Powell v. Texas

In Powell v. Texas (1968) 392 U.S. 514, the United States Supreme Court considered an Eighth Amendment challenge to a Texas statute that made it a crime to "'get drunk or be found in a state of intoxication in any public place.'" Although the defendant was a chronic alcoholic, a plurality of the Supreme Court upheld the statute because it punished behavior (being drunk in public) that society had an interest in preventing; it did not punish the defendant's status. (Ibid.) The plurality refused to read Robinson as finding an Eighth Amendment violation based on an involuntary condition or a condition occasioned by compulsion. (Id. at p. 533.) The plurality said such an interpretation of Robinson v. California (1962) would lead to a slippery slope: "it is difficult to see any limiting principle that would serve to prevent this Court from becoming, under the aegis of the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause, the ultimate arbiter of the standards of criminal responsibility ... ." (Ibid.) "If Leroy Powell cannot be convicted of public intoxication, it is difficult to see how a State can convict an individual for murder, if that individual, while exhibiting normal behavior in all other respects, suffers from a 'compulsion' to kill ... ." (Id. at p. 534.) The plurality said "traditional common-law concepts of personal accountability and essential considerations of federalism" led them to reject the proposition that criminal penalties may not be imposed for a condition the defendant was powerless to change. (Id. at pp. 533-535.) The Powell plurality also said it could not conclude the defendant suffered from an irresistible compulsion to drink and to get drunk in public. (Powell, supra, 392 U.S. at p. 535.)