The Legislature will spend $50,000 defending the seizure of a pilot's plane

Kenneth Jouppi, a retired bush pilot, lost his Cessna over a six-pack. The U.S. Supreme Court will decide in December whether Alaska was allowed to take it, and the Legislature voted Thursday to spend up to $50,000 arguing that it was.

The Legislative Council approved the money 10-0 to hire outside counsel and file an amicus brief, a filing from someone who is not a party to the case. Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson made the motion, which also lets the chair direct Legislative Legal Services and outside counsel on what the brief says. The council took it up after a closed executive session.

Jouppi was convicted after a 2012 flight loaded in Fairbanks and bound for Beaver, a village that has voted to bar alcohol. State law makes forfeiture of the aircraft mandatory on conviction. The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the loss of the plane, valued at $95,000, last year. The U.S. Supreme Court's own summary of the case says the state court upheld the forfeiture because the pilot "knew that one of his passenger's grocery bags contained a sixpack of Budweiser."

Megan Wallace, chief counsel of Legislative Legal Services, told the council the state court had held it was "not unconstitutionally excessive punishment to confiscate the airplane," and that the ruling rested on deference to the Legislature's authority to set penalties, so long as they are not grossly disproportional. That deference is what the Legislature is paying to protect.

Jouppi's lawyers at the Institute for Justice argue that a punitive forfeiture has to face real proportionality review, and that Alaska's scheme offers "no protection" under the constitutional bar on excessive fines. The Cato Institute, in its own brief, calls the state court's reasoning "myopic" for weighing the general harms of bootlegging rather than what Jouppi actually did, which was a misdemeanor.

Alaska is already defending the judgment through the Department of Law, which filed against review last November. Eleven organizations filed briefs backing Jouppi on Sept. 9 and 10, the two days before the council voted. Argument is set for Dec. 1.