‘Airplane forfeited for a 6-pack’: Supreme Court takes up excessive fines appeal

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review the standard for evaluating unconstitutionally excessive fines in a case over Alaska seizing a $95,000 airplane for illegally transporting beer.

Bush pilot Ken Jouppi argues that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on such fines was “built for cases like” his, in which the state has been trying to take his 1969 Cessna because his passenger had beer in her luggage and the state said that at least one six-pack would have been visible to the pilot. Jouppi was set to fly the passenger to a “dry” village that banned alcohol.

His lawyers with the Institute for Justice said in his petition that “an airplane forfeited for a six-pack” violates the excessive fines clause and raises an important question for the justices to answer about how courts must analyze such seizures. That question, they said, is whether courts should consider the gravity of the underlying offense “purely in the abstract” or by examining “the specific defendant’s wrongdoing.”

They said the Alaska Supreme Court’s ruling against Jouppi “adopted a minority view” among the nation’s courts by examining his case in “paradigmatically abstract terms.”

The state court said the forfeiture was constitutional because it wasn’t “grossly disproportional to the gravity of the harm caused by Jouppi’s alcohol importation offense.” It said the value of his plane is “only 9.5 times the maximum fine that could have been imposed” against him.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case for the coming term that starts in October, with a decision expected by July. It takes four justices to grant review of a petition, but the vote tally isn’t public. How the court overall is leaning could become clearer at the hearing, which will be scheduled for sometime between October and April.

When it ruled against him, the state high court recounted that the evidence at his trial showed that in April 2012, 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.” The state court said the jury heard conflicting evidence about what would have been visible to the pilot, but a state trooper testified that he saw Jouppi “opening and closing boxes while loading the airplane and opined that Jouppi had to be turning a blind eye to the boxes’ contents because it would have been impossible not to see that there was alcohol being loaded into the airplane.”

Opposing U.S. Supreme Court review, state officials said Alaska “faces unique difficulties in combating alcohol abuse and its consequences,” including alcohol-fueled domestic violence. They said that’s why state law makes planes that illegally import alcohol into dry communities subject to forfeiture.

State officials also disagreed with Jouppi’s characterization of how courts around the country review these claims generally, as well as with Jouppi’s characterization of how the Alaska high court evaluated his case specifically. “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,” they said.

Among Jouppi’s supporters is Tyson Timbs, who filed an amicus brief urging the justices to review Jouppi’s appeal. In 2019 the Supreme Court ruled for Timbs in a landmark case he brought against Indiana’s seizure of his Land Rover, which was allegedly being used to transport heroin. Timbs’ lawyers wrote to the justices that courts around the country still aren’t properly enforcing the excessive fines ban. They said that reviewing Jouppi’s case would therefore provide an opportunity for the court to curb excessive fines and forfeitures and “provide critical constitutional protection to individuals nationwide.”

In his petition, Jouppi cited Timbs’ case to highlight how forfeiture claims are playing out differently around the country, writing that Timbs “unquestionably would have lost his Land Rover had he been in Alaska instead of Indiana.”

State officials said Timbs’ case isn’t comparable to Jouppi’s. They noted that when Indiana’s high court eventually ruled for Timbs in further proceedings following his U.S. Supreme Court win, the state court emphasized that Timbs’ case was unusual.

The state court said the forfeiture of Timbs’ Land Rover wasn’t unconstitutional only because he was poor, suffered from addiction and dealt drugs to an undercover officer and not someone who would use them, or because the vehicle’s value was 3 1/2 times the maximum fine for the underlying offenses, or because he got the minimum possible sentence and wasn’t a big-time drug dealer, or because the vehicle was his only asset and essential to him reintegrating into society. “Rather, it’s the confluence of all these facts that makes Timbs the unusual claimant who could overcome the high hurdle of showing gross disproportionality,” the Indiana Supreme Court said.

Alaska officials said Jouppi’s case “does not approach the confluence of factors that existed in Timbs.” They said Jouppi was “a career pilot and a business owner who intentionally aided his customers to import alcohol to dry communities ‘so he could earn his fare.’” They noted that he flew his passenger to Beaver “that same day on his second plane.”

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