The Supreme Court will decide whether Alaska can forfeit an 82-year-old bush pilot’s $95,000 Cessna over a misdemeanor alcohol charge, a case that could reshape government asset forfeiture powers nationwide.
Kenneth Jouppi has spent more than a decade fighting the State of Alaska for his 1969 Cessna. The plane was grounded and marked for seizure after Alaska State Troopers found beer in a passenger’s luggage before a 2012 flight from Fairbanks to Beaver, a remote village of fewer than 100 people that had voted to ban alcohol. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up his case, setting the stage for what legal analysts on both sides of the aisle call a potentially landmark ruling on the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause.
Jouppi was convicted of a misdemeanor alcohol-importation offense and sentenced to three days in jail and a $1,500 fine. The state then pursued civil forfeiture of his aircraft, valued at roughly $95,000. His passenger, who owned the beer, pleaded guilty. But the state wants the pilot’s plane, too, and Alaska’s highest court said that was constitutional.