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Jackson v. Com.11/2/2004
On November 22, 1994, pursuant to Code § 4.1-333, a circuit court declared Jackson an habitual drunk and entered an order of interdiction. On May 30, 2003, the police found Jackson outside a restaurant, intoxicated and in possession of a bottle of rum. Jackson testified that he had been arrested approximately 390 times, primarily for alcohol-related offenses. He stated that since the interdiction order, he had received sentences ranging from sixty days to seven months and had not remained out of jail for any period longer than a month. He testified that although he knows that it is illegal for him to drink, he cannot stop drinking. He presented to the trial court six "articles" he had obtained from the Internet about alcoholism. These were lodged with the court and made part of the record. He moved to dismiss the charge based on the four grounds he raises on appeal. The trial court denied the motion to dismiss, convicted Jackson of possession of alcohol by an interdicted person, and imposed a ninety-day jail term.
ANALYSIS
I
Jackson first contends that Code § 4.1-322 offends the Eighth Amendment by punishing the status of being an alcoholic. He relies on Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 82 S.Ct. 1417, 8 L.Ed.2d 758 (1962). In Robinson, the United States Supreme Court held that a statute making it criminally punishable to be a person addicted to narcotics imposed cruel and unusual punishment and violated the Eighth Amendment. The Court noted that the defined crime was the mere status of being addicted to drugs and that the statute required no illegal act or conduct for the imposition of punishment. However, in Powell v. Texas, 392 U.S. 514, 88 S.Ct. 2145, 20 L.Ed.2d 1254 (1968), the Supreme Court held constitutional a statute that punished appearing drunk in public, despite evidence of Powell's alcoholism. The Powell Court rejected the argument that public drunkenness was symptomatic of alcoholism *223 and that Robinson forbade imposition of criminal sanctions on chronic alcoholics for public drunkenness. The Powell Court held that
appellant was convicted, not for being a chronic alcoholic, but for being drunk in public on a particular occasion. The State of Texas thus has not sought to punish a mere status, as California did in Robinson; nor has it attempted to regulate appellant's behavior in the privacy of his own home. Rather, it has imposed upon appellant a criminal sanction for public behavior which may create substantial health and safety hazards, both for appellant and for members of the general public, and which offends the moral and esthetic sensibilities of a large segment of the community.
Id. at 532, 88 S.Ct. 2145.
Applying Powell, Fisher v. Coleman, 486 F.Supp. 311 (W.D.Va.1979), aff'd, 639 F.2d 191 (4th Cir.1981), held that the federal interdiction statute, prohibiting an habitual drunkard from purchasing alcohol, did not violate the Eighth Amendment proscription against cruel and unusual punishment. The Court held that the statute "cannot be said to violate the prohibition of the Eighth Amendment when applied to an alcoholic, since the statute makes criminal specific behavior which the state has a legitimate interest in regulating." Id. at 316 (citing Powell).
Code § 4.1-322 states, in pertinent part:
[n]o person who has been interdicted pursuant to [Code] § 4.1-333 or § 4.1-334 shall possess any alcoholic beverages ... nor be drunk in public in violation of Code § 18.2-388. Any interdicted person found **125 to be in violation of this section shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Code § 4.1-322 imposes no criminal sanction for the status of being an alcoholic. It forbids specific behavior: possession of alcohol and public drunkenness by interdicted persons. Therefore, in accord with Powel
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