April 3, 2012, began like any other day for Ken Jouppi, a longtime bush pilot in Alaska. He was scheduled to fly a passenger and her groceries from Fairbanks 110 miles north to the village of Beaver. Hidden in the passenger’s luggage, though, were three cases of beer—two Budweiser, one Bud Light—intended as a gift to her husband, who worked in Beaver as the local postmaster. 

The beer was illegal to bring to Beaver, which voted to prohibit alcohol in 2004.  Before Ken could take off, state troopers searched the plane and discovered the beer. Ken insisted he did not know about the beer. He was nevertheless charged, convicted and sentenced to the statutory minimum: a $1,500 fine and three days in jail.

But the State wasn’t done with him yet. For the past thirteen years, prosecutors have also been trying to forfeit his airplane, a Cessna U206D, worth about $95,000. And this past April, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the harm of a single six-pack of beer warranted seizing something as valuable as an airplane. 

The end result: a $95,000 plane forfeited for a six-pack of Budweiser. 

Ken is not giving up the fight. Instead, he’s partnered with the Institute for Justice to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and give much-needed clarity to what constitutes an unconstitutionally excessive fine. In an era where enforcement agencies (in the Supreme Court’s words) “increasingly depend heavily on fines and fees as a source of general revenue,” it’s critical that the Court invigorate the Bill of Rights’ Excessive Fines Clause in a way that better secures protections for ordinary people nationwide. 

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Ken Jouppi has been fascinated with flying since childhood. After serving four years in the Air Force, mainly as a mechanic for B-52s, he got his pilot’s license in the late 1960s. In the late ‘70s, he moved to Alaska.

For those who love flying, there’s no better place. Ever since Captain Joseph Martin first flew an open-cockpit biplane over Fairbanks in 1913 (helped by his wife and fellow pilot, Lily), aviation has held a special place in Alaska’s heritage. And Ken fit right in. Starting out, he flew for a small company in Ketchikan, working with the U.S. Forest Service, flying charters, and occasionally piloting medevac and search missions.

 In time, he started his own company (“KenAir”), and for years, he made a living using his 1969 Cessna U206D as a one-man air-taxi service, shuttling tourists and locals alike over the Alaskan wilderness. 

Alaska’s Alcohol Regulations and Ken’s Conviction Under Them

In the 1980s, the state of Alaska authorized municipalities and villages to declare themselves “dry villages.” Since then, some communities have voted simply to regulate the sale of alcohol, limiting it to restaurants, package stores, and the like. Others prohibit selling alcohol but not possessing it. Still others select a more stringent level of restriction: banning the sale, importation, and possession of alcohol altogether. For these most restrictive villages, it is a state-level crime to “knowingly send, transport, or bring an alcoholic beverage” there. Violating the statute is typically a misdemeanor, though those committing their third offense or those transporting more sizable amounts of alcohol (10.5 liters of spirits or 12 gallons of beer) can face felony charges. For first-time misdemeanor offenders, the minimum sentence is three days’ incarceration and a $1,500 fine.

And, potentially, forfeiture. Using a plane to import the alcohol subjects the plane to mandatory forfeiture—no matter the quantity and no matter the seriousness of the offense. When another vehicle—car, boat, snowmobile—is used to commit the violation, in contrast, forfeiture is mandatory only for particularly egregious variants of the offense. But for planes in particular, the forfeiture statute casts what the Alaska courts have described as a “wide net.”

The Lower-Court Proceedings

As a pilot, Ken knew of Alaska’s dry-village system, and he would not deliberately fly alcohol illegally. But he also respected his clients privacy, and didn’t rifle through their luggage to hunt for alcohol. No law required him to search their belongings, and, in his view, it would be invasive and demeaning to do so.

It’s against that backdrop that Ken prepared to fly a repeat passenger to the fully dry village of Beaver in April 2012. Along with many other groceries, the passenger had three cases of beer packed in her luggage. She herself was not a drinker. But she was travelling to Beaver to spend her birthday with her husband; the beer (Budweiser and Bud Light) was for him.

As Ken loaded the plane, state troopers arrived on scene, searched it, and found the beer. Ken insisted he had no idea there was beer in his passenger’s luggage. But the officers maintained that, at a minimum, one six-pack of Budweiser was visible in a shopping bag. So the State charged Ken and his passenger with misdemeanors. The passenger pleaded guilty. Ken went to trial and was found guilty as well; the verdict didn’t specify whether Ken was willfully blind to all of the beer on board or just the one six-pack. He was sentenced to the minimum: three days in jail and a $1,500 fine.

Then came a decade-plus of litigation over forfeiting his plane. Initially, the trial court refused the State’s forfeiture demand on statutory groudns. Ken got his plane back. But the plane had been left out and exposed the elements while in the State’s possession, and Ken had to spend significant time and money restoring it to usable condition—all while the State appealed the trial court’s denial of the forfeiture. 

Following one round of appeals, the trial court then ruled that forfeiting the $95,000 would be an unconstitutionally excessive fine. Again the State appealed. And when the case reached the state supreme court, it reversed the lower court. 

In the state supreme court’s view, it did not matter whether Ken was willfully blind to all of the passenger’s beer or just a single six-pack. For “[i]t is clear to us,” the court stated, “that the legislature determined that the harm from even a six-pack of beer knowingly imported into a dry village is severe enough to warrant forfeiture of an aircraft.” Examining Ken’s crime at a stratospheric level of generality, the court thus upheld the forfeiture: a plane, for a six-pack.

Seeking Supreme Court Review

The Excessive Fines Clause was built for cases like this. Like its precursors in the English Bill of Rights and Magna Carta, the Excessive Fines Clause was designed to ensure that economic punishments bear some relationship to the gravity of the offense. But only once in its history—and never in this century—has the Supreme Court issued an opinion discussing precisely how courts should determine whether a fine is excessive. The Alaska court’s decision in Ken’s case captures the resulting confusion vividly. On remand from the U.S. Supreme Court (in a case litigated by IJ), the Indiana Supreme Court in 2021 ruled that forfeiting Tyson Timbs’s $40,000 Land Rover over a low-level drug offense was unconstitutionally excessive. By contrast, Alaska now holds that forfeiting a $95,000 plane over a six-pack of beer is not excessive. That disparity underscores the need for the U.S. Supreme Court to bring clarity to the standard that governs in these types of cases. 

The need for the Court’s intervention is acute. As Justice Scalia observed in the early 1990s, fines, unlike incarceration, are a “source of revenue” for the government. So, he warned, “[t]here is good reason to be concerned that fines, uniquely of all punishments, will be imposed in a measure out of accord with the penal goals of retribution and deterrence.” Those concerns have only multiplied in the decades since; nationwide, both police and prosecutors rely on fines and forfeitures for their budgets. And those bearing the brunt are most often the Nation’s most vulnerable—the poor and the politically powerless. The Constitution’s Framers, studying this phenomenon over centuries of English history prior, foresaw precisely this phenomenon. That is why they enacted the Excessive Fines Clause as a constitutional safety valve, and it is as important today as it was then. 

About the Institute for Justice

The Institute for Justice is a public-interest law firm that litigates nationwide to vindicate individual liberties. In 2019, IJ secured a Supreme Court victory holding that the Excessive Fines Clause applies to state and local governments. IJ is currently working to protect a Florida homeowner from ruinous, six-figure fines for how she parked on her own driveway; Detroiters targeted by Wayne County, Michigan’s forfeiture apparatus, and thousands of Alabamians victimized by a notorious profit-fueled ticketing scheme in Brookside, Alabama.