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{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2023}}
{{Infobox SCOTUS case
|Litigants=Robinson v. California
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* In ''[[Wilkerson v. Utah|Wilkerson v. State of Utah]]'', the Supreme Court held that it was not a cruel and unusual punishment for the Territory of Utah to execute a criminal by shooting him, rather than the more common use of hanging. The Court said that cruel and unusual punishments include "punishments of torture" and cases "where the prisoner was drawn or dragged to the place of execution, in treason; or where he was emboweled alive, beheaded, and quartered, in high treason," as well as "public dissection in murder, and burning alive in treason committed by a female." But execution by shooting was not in the category.<ref>{{ussc|name=Wilkerson v. Utah|volume=99|page=130|pin=135-36|year=1878}}.</ref>
* In ''[[Electric chair#
* In ''[[Trop v. Dulles]]'', the Court held (5-4) that it was cruel and unusual to deprive a native-born citizen of his U.S. citizenship by reason of his conviction by court-martial for wartime desertion. The Court recognized that the death penalty would have been permissible, yet it said, "But it is equally plain that the existence of the death penalty is not a license to the Government to devise any punishment short of death within the limit of its imagination."<ref>{{ussc|name=Trop v. Dulles|volume=356|page=86|pin=99|year=1958}}.</ref> The Court held that making Trop stateless was a cruel and unusual punishment because: "The punishment strips the citizen of his status in the national and international political community. His very existence is at the sufferance of the country in which he happens to find himself."<ref>''Trop'', 356 U.S. at 101.</ref>
* The last in this line of cases before ''Robinson'' was ''[[Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber|Francis v. Resweber]]''. In ''Francis'', the Court considered whether Louisiana could try a second time to electrocute a convicted murderer, after the first attempt failed because of a defect in the State's electric chair. The Court held, 5-4, that re-electrocuting the defendant Francis was not cruel and unusual.<ref>{{ussc|name=Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber|volume=329|page=459|pin=|year=1947}}.</ref>
However, in ''[[Weems v. United States]]'', 217 U.S. 349 (1910), in which a punishment of twelve years in irons at hard and painful labor was imposed for the crime of falsifying public records, the Court held that the penalty was cruel in its ''excessiveness'' and unusual in its character (''i.e.'', its disproportionality).<ref>{{ussc|name=Weems v. United States|volume=217|page=349|pin=|year=1910}}.</ref> The Court quoted ''[[obiter dicta]]'' by Justice Field in dissent in [https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/144/323/ ''O'Neil v. Vermont''], 144 U.S. 323 (1892): "the inhibition was directed not only against punishments which inflict torture, 'but against all punishments which, by their excessive length or severity, are greatly disproportioned to the offenses charged.'".<ref>''Weems'', 217 U.S. at 371.</ref> Justices [[Edward Douglass White|White]] and [[Oliver Wendell Holmes
==Supreme Court ruling in ''Robinson''==
A fragmented Court reversed the state's judgment. The main opinion, by Justice [[Potter Stewart]] (joined by Justices Warren, Black and Brennan) in combination with Douglas's concurring opinion, recognized that drug addiction is a disease, and that it is unconstitutional to impose punishment for having a disease.<ref>''Robinson'', 370 U.S. at
Justice Clark dissented, first, because "[p]roperly construed, the statute provides a treatment, rather than a punishment." Second, "even if interpreted as penal, the sanction of incarceration for 3 to 12 months is not unreasonable when applied to a person who has voluntarily placed himself in a condition posing a serious threat to the State."<ref>370 U.S. at 685.</ref>
Justice [[Byron White]] dissented. He argued, first, that "on this record, it was within the power of the State of California to confine him by criminal proceedings for the use of narcotics or for regular use amounting to habitual use."<ref>370 U.S. at 688.</ref> Second, the Court "has effectively removed California's power to deal effectively with the recurring case under the statute where there is ample evidence of use but no evidence of the precise location of use. Beyond this, it has cast serious doubt upon the power of any State to forbid the use of narcotics under threat of criminal punishment."<ref name=White689>370 U.S. at 689.</ref> Finally, he said that the Court was using "cruel and unusual punishment" as a disguise of "[[substantive due process]]":
<blockquote> 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.<ref name=White689/></blockquote>▼
▲<blockquote>
==Subsequent developments==▼
▲==Subsequent developments==
===Robinson's death===
By June 25, 1962, the day the Court handed down this decision, Robinson had been dead for more than ten months. In fact, he was dead before his appeal papers were filed in the Supreme Court. The California Attorney General's office discovered this fact upon remand and notified the Court, since this arguably mooted the case long before its decision. The Court, however, did not vacate the ''Robinson'' decision as moot.<ref>See ''Robinson v. California'', 371 U.S. 905 (1961) (order denying petition for rehearing and abatement of judgment with dissent).</ref> Justices Clark, Harlan, and Stewart dissented, arguing that settled precedent required dismissal for mootness.
===Later cases in Supreme Court===
Following the ''Robinson'' decision, the Court upheld a law criminalizing [[public intoxication|public drunkenness]] under ''[[Powell v. Texas]]'',<ref>{{ussc|name=Powell v. Texas|volume=392|page=514|pin=517|year=1968}}.</ref> despite the argument advanced by some members of the Court that ''Robinson'' held that it was not criminal to give in to the irresistible compulsions of a "disease" (alcoholism).▼
In [[City of Grants Pass v. Johnson]], the court declined to extend the argument in Robinson to laws prohibiting even homeless people from sleeping in public. In a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas said that Robinson was wrongly decided. In a dissent, three judges argued that "sleep is not a crime" and based on Robinson, it is illegal to criminalize the status of homelessness.<ref>{{Cite web |title=US Supreme Court says cities can punish people for sleeping in public places |url=https://www.opb.org/article/2024/06/28/supreme-court-grants-pass-punish-homeless/ |access-date=2024-06-28 |website=opb |language=en}}</ref>
▲Following the ''Robinson'' decision, the Court upheld a law criminalizing [[public intoxication|public drunkenness]] under ''[[Powell v. Texas]]'',<ref>{{ussc|name=Powell v. Texas|volume=392|page=514|pin=517|year=1968}}.</ref> despite the argument advanced by some members of the Court that ''Robinson'' held that it was not criminal to give in to the irresistible compulsions of a "disease" (alcoholism)
===="Disproportionality" cases based on ''Robinson''====
The first case in which the Supreme Court applied the expanded "cruel and unusual" principle of ''Robinson'' to cases in which the penalty was considered disproportionate or excessive relative to the crime was ''Coker v. Georgia''. The Court held that, because of the disproportionality, it was a violation of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause to impose capital punishment for rape of an adult woman.<ref>{{ussc|name=Coker v. Georgia|volume=433|page=584|pin=|year=1977}}.</ref>
In ''[[Rummel v. Estelle]]'', the Court held that it did ''not'' constitute cruel and unusual punishment to impose a life sentence, under a recidivist statute, upon a defendant who had been convicted, successively, of fraudulent use of a credit card to obtain $80 worth of goods or services, passing a forged check in the amount of $28.36, and obtaining $120.75 by false pretenses. The Court said that "one could argue without fear of contradiction by any decision of this Court that for crimes concededly classified and classifiable as felonies, that is, as punishable by significant terms of imprisonment in a state penitentiary, the length of the sentence actually imposed is purely a matter of legislative prerogative."<ref>{{ussc|name=Rummel v. Estelle|volume=445|page=263|pin=274|year=1980}}. .</ref> Despite its unwillingness to find unconstitutional disproportionality, the Court conceded,
In ''[[Solem v. Helm]]'', a 5-4 majority set a conviction aside under the Eighth Amendment, because it was disproportionate—a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole, imposed under a recidivist statute for successive offenses that included three convictions of third-degree burglary, one of obtaining money by false pretenses, one of grand larceny, one of third-offense driving while intoxicated, and one of writing a "no account" check with intent to defraud.<ref>{{ussc|name=Solem v. Helm|volume=463|page=277|pin=|year=1983}}.</ref> The Court later characterized this decision as "scarcely the expression of clear and well accepted constitutional law."<ref>{{ussc|name=Harmelin v. Michigan|volume=501|page=957|pin=965|year=1991}}.</ref>
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===Later cases in lower courts===
In ''State v. Margo'',<ref>40 N.J. 188, 191 A.2d 43 (1963).</ref> the Supreme Court of New Jersey first distinguished ''Robinson'' by stating, "In ''Robinson'' it was held that a statute of California which made it a criminal offense to 'be addicted to the use of narcotics' inflicted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. But Margo "was convicted of being under the influence of a narcotic drug, heroin." Margo's conviction was not for addiction, as was Robinson's. The court then declared:
<blockquote>We see no reason why, if a person may constitutionally be punished for using a drug, he may not be punished for being under its `influence,' for realistically the use of a drug offends society's interests precisely because of its baleful influence upon the person and the harm to which that influence may lead. In other words, being under the influence of a drug is itself antisocial behavior. It is not some latent or passive proclivity; it is an active state, voluntarily induced and laden with a present capacity for further injury to society. We think society may use the criminal process to protect itself against that harm. Robinson is not to the contrary.<ref>40 N.J. at 190, 191 A.2d at 45.</ref></blockquote>▼
▲We see no reason why, if a person may constitutionally be punished for using a drug, he may not be punished for being under its `influence,' for realistically the use of a drug offends society's interests precisely because of its baleful influence upon the person and the harm to which that influence may lead. In other words, being under the influence of a drug is itself antisocial behavior. It is not some latent or passive proclivity; it is an active state, voluntarily induced and laden with a present capacity for further injury to society. We think society may use the criminal process to protect itself against that harm. Robinson is not to the contrary.<ref>40 N.J. at 190, 191 A.2d at 45.</ref></blockquote>
The court therefore unanimously affirmed the conviction.
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In ''Salas v. State'',<ref>365 S.W.2d 174 (Tex. Crim. App. 1963)</ref> the defendant was convicted of being "unlawfully under the influence of a narcotic drug."<ref>365 S.W.2d at 175.</ref> The court affirmed the conviction because it considered the ''Robinson'' holding limited to addiction. Salas appealed to the Supreme Court, but the appeal was dismissed "for want of substantial Federal question."<ref>Appeal dismissed ''sub nom. Salas v. Texas'', 375 U.S. 15 (1963),</ref>
In ''State v. Brown'',<ref>103 Ariz. 289, 440 P.2d 909 (1968) (''en banc'').</ref> the Arizona Supreme Court (''en banc'') refused to hold the state without power to criminalize drug use. It said ''Robinson'' applied only to criminalizing ''addiction'', not ''use'' or ''being under the influence''. Here, "Brown was convicted of being 'under the influence of
==See also==
* [[List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 370]]
==References==
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==External links==
* {{caselaw source
| case=''Robinson v. California'', {{ussc|370|660|1962|el=no}}
| findlaw=https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/370/660.html
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{{US8thAmendment}}
[[Category:1962 in California]]▼
[[Category:1962 in United States case law]]
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[[Category:Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause case law]]
[[Category:United States controlled substances case law]]▼
[[Category:Incorporation case law]]
▲[[Category:1962 in California]]
[[Category:Legal history of California]]
▲[[Category:United States controlled substances case law]]
[[Category:United States Supreme Court cases of the Warren Court]]
[[Category:United States Supreme Court cases]]
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