equivalent of three cases of beer into his airplane for a customer who had chartered his company’s services to fly from Fairbanks to Beaver.
October and April review
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in the term that starts in October, and a hearing will be scheduled sometime between October and April. A decision is expected by July.
That review puts the court’s method for judging forfeitures under the Eighth Amendment at the center of the dispute. How the Supreme Court will apply that standard to Jouppi’s airplane forfeiture is still the open issue the justices have taken up.
Jouppi and Tyson Timbs
State officials said Alaska “faces unique difficulties in combating alcohol abuse and its consequences,” and they said planes that illegally import alcohol into dry communities are subject to forfeiture under state law. They also said, “The Alaska Supreme Court properly looked at the facts of this case as well as the Alaska Legislature’s goals in enacting the forfeiture statute.”
Tyson Timbs is among Jouppi’s supporters as the case moves into Supreme Court review.
