Opinion ID: 1893409
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Drug Dependence, Free Will and Mens Rea

Text: The majority opinion accurately notes that [t]he pivotal fact in appellants' position is that heroin addiction causes or creates in them an `overwhelming compulsion' to possess and use heroin. They posit that the `compulsion' negates `free will' thus removing any meaningful choice, in the legal sense, to refrain from possession or use of narcotics. Then without any explanation or reference to supporting material, the majority baldly states that it does not agree with appellants' position. [68] Although the precise etiology of drug dependence (addiction), an interaction of complex psychological, physiological, and sociological components, is not yet known, virtually all experts [69] accept the World Health Organization's (WHO) definition of drug dependence as authoritative. That definition is: Drug dependence : A state, psychic and sometimes also physical, resulting from the interaction between a living organism and a drug, characterized by behavioral and other responses that always include a compulsion to take the drug on a continuous or periodic basis in order to experience its psychic effects, and sometimes to avoid the discomfort of its absence. Tolerance may or may not be present. A person may be dependent on more than one drug. [World Health Organization Expert Committee on Drug Dependence, Nineteenth Report, WHO Tech.Rep.Ser. No. 526, at 16 (1973).] The WHO definition of dependence-producing drug includes both heroin and alcohol. [70] Drug dependence of the opiate type, which includes heroin and morphine, is ranked as the most intensive form of drug dependence [71] and is described as a state arising from repeated administration of morphine, or an agent with morphine-like effects, on a periodic or continuous basis. Its characteristics include: (1) an overpowering desire or need to continue taking the drug and to obtain it by any means ; the need can be satisfied by the drug taken initially or by another with morphine-like properties; (2) a tendency to increase the dose owing to the development of tolerance; (3) a psychic dependence on the effects of the drug related to a subjective and individual appreciation of those effects; and (4) a physical dependence on the effects of the drug requiring its presence for maintenance of homeostasis and resulting in a definite, characteristic, and self-limited abstinence syndrome when the drug is withdrawn. [WHO Tech. Rep.Ser. No. 273, at 13 (1964) (emphasis added).] Congress has clearly accepted this definition because it has repeatedly defined an addict as: [A]ny individual who habitually uses any narcotic drug so as to endanger the public morals, health, safety, or welfare, or who is so far addicted to the use of narcotic drugs as to have lost the power of self-control with reference to his addiction. [21 U.S.C. § 802(1) (1970); emphasis added.] [72] The same definition is used for drug user in the D.C. Narcotic Rehabilitation Statute, D.C. Code 1973, § 24-602(a). Since Congress and medical experts agree that drug dependence is characterized by a strong compulsion which reaches the level of loss of the power of self-control with reference to the individual's drug dependence, the question for us is whether this compulsion is strong enough to negate mens rea as to possession and PIC for the addict's own use. Appellants contend that the compulsion experienced by a narcotic addict is at least as strong as the compulsion felt by other persons in situations where the law now permits an affirmative defense. I agree. Compulsion was recognized as a defense as early as the fourteenth century. [73] Like the other common law defenses, it was based on the premise that without a free exercise of will, there can be no guilty mind, i. e., if an individual is forced to choose a given course of conduct through a reasonable fear of death or serious bodily harm, he cannot be said to have a blameworthy mind. However, on policy grounds, early common law did not recognize any compulsion, even the threat of death, as a sufficient excuse for the intentional killing of an innocent person. [74] Over the centuries the law has come to recognize a number of situations where an individual lacks free will and is therefore not to be held criminally liable for knowingly engaging in prohibited conduct. The most recent development in this continual evolutionary process is the recognition of an affirmative defense based upon alcohol dependence. In 1966 the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held: Although his misdoing objectively comprises the physical elements of a crime [public intoxication], nevertheless no crime has been perpetrated because the conduct was neither actuated by an evil intent nor accompanied with a consciousness of wrongdoing, indispensable ingredients of a crime. Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 250-252, 72 S.Ct. 240, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952). Nor can his misbehavior be penalized as a transgression of a police regulation  malum prohibitum  necessitating no intent to do what it punishes. The alcoholic's presence in public is not his act, for he did not will it. It may be likened to the movements of an imbecile or a person in a delirium of a fever. None of them by attendance in the forbidden place defy the forbiddance. [Driver v. Hinnant, 356 F.2d 761, 764 (4th Cir. 1966).] See also Fultz v. United States, 365 F.2d 404, 407-08 (6th Cir. 1966); Lewis v. Celebrezze, 359 F.2d 398, 399-400 (4th Cir. 1966); Sweeney v. United States, 353 F.2d 10, 11 (7th Cir. 1965); Weaver v. Finch, 306 F.Supp. 1185, 1194 (W.D.Mo.1969); State v. Fearon, 283 Minn. 90, 166 N.W.2d 720 (1969). The leading case on this point in our jurisdiction is Easter v. District of Columbia, supra at 35, 361 F.2d at 52, where the court stated: An essential element of criminal responsibility is the ability to avoid the conduct specified in the definition of the crime. Action within the definition is not enough. To be guilty of the crime a person must engage responsibly in the action. Thus, an insane person who does the act is not guilty of the crime. The law, in such a case based on morals, absolves him of criminal responsibility. So, too, in case of an infant. In case of a chronic alcoholic Congress has dealt with his condition so that in this jurisdiction he too cannot be held to be guilty of the crime of being intoxicated because, as the Act recognizes, he has lost the power of self-control in the use of intoxicating beverages. In his case an essential element of criminality, where personal conduct is involved, is lacking. This element is referred to in the law as the criminal mind. See Carter v. United States, 102 U.S.App.D.C. 227, 235, 252 F.2d 608, 616, where the subject is well discussed. It is there stated in terms of the common-law axiom, Actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea. Coke, Third Institute , . The portion of the quotation above which relates to an Act of Congress recognizing that a chronic alcoholic loses the power of self-control refers to the definition of chronic alcoholic contained in D. C.Code 1961, § 24-502, which is identical, in relevant part, to the definition of narcotic addict contained in 21 U.S.C. § 802(1) (1970) and drug user contained in D.C.Code 1973, § 24-602(a). The government argues that because an addict retains some control over his conduct, he cannot assert a defense based upon drug dependence. This is simply not the law in any recognized defense. The insane, chronically alcoholic, and those subject to external duress, all retain some control over their conduct. A total loss of control would render an individual nothing more than a vegetable. This is why Congress has defined an addict or drug user as one: [W]ho is so far addicted to the use of narcotic drugs as to have lost the power of self-control with reference to his addiction. [21 U.S.C. § 802(1) (1970); D.C.Code 1973, § 24-602(a); emphasis added.] Thus we are concerned with a loss of control with reference to his addiction, i. e., the use of narcotics, not a complete loss of all control. [75] Although some addicts may retain the ability to choose methadone maintenance rather than continued use of heroin, [76] they should not be precluded from raising a defense of drug dependence. Sick persons, whether mentally ill, alcohol dependent, epileptic, etc., are not precluded from asserting a defense because they failed to take advantage of available treatment. The relevant inquiry is into the defendant's mental and physical condition at the time of the alleged offense, [77] i. e., the addict's power of self-control with reference to his addiction. There is little doubt that the compulsion felt by a drug addict is at least as strong as that felt by a chronic alcoholic, [78] and that while an addict's behavior controls are not totally destroyed, they are certainly substantially impaired.