Ep. 1856 - DEEP DIVE: How "Civil Asset Forfeiture" Is Robbing Americans Blind

Matt Walsh (0:00)

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Tax relief advocates, real solutions for real people. We've covered our fair share of extraordinary injustices on this show, but aside from the scenarios where people died horrible deaths, nothing comes close to the sheer unbelievable insanity of the absolute mockery of justice that we're about to talk about. So this is a story that has obvious ramifications for your rights to own private property, which is among the most important rights that you have. And because it's about to go to the Supreme Court, you need to know about it. So we'll talk about it today. In April of 2012, an Air Force veteran named Kenneth Juby, who was in his late 60s at the time, was running an air taxi company in Alaska called Ken Air LLC. He made his living by transporting food and supplies to remote areas of the state, as well as by ferrying tourists and other visitors around. And on this particular occasion, a woman chartered his services to fly from Fairbanks to Beaver, where she planned to celebrate her husband's birthday. The journey of a little over 100 miles typically takes around 45 minutes to complete. Because there's no road linking Fairbanks and Beaver, the only alternatives to flying are taking a boat via the Yukon River, if it's summertime, or dog sledding in the winter. So the woman hired Jupy to fly her to Beaver in a 1969 Cessna 206 airplane, which he owned. So it was a routine job, but everything changed for Kenneth when the Alaska state troopers decided to search his plane before takeoff. During the inspection, the authorities discovered to their horror that there were three cases of beer, 72 beers in total, in the plane's cargo.

That was a problem because Beaver is a so-called dry village, meaning it's illegal to purchase or even possess alcohol there. And under Alaska law, if you attempt to transport alcohol into a dry village like Beaver, you're committing a crime, even if the alcohol never gets there. And there were some dispute about whether he was even aware of the fact that there was alcohol in his plane. According to the government's version of events, one six pack of beer was packed in a grocery bag and would have been visible in plain view as Juppie was loading the plane. But according to him, the beers were packed in closed boxes and he never opened the boxes at any point.

Unfortunately though for him, a state trooper testified that he saw Juppie opening and closing the boxes while loading the plane and therefore the jury convicted him of the heinous crime of attempting to knowingly send transport or bring less than 12 gallons of malt beverage into the village of Beaver.

Even though the beer never actually made it to Beaver, he was charged with attempting to facilitate the transportation of the alcohol into this sacred town and that's all it took. As punishment, he was sentenced to 180 days in jail with 177 days suspended as well as a $3,000 fine with $1,500 suspended. He was also put on probation for three years. Meanwhile, though, his company was hit with a $10,000 fine with $8,500 suspended and you would think that that would be enough. Well, it's actually more than enough for the minor violation that was committed. But the court didn't stop there. This is where the story takes a very sharp turn into the absurd. Jupy and his company were also ordered to forfeit the airplane that was supposedly used in the commission of this offense. That's because in Alaska, there's a law that requires the forfeiture of any plane that's used in the commission of this particular crime. For some reason, boats get more protections than planes under this law, but not sure why that is, but that's the way it is. So his airplane, which was valued at over $95,000 and which he depended on for his livelihood, of course, was seized by the state. The police department wanted a new aircraft, I guess, and so they just took his plane. And meanwhile, Jupy would have to find another airplane. His company only had one other plane, so this was like stealing a man's horse in the desert. It's exactly the kind of cruel and unusual punishment the Constitution prohibits. Unfortunately, in this case, the plane was returned to him while the proceedings were playing out, but that's not always what happens in these kinds of cases.