Supremes Take On Case of Power Drunk State

Letter to Romans: Did you know a $95K airplane can be seized in some places if cops find beer on board, even when parked? The Supreme Court says it’s gonna consider whether seizing such a plane went too far for the 8^th Amendment’s ban on “excessive” fines.

As the WSJ’s editorial board noted: “One progressive fiction about the Supreme Court is that it’s busy serving billionaires & big corporations. Far more often its best work is defending individuals against state power.” That’s because last week the Justices agreed to hear the case next term of an Alaskan bush pilot who had his airplane seized “over a few cases of [packaged] beer (Jouppi v Alaska).” Apparently, one Ken Jouppi was hired to fly a grocery run from Fairbanks to a village in the bush country called Beaver. Without him supposedly knowing it, the passenger had stashed on board 3 cases of Bud. And since Beaver is a dry village, the law made “transporting” it a misdemeanor crime. The state troopers spotted the suds while the plane was parked & charged Jouppi; he was sentenced to 3 days in jail & a $1,500 fine, while his plane was taken too. A state trial court ruled the forfeiture wasn’t appropriate under the 8^th Amendment barring “excessive fines,” but in 2025, the Alaska Supreme Court said it was.” Something about the taking of Jouppi’s Cessna wasn’t “punitive,” but rather part of a good state policy to combat “drunkenness.”

Never mind that the US Supreme Court in the 1998 case of US v. Bajakajian ruled that a forfeiture by the state IS punitive “if it is grossly disproportionate to the gravity of a defendant’s offense.” How do you think the Justices in DC are going to rule on this allegedly drunken abuse of state power?

Davd Soul