Albert Watson, Jr. v. United States

ROBB, Circuit Judge

(dissenting):

The majority opinion holds unconstitutional that part of the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act of 1966 which excludes from those eligible for treatment “an offender who has been convicted of a felony on two or more prior occasions”, when that provision is applied to one whose prior felony convictions for narcotic law violations occurred before the effective date of the Act. The opinion finds a deprivation of equal protection of the laws because “an addict who, at the time the 1966 Act became law, did not have two prior convictions is not disqualified from disposition under the new and enlightened provisions of the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act,” while “one who, like appellant, suffered criminal narcotics convictions on two occasions before 1966, is denied the rehabilitative possibilities of the new approach.”

The majority correctly states the effect of the 1966 Act: it benefits some addicts while it denies treatment under its provisions to other addicts. But this is not necessarily a denial of equal protection of the laws under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, for equal protection does not always require identity of treatment. The requirement of equal protection has always permitted legislative classification, so long as the classification is reasonable, rests “on real and not feigned differences”, the distinction has “some relevance to the purpose for which the classification is made”, and the different treatments provided by the legislative enactment are not so disparate, “relative to the difference in classification, as to be wholly arbitrary”. Walters v. City of St. Louis, 347 U.S. 231, 237 , 74 S.Ct. 505, 509 , 98 L.Ed. 660 (1954). Legislative enactments, the Supreme Court has said, offend the constitutional safeguard of equal protection “only if the classification rests on grounds wholly irrelevant” to aehieve *477 ment of the government’s objectives. McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 425 , 81 S.Ct. 1101, 1105 , 6 L.Ed.2d 393 (1961). Legislatures “are presumed to have acted within their constitutional power despite the fact that, in practice, their laws result in some inequality” and “a statutory discrimination will not be set aside if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it”. 366 U.S. at 425-426 , 81 S.Ct. at 1105 . See also Rinaldi v. Yeager, 384 U.S. 305, 308-309 , 86 S.Ct. 1497 , 16 L.Ed.2d 577 (1966); Baxstrom v. Herold, 383 U.S. 107, 111 , 86 S.Ct. 760 , 15 L.Ed.2d 620 (1966). Moreover, in deciding the constitutional propriety of a limitation or exclusion in a reform measure such as the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act we should be “guided by the familiar principles that a ‘statute is not invalid under the Constitution because it might have gone farther than it did,’ Roschen v. Ward, 279 U.S. 337, 339 [ ], that a legislature need not ‘strike at all evils at the same time,’ Semler v. [ ] Dental Examiners, 294 U.S. 608, 610 [ '] and that ‘reform may take one step at a time, addressing itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute to the legislative mind,’ Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U.S. 483, 489 [ ].” Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641, 657 , 86 S.Ct. 1717, 1727 , 16 L.Ed.2d 828 (1966).

Turning to the statute under consideration in the light of these principles I see nothing unreasonable or arbitrary in a congressional judgment that an addict who is a hardened offender twice previously convicted of a felony, whether before or after 1966, is not a likely prospect for rehabilitation. Sympathy for the addict may suggest to some that he ought to be eligible for treatment, but sympathy does not justify a court in re-writing the statute, striking down one of its limitations, and thereby overriding a rational judgment of Congress. It is not for a court on such grounds to substitute its views for those of the Congress.

I dissent. I would affirm both the conviction and the sentence.