Drunk Again

The Defendant worked at a tavern in Austin, Texas, shining shoes for approximately $12 per week. He had been convicted of public intoxication approximately 100 times since 1949. He used most of his paycheck to buy wine, drank daily, and about once a week drank to the point of public intoxication. In late December 1966, the Defendant was arrested and charged with being found in a state of intoxication in a public place, in violation of Texas Penal Code Article 477, which made it an offence to "get drunk or be found in a state of intoxication in any public place." He was tried in the Austin Municipal Court, found guilty, and fined $20. He appealed to the Travis County Court, where a trial de novo was held. Defence counsel argued that the Defendant was afflicted with "the disease of chronic alcoholism" and that his appearance in public while drunk was not of his own volition but a compulsion symptomatic of his disease. A psychiatrist testified that the Defendant was a chronic alcoholic who could not control his drinking, had a strong compulsion to drink, and that chronic alcoholics appear in public not by their own volition but under a disease-driven compulsion.