A 6-Pack, an Airplane, and Excessive Fines

Imagine a judge imposing a million-dollar fine for jaywalking. Or suppose a shoplifter stole a tube of toothpaste from CVS and was ordered to pay $10,000. Those punishments would strike nearly everyone as outrageous—not because the offenses are imaginary, but because the penalties would be wildly disproportionate to them. The Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause forbids precisely that kind of governmental overreach: “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed.”

On Dec. 1, the Supreme Court will hear argument in Jouppi v. Alaska, a case arising from the misdemeanor transportation of alcohol into a “dry” Alaskan village. Kenneth Jouppi received the minimum sentence authorized by law: three days in jail, a $1,500 fine, and probation. Alaska insisted that was not enough. It also wanted his airplane—worth approximately $95,000 and essential to his livelihood. The Alaska Supreme Court agreed.

Eight Centuries of Proportionality

The prohibition on excessive fines is no constitutional afterthought. Its lineage reaches back at least to Magna Carta in 1215, passed through the English Bill of Rights of 1689, and appeared in colonial charters and early state constitutions before becoming part of our Bill of Rights in 1791.

Chapter 14 of Magna Carta declared that a freeman should be fined for a minor offense only “in accordance with the degree of the offence,” and for a grave offense only “in accordance with the gravity of the offence.” It further required that the penalty preserve the offender’s “contenement”—his means of living. Merchants were to retain their merchandise, and villeins their “waynage,” the farming equipment, animals, and carts necessary to work.

As Professor John F. Stinneford explains in “The Heritage Guide to the Constitution,” the historic rule required proportionality in two senses: The fine had to fit the gravity of the offense, and it could not destroy the offender’s ability to support himself. Both principles matter here. An airplane is not incidental property to an Alaskan air-taxi operator. It is his waynage.

A Clause Too Rarely Enforced

The Supreme Court has decided only a handful of cases under the Excessive Fines Clause.

In Browning-Ferris Industries v. Kelco Disposal (1989), the Court explained that the clause restrains the sovereign’s power to use prosecution and fines for improper ends. In Austin v. United States (1993), it held that civil forfeitures can qualify as fines when they operate as punishment. And in United States v. Bajakajian (1998), the Court supplied the governing rule: A punitive forfeiture violates the Constitution when it is “grossly disproportional to the gravity of a defendant’s offense.”

United States v. Bajakajian involved a family preparing to fly from Los Angeles to Italy with more than $347,000 in cash. Federal law requires disclosure of transported currency exceeding $10,000. After the defendant falsely denied carrying additional money, the government sought forfeiture of the entire amount. The district court found that the money was not connected to any other crime and concluded that full forfeiture would be “extraordinarily harsh” and “grossly disproportionate.” It ordered forfeiture of $15,000 instead, along with probation and a $5,000 fine. The Ninth Circuit affirmed.

Writing for the Court, Justice Clarence Thomas rejected the government’s claim that taking all the money served a merely remedial purpose. A forfeiture imposed as punishment is a fine, whether the government demands cash or property. And the “touchstone” of the constitutional inquiry, he wrote, “is the principle of proportionality: The amount of the forfeiture must bear some relationship to the gravity of the offense that it is designed to punish.”

The Court declined to demand mathematical precision. Legislatures ordinarily define punishments, and judges must respect that role. But deference is not abdication. The Excessive Fines Clause exists because governments have powerful incentives to turn punishment into revenue and forfeiture into leverage. A constitutional boundary that disappears whenever the legislature labels a forfeiture “mandatory” is no boundary at all.

From a Six-Pack to an Airplane

Jouppi operates an air-taxi business in Alaska. On April 3, 2012, he was preparing to fly a passenger from Fairbanks to Beaver, a community that prohibits the sale, importation, and possession of alcohol. The passenger’s groceries contained beer—three cases in all, including one visible six-pack in a shopping bag. Jouppi maintained that he did not know the passenger was carrying alcohol.

The state charged Jouppi, his company, and the passenger with knowingly transporting alcohol into a dry community, a misdemeanor. The passenger pleaded guilty. Jouppi and his company were tried by a jury and convicted on a general verdict form that did not establish how much alcohol Jouppi knew was aboard. The trial judge imposed the statutory minimum: three days in jail, a $1,500 fine, and three years of probation.

Alaska nevertheless demanded forfeiture of the airplane. The trial judge repeatedly refused, concluding that taking the plane would be an excessive fine. After years of appellate back-and-forth, the Alaska Supreme Court upheld the forfeiture “as a matter of law.” Its reasoning effectively treated the broad statutory category of the offense as more important than Jouppi’s actual conduct, the modest sentence imposed, the uncertain quantity he knowingly transported, or the devastating economic effect of confiscating his principal business asset.

Why Alaska Should Lose

The Buckeye Institute’s amicus brief identifies the central error: “The Excessive Fines Clause requires courts to weigh the gravity of the specific defendant’s wrongdoing, not the abstract category of the offense.” That distinction is indispensable. Governments have evaded limits on fines for centuries by describing offenses at a level of generality that makes almost any penalty appear plausible. Modern forfeiture regimes invite the same maneuver.

First, Jouppi was convicted of a misdemeanor, not bootlegging, organized crime, or trafficking for profit. The general verdict did not determine whether he knowingly transported one visible six-pack or all three cases. That ambiguity is not trivial. Six beers and dozens of beers reflect different conduct and potentially different culpability. Where the state chose a verdict form that left the matter unresolved, it should not receive the benefit of the harshest possible assumption at sentencing.

Second, the trial judge was closest to the evidence and best positioned to assess Jouppi’s culpability. He had a range of lawful punishments available and selected the minimum. He also found that confiscating the airplane would be excessive. That judgment deserves weight, especially because Jouppi, an 83-year-old Air Force veteran, relied on the aircraft to earn a living. The Constitution should not permit the state to convert a low-level misdemeanor into economic ruin.

Third, the value of the property bears little relationship to the punishment the trial court considered appropriate. The airplane was worth roughly $95,000—nine and a half times the $10,000 maximum statutory fine and more than 60 times the $1,500 fine the judge actually selected. The Alaska Supreme Court’s approach risks turning statutory authorization into constitutional permission. But the Eighth Amendment is a limit on legislative and executive power, not an invitation to rubber-stamp it.

This case offers the Supreme Court an overdue opportunity to give United States v. Bajakajian practical force. Courts assessing a forfeiture should examine the defendant’s actual conduct, the harm caused, the penalties selected by the sentencing judge, the property’s value, and whether confiscation would strip the defendant of the means to earn a living. No single consideration should be mechanically dispositive, but neither may the government hide behind an offense label broad enough to swallow the constitutional rule.

The Excessive Fines Clause was born from a simple insight: the power to punish must not become the power to destroy. Eight centuries after Magna Carta, that principle remains necessary because the temptation to use fines and forfeitures for improper ends remains very much alive.

Alaska punished Jouppi with jail, probation, and a fine for a misdemeanor involving beer. Taking a $95,000 airplane on top of that is not justice calibrated to wrongdoing. It is precisely the kind of disproportionate exaction the Eighth Amendment forbids. The Supreme Court should reverse.

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