Forced forfeiture of a plane used to transport a six-pack of beer to a dry village does not violate the excessive fines clause in the U.S. Constitution, according to the Alaska Supreme Court.
Pending further appeals, Friday's decision means Fairbanks pilot Kenneth Jouppi must give up his Cessna 206 as punishment for ignoring beer loaded onto a flight routed to the dry village of Beaver in 2012.
"Obviously, we're quite disappointed in the opinion," Robert John, Jouppi's attorney, told KUAC Monday.
But he says the case may not be finished yet.
"The odds are good that we're gonna be seeking review in the United States Supreme Court," he said. "So we gotta muster our resources and proceed forward."
Getting a case before the U.S. Supreme Court is far from automatic. Its justices agree to hear about 1% of the appeals they receive.
At the state level, though, the case has already been ping-ponging between trial and appellate courts for years.
More than a decade ago, a Fairbanks jury found Jouppi, owner of KenAir, LLC, guilty of a misdemeanor bootlegging charge. Evidence presented at trial showed Jouppi had helped a passenger load cargo that contained about 72 beers — mostly in boxes — onto the plane.
The plane didn't leave the airport, though, because Alaska State Troopers had been on scene watching the incident with a search warrant prepared.
Court proceedings never determined whether Jouppi was culpable for all the alcohol. But at least one six-pack was in a plastic bag, and the prosecution successfully argued that Jouppi must have been aware of it.
Jouppi was sentenced to three days in jail. He and his company also both had to pay a $1,500 fine and got three years of probation, but district court trial judge Patrick Hammers determined that the state could not take the plane as part of the Fairbanks pilot's punishment under Alaska law.
The state challenged that conclusion, and the Alaska Court of Appeals reversed the lower court's ruling, sending it back to the trial judge for further consideration.
Then that sequence repeated again – this time on constitutional rather than statutory grounds – as the trial and appellate court again didn't see eye to eye when it came to the plane's confiscation.
After the case appeared in the appeals court a second time, the parties petitioned to the state Supreme Court, which was tasked primarily with deciding whether forcing Jouppi to forfeit the $95,000 plane counts as an unconstitutionally excessive fine.
That question requires the judges to consider whether a given fine is "grossly disproportional" to the gravity of an offense.
In Friday's opinion, the judges invoked alcohol's connections to crime, health disorders and death.
They wrote, "Within this context, it is clear that the illegal importation of even a six-pack of beer causes grave societal harm. This factor strongly suggests that the forfeiture is not grossly disproportional."
Friday's opinion also differs from earlier rulings from the Alaska Court of Appeals in that it says the case does not need to be sent back to the trial court for additional fact-finding.
But John said he thinks the judges miscalculated.
"In my opinion, if this isn't an excessive fine, I don't know what is," he said.
At an evidentiary hearing, Jouppi said he had retired from flying and would likely sell the plane if it were returned to him, court documents say. According to Alaska Department of Commerce filings, KenAir was created in 2008 and dissolved in 2014.
Spokespeople for the Alaska Department of Law did not immediately respond to questions Monday about why they stuck with the litigation for 13 years and what will happen to the plane if it is forfeited.
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