holding that a California 9 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO statute violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, as applied, because it made “the ‘status’ of narcotic addiction a criminal offense for which the offender may be prosecuted ‘at any time before he reforms,’ * * * even though he has never touched any narcotic drug within the State or been guilty of any irregular behavior there”
How later courts described this case
- holding that a California 9 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO statute violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, as applied, because it made “the ‘status’ of narcotic addiction a criminal offense for which the offender may be prosecuted ‘at any time before he reforms,’ * * * even though he has never touched any narcotic drug within the State or been guilty of any irregular behavior there”
- holding 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”
- holding that a California law criminalizing addiction to narcotics was cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment, and was in the “same category” as laws “mak[ing] it a criminal offense for a person to be mentally ill, or a leper, or to be afflicted with a venereal disease”
- recognizing that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, requires the State to provide adequate medical care to incarcerated prisoners
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Disagreed with by JONES v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES, 444 F.3d 1118 (2006)
We disagree with the analysis of Robinson and Powell conducted by both the district court in Joyce and the district court in the case at bar.
Distinguished
Distinguished by People v. Nicholson, 64 Cal. App. Supp. 3d 31 (1976)
Accordingly, Robinson is inapplicable.
Distinguished by McDonald v. Director of Patuxent Institution, 236 Md. 642 (1964)
Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660, relied on by the applicant is clearly distinguishable on the facts.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Harlan,
concurring.
I am not prepared to hold that on the present state of medical knowledge it is completely irrational and hence unconstitutional for a State to conclude that narcotics addiction is something other than an illness nor that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment for the State to subject narcotics addicts to its criminal law. Insofar as addiction may be identified with the use or possession of narcotics within the State (or, I would suppose, without the State), in violation of local statutes prohibiting such acts, it may surely be reached by the State’s criminal law. But 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 *679 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, and for present purposes we must accept the trial court’s construction as binding, Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U. S. 1, 4 , 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.
The jury was instructed that “it is not incumbent upon the People to prove the unlawfulness of defendant’s use of narcotics. All that the People must show is either that the defendant did use a narcotic in Los Angeles County, or that while in the City of Los Angeles he was addicted to the use of narcotics.” (Emphasis added.) Although the jury was told that it should acquit if the appellant proved that his “being addicted to the use of narcotics was administered [sic] by or under the direction of a person licensed by the State of California to prescribe and administer narcotics,” this part of the instruction did not cover other possible lawful uses which could have produced the appellant’s addiction.