SCOTUS To Decide If Cops Can Steal 82-Year-Old’s Plane Over Passenger’s Bud Lights

The Supreme Court just took a new case to explore the nature of cruel and unusual punishment. Don’t worry, it’s not about halting a state’s plan to execute a scientifically exonerated man by dunking him in a chamber of sharks — which is presumably in the planning stages in Florida — but rather to put a stop to Alaska’s attempt to steal a bush pilot’s plane because a passenger smuggled beer in her luggage into a dry town.

Alaska has been trying to take away this guy’s plane for 13 years now. Now the U.S. Supreme Court is involved.

Ken Jouppi runs a plane service in Alaska, where some remote towns can only realistically be reached by air. Anyone familiar with Northern Exposure knows the drill. Back in 2012, Jouppi — an Air Force veteran who has flown Alaska’s backcountry since the 1970s — flew a passenger and her grocery run 110 miles from Fairbanks to Beaver, a town that seems to be considerably less cool than Cicely, Alaska. Those groceries included some hidden Budweiser and Bud Light — three cases to be precise — and damned if Beaver wasn’t a dry town.

Or maybe it should be “dammed” because it’s called Beaver? I’ll show myself out.

Adding to the absurdity, Jouppi wasn’t found responsible for the three hidden cases, but only for a six-pack that authorities argued he could have seen. So Jouppi’s case is entirely limited to a six-pack.

For this transgression, authorities in Alaska want to take away Jouppi’s plane, valued at $95,000 — or nine and a half times the maximum $10,000 fine the misdemeanor carries (Jouppi was sentenced to a $1,500 fine). The trial court looked at that ratio twice and twice concluded the forfeiture was unconstitutionally excessive. Because… duh. In April, the Alaska Supreme Court reversed, ruling that stealing $95,000 and the man’s whole business is “not grossly disproportional to the gravity of the harm caused by the offense.” Say what you will about the dangers of alcohol, but writing the words “gravity of the harm” to describe a flight — that never took off, mind you — with three cases of domestic macrobrew should require the justices involved to retire from shame and move to a remote village above Arctic Circle. The justices had words like “is within the law’s broad conception of proportionality” available to them, and instead decided to talk about the “gravity” of a misdemeanor.

With help from the Institute for Justice, Jouppi is taking this case to SCOTUS, arguing that this amounts to an excessive fine under the Eighth Amendment. So Brett Kavanaugh, who told the Senate under oath that he likes beer, will soon have to turn a jaundiced eye toward Alaska’s treatment of some Bud Lights.

Or is it “Buds Light,” like “Attorneys General”?^[1]

Alcohol abuse in rural Alaska leads to increased crime; disorders, such as alcoholism; conditions, such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder; and death, imposing substantial costs on public health and the administration of justice.

Oh, we can take into account the aggregate risks of products in the same general category now? I’m not sure these justices are ready for a thorough accounting of what guns can do. The opioid crisis cost Alaska upwards of $1.2 billion by some estimates and they’re taking home roughly $100 million from the settlement. Less than a tenth of the cost of the harm was acceptable from the company who actively pushed oral heroin, but they demand almost 10x the maximum fine (and over 60x the actual court-imposed fine) for a guy who didn’t rummage through his passenger’s effects looking for watered down beer.

And, yes, the opioid settlement grew out of civil litigation and Jouppi’s case is criminal, but the comparison isn’t about the legal particulars as much as a moral examination of how the state of Alaska measures grave societal harm. Corporations pushing pills that destroy lives is, by this score, not nearly as worrying as a pilot selling tickets to someone carrying a six-pack.

These justices are deeply unserious.

The United States Supreme Court will grapple with whether the Eighth Amendment contemplates weighing an excessive fine against some hypothetical possible harm or actually requires some bare minimum connection to what a particular person actually did.

Historically, proportionality challenges to punishments rarely succeed, with courts awarding enormous deference to whatever a legislature decides a crime is worth. Here though, the legislature decided this crime had a maximum fine of $10,000 and prosecutors and the state’s supreme court decided it’s worth an additional $95,000 for the hell of it.

The Supreme Court has spent years whittling the cruel and unusual punishment part of the Eighth Amendment down to nothing. The justices ruled that you can hold someone in prison for life for petty theft. They tell condemned prisoners that a method of execution isn’t “cruel and unusual” unless the prisoner can identify a kinder, gentler way to be killed by the state. The Eighth Amendment, applied to human beings, is about as protective as a wet paper towel.^[2]

But to a person’s money? This Supreme Court will defend money with a vigor typically seen in cornered animals defending their young. We just got off a Term where the Court decided on the same day that the Constitution demands the president have unlimited power to control every government executive function and that the Federal Reserve is shielded from interference because… dollar, dollar bills, y’all.

Indeed, in 2019 the Court unanimously ruled in Timbs v. Indiana — another Institute for Justice case, for what it’s worth — that the Excessive Fines Clause binds the states, after Indiana tried to keep a $42,000 Land Rover over a $260 heroin sale. On remand, Timbs got his car back. Jouppi is asking the Court to finish the sentence it started and declare that an excessive fine has to be measured against what someone did, not against the darkest thing anyone can imagine has ever done with mountains of beer.

Ken Jouppi should win. But when the Supreme Court announces Jouppi’s victory in a few months, remember that our justices believe the Eighth Amendment has a lot to say about what the government can take from someone, and almost nothing to say about what it can do to that someone.

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The post SCOTUS To Decide If Cops Can Steal 82-Year-Old’s Plane Over Passenger’s Bud Lights appeared first on Above the Law.

The Supreme Court just took a new case to explore the nature of cruel and unusual punishment. Don’t worry, it’s not about halting a state’s plan to execute a scientifically exonerated man by dunking him in a chamber of sharks — which is presumably in the planning stages in Florida — but rather to put a stop to Alaska’s attempt to steal a bush pilot’s plane because a passenger smuggled beer in her luggage into a dry town.

Alaska has been trying to take away this guy’s plane for 13 years now. Now the U.S. Supreme Court is involved.

Ken Jouppi runs a plane service in Alaska, where some remote towns can only realistically be reached by air. Anyone familiar with Northern Exposure knows the drill. Back in 2012, Jouppi — an Air Force veteran who has flown Alaska’s backcountry since the 1970s — flew a passenger and her grocery run 110 miles from Fairbanks to Beaver, a town that seems to be considerably less cool than Cicely, Alaska. Those groceries included some hidden Budweiser and Bud Light — three cases to be precise — and damned if Beaver wasn’t a dry town.

Or maybe it should be “dammed” because it’s called Beaver? I’ll show myself out.

Adding to the absurdity, Jouppi wasn’t found responsible for the three hidden cases, but only for a six-pack that authorities argued he could have seen. So Jouppi’s case is entirely limited to a six-pack.

For this transgression, authorities in Alaska want to take away Jouppi’s plane, valued at $95,000 — or nine and a half times the maximum $10,000 fine the misdemeanor carries (Jouppi was sentenced to a $1,500 fine). The trial court looked at that ratio twice and twice concluded the forfeiture was unconstitutionally excessive. Because… duh. In April, the Alaska Supreme Court reversed, ruling that stealing $95,000 and the man’s whole business is “not grossly disproportional to the gravity of the harm caused by the offense.” Say what you will about the dangers of alcohol, but writing the words “gravity of the harm” to describe a flight — that never took off, mind you — with three cases of domestic macrobrew should require the justices involved to retire from shame and move to a remote village above Arctic Circle. The justices had words like “is within the law’s broad conception of proportionality” available to them, and instead decided to talk about the “gravity” of a misdemeanor.

With help from the Institute for Justice, Jouppi is taking this case to SCOTUS, arguing that this amounts to an excessive fine under the Eighth Amendment. So Brett Kavanaugh, who told the Senate under oath that he likes beer, will soon have to turn a jaundiced eye toward Alaska’s treatment of some Bud Lights.

Or is it “Buds Light,” like “Attorneys General”?^[1]

Alcohol abuse in rural Alaska leads to increased crime; disorders, such as alcoholism; conditions, such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder; and death, imposing substantial costs on public health and the administration of justice.

Oh, we can take into account the aggregate risks of products in the same general category now? I’m not sure these justices are ready for a thorough accounting of what guns can do. The opioid crisis cost Alaska upwards of $1.2 billion by some estimates and they’re taking home roughly $100 million from the settlement. Less than a tenth of the cost of the harm was acceptable from the company who actively pushed oral heroin, but they demand almost 10x the maximum fine (and over 60x the actual court-imposed fine) for a guy who didn’t rummage through his passenger’s effects looking for watered down beer.

And, yes, the opioid settlement grew out of civil litigation and Jouppi’s case is criminal, but the comparison isn’t about the legal particulars as much as a moral examination of how the state of Alaska measures grave societal harm. Corporations pushing pills that destroy lives is, by this score, not nearly as worrying as a pilot selling tickets to someone carrying a six-pack.

These justices are deeply unserious.

The United States Supreme Court will grapple with whether the Eighth Amendment contemplates weighing an excessive fine against some hypothetical possible harm or actually requires some bare minimum connection to what a particular person actually did.

Historically, proportionality challenges to punishments rarely succeed, with courts awarding enormous deference to whatever a legislature decides a crime is worth. Here though, the legislature decided this crime had a maximum fine of $10,000 and prosecutors and the state’s supreme court decided it’s worth an additional $95,000 for the hell of it.

The Supreme Court has spent years whittling the cruel and unusual punishment part of the Eighth Amendment down to nothing. The justices ruled that you can hold someone in prison for life for petty theft. They tell condemned prisoners that a method of execution isn’t “cruel and unusual” unless the prisoner can identify a kinder, gentler way to be killed by the state. The Eighth Amendment, applied to human beings, is about as protective as a wet paper towel.^[2]

But to a person’s money? This Supreme Court will defend money with a vigor typically seen in cornered animals defending their young. We just got off a Term where the Court decided on the same day that the Constitution demands the president have unlimited power to control every government executive function and that the Federal Reserve is shielded from interference because… dollar, dollar bills, y’all.

Indeed, in 2019 the Court unanimously ruled in Timbs v. Indiana — another Institute for Justice case, for what it’s worth — that the Excessive Fines Clause binds the states, after Indiana tried to keep a $42,000 Land Rover over a $260 heroin sale. On remand, Timbs got his car back. Jouppi is asking the Court to finish the sentence it started and declare that an excessive fine has to be measured against what someone did, not against the darkest thing anyone can imagine has ever done with mountains of beer.

Ken Jouppi should win. But when the Supreme Court announces Jouppi’s victory in a few months, remember that our justices believe the Eighth Amendment has a lot to say about what the government can take from someone, and almost nothing to say about what it can do to that someone.

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