United States v. Moore

United States v. Moore, 486 F.2d 1139 (D.C. Cir. 1973), was a case heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in which the Court ruled that narcotics addicts are not protected from prosecution for narcotics possession. Police officers investigating a drug trafficking ring found the defendant, Raymond Moore, in a hotel room with heroin capsules in his pocket; he was charged and convicted of narcotics possession. Moore claimed at trial and on appeal that his addiction to heroin forced him to possess and use drugs. He argued that because he did not have the free will to keep himself from possessing drugs, he should not be held criminally responsible.

Moore's defense in the D.C. Circuit was based on three legal foundations. First, he argued that when the U.S. Congress made possession of narcotics a crime, they did not intend for the law to apply to narcotics addicts. Second, he argued that narcotics addicts are protected by the common law principle of mens rea (meaning a "guilty mind"), which generally requires the government to prove that a person had the free will to commit a crime before they can be found guilty of it. Third, he argued that the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Robinson v. California – in which the Court struck down a state law that made it illegal to be a narcotics addict, citing the Eighth Amendment – would also prevent a narcotics addict from being convicted of possession. The government argued in return that Congress never intended to create a defense to drug possession based on addiction and mens rea, and that Robinson did not apply to this case.

The D.C. Circuit upheld Moore's conviction, refusing to create an addiction-based defense to narcotics possession. The Court's ruling was made per curiam, meaning that no one judge wrote for the majority, but judges Malcolm Richard Wilkey and Harold Leventhal wrote separate concurring opinions that laid out the majority's reasoning. Wilkey and Leventhal doubted that addicts physically cannot keep themselves from taking drugs and worried that the defense could potentially apply to crimes more serious than possession, or lead people to fake addiction. They also rejected Moore's interpretations of Robinson and Congress's intent. Judge J. Skelly Wright wrote the main dissent, supporting all of Moore's legal claims and arguing even further that the justice system accomplishes nothing by imprisoning an addict for possession.^[a] He also wrote that the practical problems of an addiction defense would also apply to the insanity defense, which has safeguards and limitations to prevent abuse.

Moore's case was remanded to the lower court to reconsider his sentencing; the Supreme Court denied a petition to hear the case later that year. Legal commentators wrote that the decision mainly solidified the split over the proposed addiction defense in the courts and noted that a defense that only applied to possession would not have helped Moore's long prior record of convictions and imprisonment because of his heroin addiction.

On January 19, 1971, police officers searched a hotel room in Washington, D.C., as part of an investigation into a heroin smuggling operation. In the hotel room was drug paraphernalia and a man named Raymond Moore, who had 50 heroin capsules in his pocket. Moore was arrested and charged with four counts of violating the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act and the Jones–Miller Act, which, among other offenses, make it illegal for a person to possess heroin. Moore claimed to be a heroin addict who only took enough heroin to satisfy his addiction.^[2]

Moore asked the court to dismiss the charges against him, arguing that since he was addicted to heroin but did not sell or distribute to others,^[b] he should be exempt from the charges on two grounds: first, that addicts lack the mens rea ("guilty mind") to be held criminally responsible, and second, that enforcing the law against addicts would be in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The court refused. It also suppressed testimony from a psychiatrist who said that Moore had been an addict for over 25 years, and could not control his urge to take heroin, because the court ruled that addiction is not a defense to heroin possession. The jury convicted Moore; the court did not refer him for treatment under the Narcotics Addict Rehabilitation Act, sentencing him instead to a total of six years in prison.^[c] Moore appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.^[6]

Under U.S. common law, in order to convict someone of a crime, the government generally has to show that the accused had mens rea ("guilty mind"), which involves the accused having had the free will to commit the crime.^[7] One example of a defense based on a lack of mens rea is the insanity defense, which generally excuses the accused of all criminal responsibility.^[8] Judge Wright, dissenting in this case, observed that society generally agrees that addiction forces people to acquire and use drugs, and that addicts cannot overcome the urges from addiction on free will alone.^[9] The D.C. Circuit ruled in Heard v. United States (1965) that addiction alone does not meet the legal definition of insanity; however, the Court also ruled en banc in Easter v. District of Columbia (1966) that alcoholism can be a defense against public intoxication because, despite not being a form of insanity, alcoholics still lack the free will necessary to keep themselves from committing that particular act.^[10][a]

The addiction defense finds some amount of support in the legislative history of the acts criminalizing possession; the history does not endorse the defense, but it also does not rule it out. The acts were mainly intended to regulate acts around possession like importing and distributing narcotics, and possessing narcotics was viewed as strong evidence that some other illegal act had been committed. Since the act makes no mention of whether or not the law should apply purely to non-trafficking addicts, some argue that Congress never intended for the law to apply to them, but other argue that Congress never intended to create a specific exception for them, either.^[11]

In Robinson v. California (1962), the Supreme Court struck down a law that made it illegal to be a narcotics addict, ruling that it violated the Eighth Amendment's protection against "cruel and unusual punishments".^[12] However, the language of the decision made it unclear what exactly the Supreme Court was protecting; under one theory, the Court was protecting all acts that are compelled by addiction – including the possession of drugs – but under a narrower reading, the Court was only ruling against criminalizing the status of being an addict, simply requiring that there be an actus reus ("guilty act").^[13]

Lower courts, met with addicts claiming protection from possession charges under Robinson, mainly endorsed the narrow view that Robinson only protected people from status crimes, but legal scholars and some appellate courts disagreed; the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals interpreted Robinson broadly, ruling in Driver v. Hinnant (1966) that it protects alcoholics from being convicted of public intoxication.^[14][d] Looking to resolve the conflict, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of an alcoholic for public intoxication in Powell v. Texas (1968) in a 5–4 vote, but they could not agree on a rationale; four justices upheld the conviction because they agreed with the narrow view that Robinson does not protect acts compelled by addiction. However, Justice Byron White agreed on different grounds, taking the broad view that Robinson does protect acts compelled by addiction but arguing that public intoxication is not compelled by alcoholism. The Court's failure to reach a consensus added complexity and confusion to the debate over Robinson, rather than clarifying it.^[15]

Most courts taking up the issue after Powell followed the narrow interpretation,^[16] but the D.C. Circuit disagreed with that trend in Watson v. United States (1970), a case similar to Moore in that it also involved an addict charged with heroin possession. Unlike most courts after Powell, the majority in the case wrote that Congress never intended for the heroin possession law to apply to addicts and that even if they did, narcotics addicts would be protected by Robinson, but that was not the focus of the decision – the case was decided on other grounds, making their holdings on Robinson and congressional intent obiter dicta ("said in passing"). Lower courts in D.C. could not agree whether the D.C. Circuit's holding on Robinson was binding.^[17]

Moore argued that the D.C. Circuit should allow addiction as a defense to possession on three grounds: first, that Congress never intended for the law to apply to addicts; second, that addicts do not have the free will to prevent them from committing the crime and do not have mens rea; and third, that Robinson v. California makes it unconstitutional to criminalize the status of addiction, and that possession is an unavoidable consequence of addiction. The government disputed all three of those points and raised some evidence that suggested that Moore was not a non-trafficking addict, meaning that the addiction defense would be useless to him anyway.^[5]

Malcolm Richard Wilkey (left) and Harold Leventhal (right) wrote the main concurrences in the D.C. Circuit's per curiam decision.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 5–4 to uphold Moore's conviction in a per curiam opinion released on May 14, 1973, but that was the only issue the Court formed a clear majority on.^[18] The five in favor – judges Malcolm Richard Wilkey, George MacKinnon, and Roger Robb in one opinion and judges Harold Leventhal and Carl E. McGowan in another – doubted that addiction completely removes a person's ability to choose whether or not they take drugs, and that a drug addict does at least have to take drugs once before becoming addicted.^[19] Wilkey argued in his opinion that if an addict who possesses and uses drugs has lost control, than addicts who engage in more serious crimes, like robbing a bank for money to buy drugs, have lost even more self-control, and concluded that the addiction defense is unworkable.^[20] Leventhal wrote in his opinion that courts might not be able to differentiate between real addicts and people faking addiction to get out of drug charges.^[21]

On the issue of precedent, Wilkey and Leventhal both considered Robinson and Powell to not apply to the case, taking the narrow view that they prohibited only status crimes. Wilkey acknowledged the confusion coming from the Court's lack of a majority in Powell, but felt the Supreme Court should be the one to clarify their intent.^[22] Leventhal disagreed that White's opinion in Powell endorsed the broad view of Robinson, arguing that even though he did suggest that Robinson would protect an addict from being charged with possession, his overall approach was still closer the narrow view.^[23] The D.C. Circuit's previous decision in Watson was held to not be binding on the Court,^[24] and the majority felt that Congress's trend of giving judges discretion to sentence convicts to rehabilitation indicated a Congressional intent to be sensitive towards addiction without completely removing criminal responsibility.^[25]

Leventhal argued in his opinion to remand the sentence to the trial court so that the court could consider a lighter sentence under the Narcotics Addict Rehabilitation Act; Wilkey disagreed, but without a majority to uphold the sentence, the sentence was remanded to the trial court.^[26] The Supreme Court denied a petition to take the case on October 23, 1973.^[27]

The main dissent was written by Judge J. Skelly Wright and joined by judges David L. Bazelon, Edward Allen Tamm, and Spottswood William Robinson III. Wright would have accepted Moore's arguments to create an addiction defense based on mens rea and Robinson. On the issue of mens rea, he argued that standard practice in criminal law is to not hold someone criminally responsible for something they had no control over. On the issue of Robinson, he pointed to White's concurrence and the four justices in dissent on Powell, all of whom interpreted Robinson in a way that would create some kind of addiction defense. Wright even would have extended the defense to crimes other than possession, but felt that Congress's intent in passing anti-narcotics laws and the Supreme Court's ruling in Powell ruled that out.^[28] In response to the judges who worried that people accused of narcotics possession could fake being an addict, Wright responded that a jury has to make a similar judgment call when a defendant claims legal insanity, and that the jury would be provided with as much evidence as need to decide whether or not someone really is an addict.^[29]

More fundamentally than the issues of mens rea, Robinson, or congressional intent, Wright argued that sending an addict to prison for possession went against the defining goals of imprisonment – to punish an offender, to restrain them from committing the same crime immediately, to deter them from committing the same crime in the future, and to rehabilitate them into society after their sentence has been served. Wright argued that since addiction forces addicts to take drugs, the threat of jail would have no deterring effect on an addict, and that the justice system cannot punish people for things outside of their control. While he did acknowledge that prison does restrain an addict from using drugs, he wrote that confinement to a drug rehabilitation facility under civil law would accomplish the same thing and do a better job of rehabilitating the addict.^[30]

MacKinnon and Robb filed separate concurring opinions voting to uphold the conviction and the sentences.^[31] Bazelon wrote separately to concur in part and dissent in part, arguing that Robinson protected not just possession by an addict, but all acts compelled by addiction. He acknowledged that his position had practical difficulties, but still felt that limiting Robinson only to possession was logically untenable.^[32] He was the only judge to hold that Congress might have intended to protect acts other than possession in their lawmaking.^[33]

Alan R. Sankin, writing in the University of Toledo Law Review, agreed with the dissent on some of the substantive issues, arguing that "there is a basic logic which would excuse the addict from criminal responsibility for any act in which he lacked substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirement of the law." He wrote that, practically speaking, it would be difficult to create an addiction defense for crimes other than possession, but that addicts are most often charged with crimes other than possession – Moore, for instance, had not been convicted of possession once and still spent 13 years in prison on various charges before this case.^[34] Sankin argued that if a court were willing to create an addiction defense in order to help reduce drug addiction, it should be willing to maximize the effect of the defense by diverting as many people to civil treatment as possible, allowing the defense to apply to crimes other than possession when it is clear that the person did not have a way to keep themself from committing the act. He also argued that Congress not having specified whether the possession laws apply to addicts does not mean that Congress did intend for the law to apply to them, only that the issue was left to the courts to resolve.^[35]

Gary W. Barrick, writing in the American Criminal Law Review, commented that Moore did not appear to settle the issues raised by Robinson and Powell, only confirming the broader split among judges' opinions on an addiction defense. He predicted that Moore might spark some new interest in the courts on whether mens rea and Robinson could support an addiction defense for non-trafficking addicts.^[36]

• City of Grants Pass v. Johnson
• Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970

• Text of United States v. Moore, 486 F.2d 1139, is available from: Justia