The will soon hear oral arguments in a case out of Alaska that centers around an airplane, a six pack of beer, and an amendment to the Constitution that traces its history back centuries as a legal expert lays out the potential impact of the ruling to Fox News Digital.
“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted,” the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads.
That amendment is at the heart of a case that will be heard by the Supreme Court in December and Cully Stimson, a senior legal fellow at Heritage Foundation, described it as “the case that libertarians and freedom-minded people have been hoping for for years.”
Kenneth Jouppi, now 82, was operating a one-man air taxi service using his personally-owned 1969 Cessna plane in 2012 when Alaska state troopers executed a search warrant on his plane and found alcohol on board, including one six-pack that they said was plainly visible. At the time, Jouppi was on a runway in Fairbanks preparing to take a customer and her groceries to the remote village of Beaver near the center of the state.
Having beer on board wasnt illegal on its own and Jouppi says he was not aware the woman had the beer with her. However, since Beaver had banned the possession or sale of alcohol within its limits, Jouppi was convicted of alcohol importation, a . The Alaska Supreme Court held that, under the alcohol importation ban, the state was required to confiscate Jouppis Cessna.
Jouppi has since argued in court that the states seizure of his plane, valued at $95,000, runs afoul of the 8th Amendments ban on excessive fines. Now, the Supreme Court will weigh in on whether hes right.
“Taking a guy’s airplane, livelihood because he tried to take a six-pack of beer into a dry village, I mean can there be a more outrageous abuse of the excessive fines clause?” Stimson said. “I don’t think so. So honestly, in a perfect world, it should be 9-0 for Mr. Jouppi.”
Stimson says the idea that governments should not be able to devastate citizens with fines dates back centuries to the Magna Carta, the 1215 English charter that limited the kings power and established the principle that rulers are subject to the law, and explained in a recent Daily Signal article that prohibition on excessive fines is backed by “8 centuries of proportionality.”
At the center of the case, Stimson explained, is whether Alaskas forfeiture of Jouppis roughly $95,000 airplane was proportionate to his misdemeanor conviction for bringing a six-pack of beer into a dry village.
Alaska argues the plane was worth less than 10 times the maximum possible fine of $10,000, while Jouppis attorneys point to the sentence he actually received: the minimum $1,500 fine and three days in jail. The Supreme Court will consider whether proportionality should be measured against the maximum penalty allowed by law or the specific punishment imposed in Jouppis case.
“Alaska’s Brief spends a lot of ink on the purpose of these local rules that create dry cities,” Stimson said. “They spend a lot of ink on alcoholism in Alaska and all the rest of it. All of that’s irrelevant. If it was that important, they would have made it a felony and they would have made it a really serious felony with a lot of jail time and a huge forfeiture. They made it a misdemeanor. He was convicted of a misdemeanor and he got three days in jail.”
Stimson pointed to the trial judge in the case who refused to take Jouppis plane in the first place and said that was the correct decision.
“The state appealed that, it came back to the judge on remand from the Court of Appeals and the judge said, I find that the request by the state is a
