Easing Up on Alcoholics

"I am 58 years old, and was first arrested for drunkenness at age 24," Joe Driver told North Carolina Superior Court Judge Raymond Mallard. "Since then I have spent two-thirds of my life in jail for drinking. Yes, sir, I consider myself an alcoholic. I want to do something about it, but it don't look like I can." The judge had a question: "If I counted correctly, would it be right that you have been up for being publicly drunk 203 times?" The number of offenses made no difference to Driver, who had stopped counting long since. But it made a big difference to North Carolina law. Because he had been convicted on the same charge more than three times in the previous year, the judge could and did sentence him to two years in prison.

To Durham Lawyers Anthony Brannon and J. Milton Read Jr., it seemed harsh and unfair to treat a chronic drunk as a common criminal. They had read that Washington Attorney Peter Hutt had defended a District of Columbia drunk with the argument that alcoholism is a disease, not a crime (TIME, Nov. 27), and they decided to do the same for Driver. They took their case to the federal courts, and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision that promises to echo across the U.S., upheld their argument. "The alcoholic's presence in public is not his act," argued Judge Albert Bryan. "It may be likened to the movement of an imbecile, or a person in a delirium. The upshot of our decision is that the state cannot stamp an unpretending chronic alcoholic as a criminal if his drunken public display is involuntary as the result of disease. However, nothing we have said precludes appropriate detention of him for treatment and rehabilitation so long as he is not marked a criminal."

The ruling had a special meaning for Attorney Hutt, who appeared as amicus curiae in support of North Carolina's Driver. Though he had started the whole thing, Hutt was disappointed when the conviction of his own client was upheld last month by the District of Columbia Circuit Court. Now he is almost positive that the North Carolina decision will be followed by the D.C. Circuit Court which has agreed to reconsider his appeal. If that happens, Hutt predicts, the eight other U.S. circuit courts will follow suit.

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