Powell v. State of Texas

• Citation: 88 S.Ct. 2145,20 L.Ed.2d 1254,392 U.S. 514
• Decision Date: 17 June 1968
• Docket Number: No. 405,405
• Parties: Leroy POWELL, Appellant, v. STATE OF TEXAS
• Court: United States Supreme Court

392 U.S. 514

88 S.Ct. 2145

20 L.Ed.2d 1254

Leroy POWELL, Appellant,

v STATE OF TEXAS.

No. 405.

Argued March 7, 1968.

Decided June 17, 1968.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 14, 1968.

See 89 U.S. 65.

[Syllabus from pages 514-516 intentionally omitted] Don L. Davis, Austin, Tex., for appellant, pro hac vice, by special leave of Court.

David Robinson, Jr., Washington, D.C., for appellee.

Peter Barton Hutt, Washington, D.C., for American Civil Liberties Union et al., amicus curiae.

Mr. Justice MARSHALL announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE, Mr. Justice BLACK, and Mr. Justice HARLAN join.

In late December 1966, appellant was arrested and charged with being found in a state of intoxication in a public place, in violation of Vernon's Ann.Texas Penal Code, Art. 477 (1952), which reads as follows:

'Whoever shall get drunk or be found in a state of intoxication in any public place, or at any private house except his own, shall be fined not exceeding one hundred dollars.'

Appellant was tried in the Corporation Court of Austin, Texas, found guilty, and fined $20. He appealed to the County Court at Law No. 1 of Travis County, Texas, where a trial de novo was held. His counsel urged that appellant was 'afflicted with the disease of chronic alcoholism,' that 'his appearance in public (while drunk was) * * * not of his own volition,' and therefore that to punish him criminally for that conduct would be cruel and unusual, in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

The trial judge in the county court, sitting without a jury, made certain findings of fact, infra, at 521, but ruled as a matter of law that chronic alcoholism was not a defense to the charge. He found appellant guilty, and fined him $50. There being no further right to appeal within the Texas judicial system,¹ appellant appealed to this Court; we noted probable jurisdiction. 389 U.S. 810, 88 S.Ct. 97, 19 L.Ed.2d 62 (1967).

I.

The principal testimony was that of Dr. David Wade, a Fellow of the American Medical Association, duly certificated in psychiatry. His testimony consumed a total of 17 pages in the trial transcript. Five of those pages were taken up with a recitation of Dr. Wade's qualifica- tions. In the next 12 pages Dr. Wade was examined by appellant's counsel, cross-examined by the State, and re-examined by the defense, and those 12 pages contain virtually all the material developed at trial which is relevant to the constitutional issue we face here. Dr. Wade sketched the outlines of the 'disease' concept of alcoholism; noted that there is no generally accepted definition of 'alcoholism'; alluded to the ongoing debate within the medical profession over whether alcohol is actually physically 'addicting' or merely psychologically 'habituating'; and concluded that in either case a 'chronic alcoholic' is an 'involuntary drinker,' who is 'powerless not to drink,' and who 'loses his self-control over his drinking.' He testified that he had examined appellant, and that appellant is a 'chronic alcoholic,' who 'by the time he has reached (the state of intoxication) * * * is not able to control his behavior, and (who) * * * has reached this point because he has an uncontrollable compulsion to drink.' Dr. Wade also responded in the negative to the question whether appellant has 'the willpower to resist the constant excessive consumption of alcohol.' He added that in his opinion jailing appellant without medical attention would operate neither to rehabilitate him nor to lessen his desire for alcohol.

On cross-examination, Dr. Wade admitted that when appellant was sober he knew the difference between right and wrong, and he responded affirmatively to the question whether appellant's act in taking the first drink in any given instance when he was sober was a 'voluntary exercise of his will.' Qualifying his answer, Dr. Wade stated that 'these individuals have a compulsion, and this compulsion, while not completely overpowering, is a very strong influence, an exceedingly strong influence, and this compulsion coupled with the firm belief in their mind that they are going to be able to handle it from now on causes their judgment to be somewhat clouded.'

Appellant testified concerning the history of his drinking problem. He reviewed his many arrests for drunkenness; testified that he was unable to stop drinking; stated that when he was intoxicated he had no control over his actions and could not remember them later, but that he did not become violent; and admitted that he did not remember his arrest on the occasion for which he was being tried. On cross-examination, appellant admitted that he had had one drink on the morning of the trial and had been able to discontinue drinking. In relevant part, the cross-examination went as follows:

'Q. You took that one at eight o'clock because you wanted to drink?

'A. Yes, sir.

'Q. And you knew that if you drank it, you could keep on drinking and get drunk?

'A. Well, I was supposed to be here on trial, and I didn't take but that one drink.

'Q. You knew you had to be here this afternoon, but this morning you took one drink and then you knew that you couldn't afford to drink any more and come to court; is that right?

'A. Yes, sir, that's right.

'Q. So you exercised your will power and kept from drinking anything today except that one drink?

'A. Yes, sir, that's right.

'Q. Because you knew what you would do if you kept drinking that you would finally pass out or be picked up?

'A. Yes, sir.

'Q. And you didn't want that to happen to you today?

'A. No, sir.

'Q. Not today?

'A. No, sir.

'Q. So you only had one drink today?

'A. Yes, sir.'

On redirect examination, appellant's lawyer elicited the following:

'Q. Leroy, isn't the real reason why you just had one drink today because you just had enough money to buy one drink?

'A. Well, that was just give to me.

'Q. In other words, you didn't have any money with which you could buy any drinks yourself?

'A. No, sir, that was give to me.

'Q. And that's really what controlled the amount you drank this morning, isn't it?

'A. Yes, sir.

'Q. Leroy, when you start drinking, do you have any control over how many drinks you can take?

'A. No, sir.'

Evidence in the case then closed. The State made no effort to obtain expert psychiatric testimony of its own, or even to explore with appellant's witness the question of appellant's power to control the frequency, timing, and location of his drinking bouts, or the substantial disagreement within the medical profession concerning the nature of the disease, the efficacy of treatment and the prerequisites for effective treatment. It did nothing to examine or illuminate what Dr. Wade might have meant by his reference to a 'compulsion' which was 'not completely overpowering,' but which was 'an exceedingly strong influence,' or to inquire into the question of the proper role of such a 'compulsion' in constitutional adjudication. Instead, the State contented itself with a brief argument that appellant had no defense to the charge because he 'is legally sane and knows the difference between right and wrong.'

Following this abbreviated exposition of the problem before it, the trial court indicated its intention to disallow appellant's claimed defense of 'chronic alcoholism.' Thereupon defense counsel submitted, and the trial court entered, the following 'findings of fact':

'(1) That chronic alcoholism is a disease which destroys the afflicted person's will power to resist the constant, excessive consumption of alcohol.

'(2) That a chronic alcoholic does not appear in public by his own volition but under a compulsion symptomatic of the disease of chronic alcoholism.

'(3) That Leroy Powell, defendant herein, is a chronic alcoholic who is afflicted with the disease of chronic alcoholism.'

Whatever else may be said of them, those are not 'findings of fact' in any recognizable, traditional sense in which that term has been used in a court of law; they are the premises of a syllogism transparently designed to bring this case within the scope of this Court's opinion in Robinson v. State of California, 370 U.S. 660, 82 S.Ct. 1417, 8 L.Ed.2d 758 (1962). Nonetheless, the dissent would have us adopt these 'findings' without critical examination; it would use them as the basis for a constitutional holding that 'a person may not be punished if the condition essential to constitute the defined crime is part of the pattern of his disease and is occasioned by a compulsion symptomatic of the disease.' Post, at 569.

The difficulty with that position, as we shall show, is that it goes much too far on the basis of too little knowledge. In the first place, the record in this case is utterly inadequate to permit the sort of informed and responsible adjudication which alone can support the announcement of an important and wide-ranging new constitutional principle. We know very little about the circumstances surrounding the drinking bout which re- sulted in this conviction, or about Leroy Powell's drinking problem, or indeed about alcoholism itself. The trial hardly reflects the sharp legal and evidentiary clash between fully prepared adversary litigants which is traditionally expected in major constitutional cases. The State put on only one witness, the arresting officer. The defense put on three—a policeman who testified to appellant's long history of arrests for public drunkenness, the psychiatrist, and appellant himself.

Furthermore, the inescapable fact in that there is no agreement among members of the medical profession about what it means to say that 'alcoholism' is a 'disease.' One of the principal works in this field states that the major difficulty in articulating a 'disease concept of alcoholism' is that 'alcoholism has too many definitions and disease has practically none.'² This same author concludes that 'a disease is what the medical profession...