Alaska Took His $95,000 Airplane Over a Six-Pack of Beer.

There’s an old saying: The punishment should fit the crime.

Alaska seems to have another: If you can take it, take it.

In this case, it was an airplane.

According to the Institute for Justice, in April 2012, bush pilot Ken Jouppi was preparing to fly a passenger from Fairbanks to Beaver, a remote Alaskan village that prohibits alcohol.

Troopers stopped the plane before it left the ground. Inside, they found three cases of beer packed among the passenger’s groceries. Jouppi maintained that he didn’t know it was there. The troopers, who were already investigating him, said at least one six-pack of Budweiser was plainly visible in a grocery bag.

They didn’t just seize the beer. They seized Jouppi’s 1969 Cessna, valued at $95,000.

A jury later concluded that Jouppi either knew about the alcohol or had deliberately avoided knowing. He was convicted of a misdemeanor and received three days in jail, a $1,500 fine and three years of probation.

Then Alaska moved to keep the airplane permanently.

Under state law, an aircraft used to transport—or facilitate the transportation of—alcohol into a dry community is subject to mandatory forfeiture. For an aircraft, the amount of alcohol doesn’t matter. Neither does whether the crime is a misdemeanor or felony.

Oddly, the law is less severe if the alcohol travels by car or boat. Those vehicles generally aren’t automatically forfeited unless additional conditions are met.

But put the same six-pack in an airplane and Alaska takes the airplane.

The facts aren’t quite as clean as the headline. The passenger was carrying three cases, and the state has pointed to evidence of other suspected flights. A separate case involving an earlier flight ended with Jouppi pleading guilty to a lesser charge.

None of that, however, was necessary to the Alaska Supreme Court’s decision. The court explicitly held that taking the plane was permissible even if Jouppi was responsible for only the visible six-pack.

A lower court had reached the opposite conclusion. Taking a $95,000 airplane for a misdemeanor was grossly disproportionate—especially when the maximum monetary fine for the offense was $10,000.

The Alaska Supreme Court saw it differently.

It noted that the airplane was worth “only” 9.5 times the maximum fine. More importantly, it didn’t compare the value of the airplane solely with what Jouppi had done. It compared it with the entire problem of alcohol abuse in rural Alaska.

Alcohol contributes to crime, alcoholism, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and death, the court explained. Therefore, “the illegal importation of even a six-pack of beer causes grave societal harm.”

That’s how six beers become a $95,000 offense.

Once the government measures the crime collectively but imposes the punishment individually, almost nothing can be excessive.

This case involves criminal forfeiture, not the more notorious civil forfeiture system that can take property without first convicting its owner. But the temptation is the same. The government finds property connected to an offense and begins treating ownership as conditional.

Jouppi is now 82. Alaska has held his airplane for 14 years while the case moved through the courts.

The U.S. Supreme Court has now agreed to hear his appeal. The justices will decide whether courts judging an excessive fine must examine what a particular defendant actually did—or may justify the punishment by invoking the entire social problem surrounding the crime.

Put more simply, they’ll decide whether the punishment still has to fit the crime.

Because if a six-pack can cost an airplane, “excessive” no longer means much of anything.