Opinion ID: 1993367
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Quality of Treatment

Text: We found from the evidence that treatment, in varying degrees, in a broad sense, is furnished to all defective delinquents at Patuxent. We have earlier concluded that the establishment by the legislature of a special category of criminal known as defective delinquents is within its constitutional powers. The rules to be applied in assaying the constitutional sufficiency of a law involving the question of equal protection are stated in Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U.S. 61, 55 L.ed 369, 31 S.Ct. 337 (1911): 1. The equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment does not take from the state the power to classify in the adoption of police laws, but admits of the exercise of a wide scope of discretion in that regard, and avoids what is done only when it is without any reasonable basis, and therefore is purely arbitrary. 2. A classification having some reasonable basis does not offend against that clause merely because it is not made with mathematical nicety, or because in practice it results in some inequality. 3. When the classification in such a law is called in question, if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain it, the existence of that state of facts at the time the law was enacted must be assumed. 4. One who assails the classification in such a law must carry the burden of showing that it does not rest upon any reasonable basis, but is essentially arbitrary. We believe the questioned Act here under scrutiny passes the foregoing test and hence Daniels' contention that he has not been afforded his right to equal protection of the laws provided by the Fourteenth Amendment, fails. Justice Holmes, speaking for the Court in Buck v. Bell, supra , said: But the answer is that the law does all that is needed when it does all that it can, indicates a policy, applies it to all within the lines, and seeks to bring within the lines all similarly situated so far and so fast as its means allow. Having concluded as a fact that Daniels has received or had had available to him (See Appendix A) all of the treatment techniques available to other inmates at Patuxent, and also as generally recognized and utilized in the field of psychiatry it is obvious that he is not being denied equal protection of the law.