So today is Thursday, August 8th at about 11 a.m.

what are we going to be talking about?

All right, well, let's go back to 1960.

Okay.

On a cold night in February, two officers from the Los Angeles Police Department pulled over a green

1947 Nash driven by Charles Banks. Now Charles was sitting in the front with his wife Norma and in the back seat sat 25 year old

Lawrence Robinson, a black army veteran.

He was sitting with a lady friend of his.

Now the police officers didn't observe any criminal acts from the four people, but they did order

Robinson to roll up his sleeves. And the police later testified that they saw what appeared to be numerous needle marks and a scab on his arms.

And Robinson admitted that he'd used narcotics two weeks before,

but it was those needle marks that led to Robinson's arrest.

And in June of 1960, a jury convicted Robinson for violating the state's health and safety code.

California made it a crime, a misdemeanor, to be addicted to the use of narcotics.

And the judge had instructed the jury that they could find Robinson guilty if they agreed that he held the status of being a narcotics user.

And Robinson was then convicted and sentenced to 90 days in jail.

But he appealed his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court, and in

1962 the Supreme Court decided that Robinson's conviction was unconstitutional. The court noted that no state would make it a crime to be

mentally ill, a leper, or to be afflicted by a venereal disease. And there was no

difference with California's law making it a crime to be addicted to narcotics.

No state should be able to punish someone for their status, even if that status was drug addiction, because it could be,

in the Supreme Court's words, contracted innocently or involuntarily.

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