exist Grant Pass v. Johnsonthe Supreme Court upheld a local law banning camping on public property. During the process, the court refused to extend California v. Robinson (1962). This is how I describe it Robinson:
Robinson v. California (1962) was probably the pinnacle of Warren Court’s radicalism. California criminalizes drug addiction — not just drug use use Drugs, but addicted to using them. Robinson argued that the law violated some substantive due process rights. This happened three years ago Griswoldso courts remain trapped in New Deal settlements that deny substantive due process. So what does the Warren Court do? It sets a new standard from whole cloth under the Eighth Amendment. Kind of like a penumbra. (Griswold quote favorably Robinson.) this Robinson The court held that punishing someone because of their “status” as a drug user violated the Eighth Amendment. The court ruled that in punishing “‘identity,'”[e]Even one day in jail. . . Cruel and unusual.
Justice Gorsuch’s majority opinion nearly ruled Robinson was wrongly decided. Of course, the court declined to extend that precedent to the following facts: grant pass.
Now, Nat Lewin writes in the Wall Street Journal about how the “surprise ruling” came to be. Lewin clerked for Judge Harlan during that term. Lewin and his colleagues identified Robinson’s petition from a pile of “weak” petitions (which proved unimportant). Should be put on the “Discuss” list.
At the conference, the court is expected to rule under the Due Process Clause:
After the justices discussed the case at Friday’s meeting, Harlan told his clerks with great satisfaction that the majority voted to vacate Robinson’s conviction. Comments are usually given the following week. To our surprise, Chief Justice Earl Warren assigned Justice Stewart to Robinson. Usually no explanation is given for these assignments, but Harlan and I had hoped he would get it, but were disappointed that we could not formulate a decision that would explain the “serious constitutional issues” that would justify moving it from the trash Picking it out of the bucket is reasonable. Nonetheless, we believe that Stewart’s opinion will declare that due process does not allow criminalizing “the status of a drug addict” rather than the defendant’s conduct.
But, to Harlan’s surprise, the circulating majority opinion relied instead on the Eighth Amendment — and the issue was not brief and was barely mentioned during oral argument.
Justice Douglas seemed to have influenced Justice Stewart:
Then, as now, the end of every Supreme Court term is chaotic. Faced with looming deadlines, justices are writing, sending, receiving and joining majority opinions, concurrences and dissents. I remember receiving this from Stuart Robinson The majority opinion came just days before the end of his term and was alarmed by its reliance on the Eighth Amendment. Judge William O. Douglas, often an outlier, issued a lengthy concurrence explaining why he believed “treating drug addicts as criminals” violated the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause. I speculate that Douglass or his law clerks influenced Stewart in choosing this unusual reason.
As I pointed out in my previous article, 1962 was Griswoldwhile the justices are still struggling under New Deal settlements. Judge Stewart continued to dissent Griswold. He was dissatisfied with substantive due process. So, in hindsight, the decision probably shouldn’t have been so surprising.
Harlan himself wrote a two-paragraph concurrence rejecting the Eighth Amendment analysis:
Due to time constraints, Harlan personally wrote two paragraphs of consent expressing his disagreement with Stewart. He denied relying on the Eighth Amendment, but noted that Robinson was convicted “without further evidence than that he was in California when he was addicted to drugs.”
The Court will rule on 15 opinions on June 25, 1962. One of the cases is Engel v. Vitale! Robinson v. California Less noticed.
Finally, Lewin provides some interesting and disturbing insights into the facts of the case. Robinson ended up dead, arguably from a drug overdose.
Neither Judge Harlan nor I knew Lawrence Robinson was black (as did the other three passengers in the car). If his case reached the Supreme Court today, he would likely be celebrated by the media. Reporters may discover that Robinson died of a drug overdose on August 5, 1961, a few months after the court agreed to hear his case.
As it turned out, even the state’s lawyers apparently didn’t know. It was not until mid-July (after I had completed my clerkship) that the California Attorney General filed a petition to rehear or dismiss the case because the petitioner had died while the case was pending. When the court reconvened in October 1962, it denied the motion. Justices Tom Clark, Harlan and Stewart noted their dissent.
To make matters worse, Robinson’s attorneys were likely aware of his death but failed to disclose these facts to the court!
Robinson’s attorney was Samuel Carter McMorris, who would later become infamous for representing the Black Panther Party. During McMorris’ oral arguments, he told the judge, who represented Robinson at trial, that he had “handled a large number of drug cases” in Los Angeles courthouses and that Robinson’s case was the “third such case” in which he had personally been involved.
Did McMorris know his client was dead? A California Supreme Court disciplinary decision report points to the answer. Between 1977 and 1981, the state Superior Court revoked McMorris’ law license four times for failing to communicate with clients. In 1983, he was disbarred.
Not only did the court completely fabricate a standard out of thin air, it did so while the defendant was already dead! A Ninth Circuit judge once signed an opinion from afar, but the last time I checked, the criminal proceedings were terminated due to death.
Lewin ended with this question:
Do judges today understand this history when they consider and decide whether to preserve it? Robinson v. California As a binding precedent?
Jurisdiction can be brought at any time, even after death. The court lacks jurisdiction to decide Robinson v. California Because there are no actual cases or disputes. The state is prosecuting a body. Robinson Giving new meaning to habeas corpus companyus. The decision is not entitled to precedential weight. I think the California Attorney General could, at least in theory, petition to vacate Robinson Based on these reasons. That probably won’t happen. but next time Robinson When this happens, the government should flag the issue.
renew: I appreciate Olin’s post, which states that California filed a motion to reconsider after learning of Robinson’s death. The petition was dismissed by dissent from Justices Clark, Harlan, and Stewart. This is especially curious because Justice Stewart wrote the majority opinion! He voted to reverse his decision. I’m happy to be corrected.
