Court Opinion

ID: 9549478
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:19:21.610573+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:23.242392
License: Public Domain

Hamilton, J.
(concurring in the dissent)—I concur with the views expressed by Chief Justice Finley insofar as those views erect chronic addictive alcoholism as a legal excuse or defense to the particular crime of passive public intoxication. I do not perceive that such a holding projects chronic addictive alcoholism so far into the area of criminal defense law as would, under all circumstances, render it an excuse or a complete defense to any and all other crimes that might be committed by one suffering from the manifestations of the malady. Although the character of the *821malady, and the dialogue surrounding it, tends to equate it with the seldom recognized, yet existent, criminal defense of involuntary intoxication, in my view, the malady still possesses sufficient facets of voluntariness to subject the addict to criminal liability and punishment for activities springing from and going beyond the basic symptom of passive intoxication—e.g., disorderly behavior, drunken driving, assault, larceny, burglary, et cetera—upon the same basis as one who commits such crimes while voluntarily under the influence of intoxicants.
By way of analogy, an epileptic would certainly be legally excused from a disorderly conduct charge growing out of the bare fact that he suffered a convulsion upon a public street; yet, if in some stage or in some form of a convulsion he committed an assault or a homicide his criminal responsibility therefor would be measured by the rules pertinent to the mentally deranged.
The argument that the legislature must act upon this matter before the courts may intercede is, to my mind, softened somewhat by the steps which the legislature has already taken in the field of alcoholism. See, RCW 70.9611 (dealing with the rehabilitation of alcoholics) and RCW 71.08 (dealing with habitual drunkenness). Certainly, these statutes are evidence of the public and legislative awareness of and concern for the problem created by chronic addiction—a problem which, incidentally, is hardly alleviated or diminished by the state’s revenue gathering sale of intoxicants. Furthermore, RCW 71.08.010 (providing punishment for public intoxication) and RCW 9.01.114 (relating to intoxication as a defense in criminal prosecutions) definitely speak in terms of voluntary intoxication. These latter statutes make no mention and offer no precise circumscriptions upon a passive state or condition of intoxication induced by an involuntary submission to the demands of a chronic addictive malady. We, then, as a court, no *822more invade legislative prerogatives in recognizing, as a matter of procedural criminal process and in a limited form of legal excuse, the established medical and psychiatric link between passive public intoxication and chronic addictive alcoholism, than we do when we judicially compose and/or modify the M’Naughton or Durham rules with respect to the criminal defense of insanity. The same, in a slightly different context, may be said of the judicial formulation, modification or elimination of such defenses in the area of civil litigation as governmental or charitable immunity, contributory or comparative negligence, and assumption of risk or volenti non fit injuria, albeit we seek sustenance for our actions in these respects upon the basis of the march of the common law rather than upon the advancement of social and medical science.
Moreover, if we conceive that criminal punishment of a chronic addictive alcoholic for the passive though public manifestation of his malady is at odds with constitutional concepts of due process or cruel and unusual punishment, then it is our duty as an appellate court to declare, under appropriate circumstances, the proscriptions of the constitution for the benefit of the legislative arm, rather than await extensive and mayhaps invalid legislative interpretation and implementation.
It is upon the basis of the foregoing views that I disagree with the majority’s disposition.

As implemented by Laws of 1967, Ex. Ses., ch. 75, § 1, devoting a portion of liquor revenues to the establishment of rehabilitation facilities for alcoholics.