Byron White

“ Although many chronics have homes, many others do not. For all practical purposes the public streets may be home for these unfortunates, not because their disease compels them to be there, but because, drunk or sober, they have no place else to go and no place else to be when they are drinking. ”

“ It is also true that on the record before us there is some question whether Powell possessed that degree of compulsion which alone would satisfy one of the prerequisites I deem essential to assertion of an Eighth Amendment defense. It is nowhere disputed, however, that there are chronic alcoholics whose need to consume alcohol in large quantities is so persistent and so insistent that they are truly compelled to drink. ”

“ The person's own safety and the public interest require this much. A statute such as the one challenged in this case is constitutional insofar as it authorizes a police officer to arrest any seriously intoxicated person when he is encountered in a public place. Whether such a person may be charged and convicted for violating the statute will depend upon whether he is entitled to the protection of the Eighth Amendment. ”

“ The fact that those findings were of no legal relevance in the trial judge's view of the case is very significant for appraising the extent to which they represented a well-considered and well-supported judgment. For all these reasons I do not feel impelled to accept this finding, and certainly would not rest a constitutional adjudication upon it.↑ Analysis of this difficult case is not advanced by preoccupation with the label 'condition.' In Robinson the Court dealt with 'a statute which makes the 'status' of narcotic addiction a criminal offense * * *.' 370 U.S., at 666, 82 S.Ct., at 1420. ”

“ The proper subject of inquiry is whether volitional acts brought about the 'condition' and whether those acts are sufficiently proximate to the 'condition' for it to be permissible to impose penal sanctions on the 'condition.'↑ The opinion of Mr. Justice Marshall makes clear the limitations of our present knowledge of alcoholism and the disagreements among doctors in their description and analysis of the disease. ”