Robinson v. California - Decision, Significance, Cruel And Unusual Punishment, The Consequences, The Anti-drug Abuse Act Of 1986

william petitioner sentencing justices

Petitioner

Lawrence Robinson

Respondent

State of California

Petitioner's Claim

That the state violated his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, which protect him from cruel and unusual punishment, because the state of California sentenced him to 90 days in jail for having a drug addiction.

Chief Lawyer for Petitioner

S. Carter McMorris

Chief Lawyer for Respondent

William E. Doran

Justices for the Court

Hugo Lafayette Black, William J. Brennan, Jr., William O. Douglas, John Marshall Harlan II, Potter Stewart (writing for the Court), Earl Warren

Justices Dissenting

Tom C. Clark, Byron R. White (Felix Frankfurter did not participate)

Place

Washington, D.C.

Date of Decision

25 June 1962

Related Cases

Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905).
Whipple v. Martinson, 256 U.S. 41 (1921).
Powell v. Texas, 392 U.S. 514 (1968).

Sources

"Report on Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy." United States Sentencing Commission, http://www.ussc.gov.

Additional Topics

Robinson v. California - Decision

Robinson v. California - Significance

Initially with this case, the U.S. Supreme Court took a strong stand on what constituted a crime and what did not. Here the Court in effect said that states cannot punish people for behavior stemming from a condition beyond their control. However, after subsequent decisions such as Powell v. Texas (1968) the Court moved away from this position, reducing the Robinson decision to simply a ban that p…

Robinson v. California - Cruel And Unusual Punishment

Robinson then petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the law violated his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, because it punished him for having a drug addiction. In a 6-2 decision, the Court made it clear that it did not want to interfere with the regulation of illegal drugs in the states, because it felt the states could control the traffic of illegal drugs by a host of valid method…

Robinson v. California - The Consequences

This decision began to pave the way for the elimination of status based crimes and reduced prosecution of people for conduct caused by a condition out of their control, according to Ronald J. Allen in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. However, Powell v. Texas put an end to the latter kind of interpretation, leaving the Robinson case with only one common reading: the ban on the punishment fo…

Robinson v. California - The Anti-drug Abuse Act Of 1986

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 would, during the 1990s, attract controversy due to the wide disparity between the penalties it placed on the distribution of crack cocaine as compared with those for powder cocaine. Because crack is less expensive than cocaine, and thus more popular among inner-city youths, critics charged that the establishment of the same penalty for selling one gram of crack as …

Robinson v. California - Further Readings

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