Opinion ID: 1893409
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: EASTER v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Text: Appellants place considerable reliance upon the decision in Easter v. District of Columbia, 124 U.S.App.D.C. 33, 361 F.2d 50 (1966). This reliance is misplaced. DeWitt Easter was a chronic alcoholic who was arrested, tried and convicted upon a charge of public drunkenness. [36] He asserted three reasons why his conviction could not stand: 1) Congress, by enacting the Alcoholic Rehabilitation Act, had precluded punishing chronic alcoholics for public drunkenness, 2) the common law rules of criminal responsibility precluded a conviction, and 3) the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment barred any punishment from being imposed. Only the first view, that Congress did not intend the punishment of chronic alcoholics for public drunkenness, commanded a majority of the court. Easter v. District of Columbia, supra at 43-44, 361 F.2d at 60-61. It is asserted here, however, that the 1947 statute involved in Easter closely resembles the 1953 D.C. Narcotic Rehabilitation Act, discussed supra, and that Congress thereby intended to do the same thing for narcotic addicts as the 1947 statute did for alcohol-dependent persons, and that the Easter rationale precludes punishing addicts for possession of heroin. Easter, however, rested on a finding that Congress had excluded chronic alcoholics from the class of persons who could be criminally convicted for public drunkenness. In the D.C. Narcotics Rehabilitation Act, on the other hand, Congress has required that narcotics laws be enforced against drug users as well as other persons. The Circuit Court did not base its decision on any particular provision of the Alcoholic Rehabilitation Act, but rather examined the Act as a whole: The full flavor of the enlightened treatment of the subject by Congress, demonstrating its intention that the chronic alcoholic be subjected to civil processes when found intoxicated in public, rather than convicted as a criminal, can be gathered only by perusal in full of the Act of 1947. [Easter v. District of Columbia, supra at 34 n. 2, 361 F.2d at 51 n. 2.] The two provisions of the Alcoholic Rehabilitation Act which the court focused on were the definition of chronic alcoholic, which is similar to the definition of a drug user in section 24-602(a), and the purpose of the Act: The purpose of this chapter is. . . to substitute for jail sentences for drunkenness medical and other scientific methods of treatment which will benefit the individual involved and more fully protect the public. D.C.Code 1961, § 24-501. (Emphasis added.) In contrast, the purpose of the Narcotic Rehabilitation Act demonstrates that Congress did not intend treatment to substitute for conviction for possession by addicts of heroin but rather that addicts be given no exemption from conviction: The Congress intends that Federal criminal laws shall be enforced against drug users as well as other persons, and [the Act] shall not be used to substitute treatment for punishment in cases of crime committed by drug users. (Emphasis added.) [37] Moreover, a provision of the Narcotic Rehabilitation Act, conspicuously absent from the Alcoholic Rehabilitation Act, makes the former inapplicable to any person charged with a criminal offense, whether by indictment, information, or otherwise, or if the said person is under sentence for a criminal offense, whether he is serving the sentence, or is on probation or parole, or has been released on bond pending appeal. [38] There are valid and rational differences between addiction to heroin and alcohol. The first is obvious: alcohol is legal, although regulated, while heroin is prohibited. The second is more complex and is fairly stated as follows: Alcohol, some will say, has consequences for many individuals and for society at least as destructive as those of heroin, yet no one would propose returning to a system of prohibition. Alcohol and heroin are different problems, however, both medically and legally. A far smaller proportion of alcohol users than of heroin users become addicted in any meaningful sense of that term; the risks to the average individual of experimentation are accordingly far less in the former than in the latter case. And of those addicted to alcohol, there have been a larger proportion of cures, though not as many as one would wish. Finally, alcohol use is so widespread as to be nearly universal, while heroin use remains an exotic habit of relatively few, and thus presents easier problems of control. Perhaps because of this, while no advanced society has been able to eliminate alcohol use, virtually every society but ours has been able to eliminate, or keep to trifling proportions, heroin use. [Emphasis in original.] Wilson, Moore & Wheat, The Problem of Heroin, 29 The Public Interest 26-27 (1972). Moreover, Congress, in light of Easter, has made unmistakable its agreement with that decision. As amended in 1968, the statute now reads, in part: [A]ll public officals in the District of Columbia shall take cognizance of the fact that public intoxication shall be handled as a public health problem rather than as a criminal offense, and that a chronic alcoholic is a sick person who needs, is entitled to, and shall be provided appropriate medical, psychiatric, institutional, advisory, and rehabilitative treatment services of the highest caliber for his illness. [Emphasis supplied; D. C.Code 1973, § 24-521.] It is not permissible to apply the congressional intent underlying one statutory scheme to another, significantly different, statutory scheme. The statutes are mutually exclusive. Both deal with problems of human conduct that have a disabling impact on society in general. Congress, the legislative voice of societal attitudes, has made its judgment clear. Two forms of addiction, medically distinguishable, are to be handled in different ways when they are accompanied by criminal conduct. Once that legislative judgment is apparent, our role ends unless there is unconstitutionality.