The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Dec. 1 in the case of Ken Jouppi, an Alaska pilot who has spent 14 years fighting to get his airplane back after state troopers seized it following a search that turned up beer in a passenger’s groceries.
Jouppi flew in Alaska for 30 years before troopers stopped his plane before takeoff, searched it, and found beer in a passenger’s boxes of groceries. Some Alaska towns prohibit alcohol, and officials said the beer was visible enough that Jouppi should have known it was there. He was jailed for three days, and the state seized his plane, which he says was his primary source of income.
“That airplane was my primary source of income,” Jouppi said. “Without it, I didn’t have a business anymore.”
His attorney, Mike Greenberg of the Institute for Justice, said the plane has remained parked on a tarmac for 14 years while the case has worked its way through the courts. “It’s a ludicrous situation where the state has every interest in going after valuable assets rather than actually fighting supposed harms of alcohol,” Greenberg said.
Jouppi’s case is one of several recent disputes over government fines and seizures that critics say are disproportionate to the underlying conduct. The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bars the government from imposing “excessive fines.”
A retired professor’s tax penalty
In another case, retired professor Tuncay Saydam is facing a $400,000 penalty from the IRS after failing to file a one-page form disclosing an old bank account in his native Turkey. Saydam’s unpaid tax liability was less than $30,000, but the penalty the IRS is seeking exceeds $400,000.
“The fines will destroy my life,” Saydam said. “We have never been rich.”
A California court upheld the penalty. Northern California Chief Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu wrote in her ruling that the “government suffered a significant tax loss.”
Humboldt County greenhouse fines
In Humboldt County, California, officials used aerial photography to search for unlicensed marijuana farms, then issued fines to property owners found to have greenhouses, regardless of what was actually being grown inside them.
One property owner, identified as Graham, was fined $900,000 — accruing at $30,000 a day — despite growing only vegetables. “There actually was no marijuana on the property,” Greenberg said. “They were just guessing that if you built a greenhouse, this must be connected to marijuana.”
A lawsuit led Humboldt County to agree to end what Greenberg’s firm described as a “ruinous fine system.”
Why the fines persist
Greenberg said local and state agencies have a financial incentive to pursue these cases because, unlike other penalties, fines generate revenue that the enforcing agency often keeps. “The prosecutor’s office, state troopers, they get to keep the proceeds,” Greenberg said. “It’s an abusive system because they have every incentive to continue to prosecute.”
Jouppi’s case before the Supreme Court is expected to address whether the government’s seizure and retention of his plane for 14 years, over a beer-possession violation, violates the Constitution’s prohibition on excessive fines.
