State Allegedly Wants To Seize Pilot’s Plane Over A Six-Pack Of Beer, Supreme Court To Hear Case

Uncategorized

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review a case where an Alaskan bush pilot claims that state authorities are attempting to seize his $95,000 plane after a passenger allegedly brought a six-pack of beer on a flight bound for a dry village.

“Kenneth Jouppi was running a one-man air taxi service out of Fairbanks in 2012 when state troopers found alcohol on his 1969 Cessna. He was preparing to fly a customer and her groceries to Beaver, a remote village that bans alcohol possession. The conviction: a misdemeanor for alcohol importation. The penalty: total forfeiture of his plane,” Fox News wrote.

“Now the nation’s highest court will decide whether that seizure violates the 8th Amendment’s ban on excessive fines — a ruling that could reshape civil asset forfeiture law across the country,” it added.

SCOTUSblog explained further:

The case now before the court began more than 14 years ago, when Jouppi was scheduled to fly a passenger from Fairbanks to Beaver, Alaska – approximately a one-hour flight. Before Jouppi took off, state troopers arrived at the airport, searched his plane, found the beer that the passenger was bringing to her husband in Beaver, and charged both the passenger and Jouppi (as well as his company) with knowingly bringing alcohol to a “dry” village.

Jouppi was found guilty. The trial judge sentenced him to three days in prison and ordered him to pay a fine of $1,500.

The state also sought to forfeit Jouppi’s plane. The Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the forfeiture did not violate the Constitution. In its view, “the forfeiture of Jouppi’s airplane is not grossly disproportional to the gravity of the offense for which he has been convicted and, therefore … does not violate the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment.”

Jouppi then came to the Supreme Court in August, asking the justices to decide whether, to determine if a fine violates the excessive fines clause, courts should consider the gravity of the specific defendant’s conduct. The justices on Monday granted review without comment; the case will likely be argued in December.

The justices are scheduled to issue their next summer order list on Monday, Aug. 17.

“I’m in my 80s now, and I’ve been fighting this for over a decade because I see it as my duty to ensure that the Bill of Rights actually means something in protecting against government overreach,” Jouppi said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.

More from the Associated Press:

Jouppi’s attorneys say Alaska’s high court examined his conduct “purely in abstract terms” and didn’t evaluate whether it was part of a broader pattern of criminal activity. And they say it wasn’t.

“Few excessive fines cases will present the issue so sharply; a decision upholding the forfeiture of an airplane for a six-pack is a self-recommending candidate for review,” lawyers from the Institute for Justice wrote in their appeal.

In response, lawyers from the Alaska Attorney General’s office argued that the state Supreme Court’s “fact-bound decision” should be allowed to stand.

“Courts across the country apply a multi-factor test to determine whether a fine or forfeiture is grossly disproportional to the gravity of the offense,” they wrote. “Jouppi does not claim that the four-part standard applied by the Alaska Supreme Court is wrong, only that the court misapplied settled law by giving too much weight to some factors and not enough weight to others.”

Jouppi’s attorneys argue that the ruling from the state’s highest court conflicts with case law established in other courts, including U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

“The Excessive Fines Clause was built for cases like this,” they said.

Alaska’s attorneys said Jouppi hasn’t shown how punishing him with forfeiture of his plane is “grossly disproportional to the gravity of his offense.”

“Alcohol abuse is a serious problem in rural Alaska, and airplanes are sometimes the only realistic means to commit the crime of alcohol importation,” they wrote.

The post State Allegedly Wants To Seize Pilot’s Plane Over A Six-Pack Of Beer, Supreme Court To Hear Case appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

IN the summer of 2019, I was seated in the wine cellar of a walled Medieval town high above the Dordogne Valley of France, not far from Sarlat-la-Canéda, making phone calls, writing reports. I have given this story in other places and it appears as though you’re about to hear it again. Rob Skiba is a name you that you might be familiar with. Though he had made a name for himself as a Nephilim researcher, more recently Rob had taken a dive into the deep end of the pool via flat earth research. The recorded interviews I conducted between he and Rick Hummer, a fellow flat earth investigator and close friend of his, was published while still occupying that very wine cellar. Read all about it. Chicago Is Not a Mirage.

Word quickly spread. Within a few short weeks, dozens of flat earth researchers began accepting my invite for a private interview, if not a series of interviews. From a 17th-century tower built by King Louis XIV, and with a stunning view of the Alps, I sat down with Robbie Davidson, founder of the Flat Earth International Conferences, conducting multiple sessions. While staying in Dumfries, Scotland, David Weiss agreed to take part in the interviews, as did Bob Knodel of Globebusters. There were others. But when I asked the interviewees to discuss the moments that shaped their lives, among the many PSYOPs, false flag attacks, and hoaxes that were discussed, only these men committed commentary to the false 9/11 narrative.

The resulting recordings ballooned into The Unexpected Cosmology, a book which became a website and was even intended as an anthology. And of course, the following discourse was originally a chapter. It was Walt Disney who stated, “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.” Those sentiments remain applicable here as well. American Sensationalism: The 9/11 Interviews was always intended to be expanded upon with the inclusion of new researchers. So I’m sorry to say the project became stagnant during the Covid-19 psychodrama. I took a break to tackle other projects. We lost Rob Skiba. Rob offered hours of private conversation regarding his life but we never got around to the big one. 9/11. It was in the cards. Sadly, Bob Knodel died soon afterwards. Voices are being squeezed from an entire generation. Gnosis passes with them.

In the aftermath, the FE community became fractured. People began going their separate ways. Robbie Davidson, among a noted few others who were interviewed for the project, got up and left the movement altogether. It is not my intent to erase his or the contributions of others if only brief. They came, they went, their testimonies remain.

The original vision may have hit roadblocks but it is not forgotten. I expanded this paper a few years later to include testimony from author Pauly Hart, a dear friend of mine. I had wanted to continue that trend every year thereafter but you know how it goes. For the 25th anniversary of the attack I have redirected my efforts to its first large scale expansion, including Andrew Hoy and Darrin Geisinger into the mix. Perhaps others will lend their experiences to the recorder in time.

The following is their report.

Read the 9/11 Interviews

Watch the Interviews