Comprehensive Crime Control Act (1984)

Comprehensive Crime Control Act (1984)

370 U.S. 660

Lawrence Robinson was convicted in Los Angeles Municipal Court of violating a California statute that made it a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for any person to be “addicted to the use of narcotics.” Robinson was not under the influence of drugs at the time of his arrest, but a police officer took him into custody after observing scars, scales, and needle marks on his arms. In sustaining his conviction, the California courts construed the statute as making the “status” of narcotics addiction a criminal offence for which the offender could be prosecuted, even though he had never used or possessed any narcotics within the state and had not been guilty of any antisocial behavior there. Robinson appealed to the United States Supreme Court.

Opinion of the Court: Stewart, Black, Brennan, Douglas, Warren.

Concurring opinion: Douglas.

Concurring in result: Harlan.

Dissenting opinions: Clark; White.

Frankfurter did not participate.

MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court. …

This statute . . . is not one which punishes a Person for the use of narcotics, for their purchase, sale or possession, or for antisocial or disorderly behavior resulting from their administration. It is not a law which even purports to provide or require medical treatment. Rather, we deal with a statute which makes the “status” of narcotic addiction a criminal offense, for which the offender may be prosecuted “at any time before he reforms.” California has said that a person can be continuously guilty of this offense, whether or not he has ever used or possessed any narcotics within the State, and whether or not he has been guilty of any antisocial behavior there.

It is unlikely that any state at this moment in history would attempt to make it a criminal offense for a person to be mentally ill, or a leper, or to be afflicted with a venereal disease. A State might determine that the general health and welfare require that the victims of these and other human afflictions be dealt with by compulsory treatment, involving quarantine, confinement, or sequestration. But, in the light of contemporary human knowledge, a law which made a criminal offense of such a disease would doubtless be universally thought to be an infliction of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. . . .

We cannot but consider the statute before us as of the same category. In this Court counsel for the State recognized that narcotic addiction is an illness. Indeed, it is apparently an illness which may be contracted innocently or involuntarily. We hold that a state law which imprisons a person thus afflicted as a criminal, even though he has never touched any narcotic drug within the State or been guilty of any irregular behavior there, inflicts a cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. To be sure, imprisonment for ninety days is not, in the abstract, a punishment which is either cruel or unusual. But the question cannot be considered in the abstract. Even one day in prison would be a cruel and unusual punishment for the “crime” of having a common cold. . . .

Reversed.

MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, concurring.

In this case the trial court’s instructions permitted the jury to find the appellant guilty on no more proof than that he was present in California while he was addicted to narcotics. Since addiction alone cannot reasonably be thought to amount to more than a compelling propensity to use narcotics, the effect of this instruction was to authorize criminal punishment for a bare desire to commit a criminal act.

If the California statute reaches this type of conduct,… it is an arbitrary imposition which exceeds the power that a State may exercise in enacting its criminal law. Accordingly, I agree that the application of the California statute was unconstitutional in this case and join the judgment of reversal.

MR. JUSTICE WHITE, dissenting.

If appellant’s conviction rested upon sheet status, condition or illness or if he was convicted for being an addict who had lost his power of self-control, I would have other thoughts about this case. But this record presents neither situation. And I believe the Court has departed from its wise rule of not deciding constitutional questions except where necessary and from its equally sound practice of construing state statutes, where possible, in a manner saving their constitutionality.

I am not at all ready to place the use of narcotics beyond the reach of the States’ criminal laws. I do not consider appellant’s conviction to be a punishment for having an illness or for simply being in some status or condition, but rather a conviction for the regular, repeated or habitual use of narcotics immediately prior to his arrest and in violation of the California law. As defined by the trial court, addiction is the regular use of narcotics and can be proved only by evidence of such use. To find addiction in this case the jury had to believe that appellant had frequently used narcotics in the recent past. California is entitled to have its statute and the record so read, particularly where the State’s only purpose in allowing prosecutions for addiction was to Supersede its own venue requirements applicable to prosecutions for the use of narcotics and in effect to allow convictions for use where there is no precise evidence of the county where the use took place. . . .

. . . I deem this application of “cruel and unusual punishment” so novel that I suspect the Court was hard put to find a way to ascribe to the Framers of the Constitution the result reached today rather than to its own notions of ordered liberty. If this case involved economic regulation, the present Court’s allergy to substantive due process would surely save the statute and prevent the Court from imposing its own philosophical predilections upon state legislatures or Congress. I fail to see why the Court deems it more appropriate to write into the Constitution its own abstract notions of how best to handle the narcotics problem, for it obviously cannot match either the States or Congress in expert understanding.

I respectfully dissent.