Ricks v United States of America Appeal

    Unite S late (fnurt of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

No. 20,919A
Hattie Mae R icks and J oseph N. Williams, 

Appellants
v.

United States of America, 
Appellee

Appeal from the District of Columbia 
Court of Appeals

Decided December 23, 1968

Messrs. Monroe H. Freedman and Sol Rosen, with whom 
Mr. Ralph J. Temple was on the brief, for appellants.

Mr. Theodore Wieseman, Assistant United States Attor­
ney, with whom Messrs. David G. Bress, United States Attor­
ney, and Frank Q. Nebeker and Earl J. Silbert, Assistant 
United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.

Before Tamm, Leventhal and Robinson, Circuit Judges.

Robinson, Circuit Judge: In Ricks v. District o f  Columbia 
(Ricks I),1 decided today, we hold that three subsections of 
the District of Columbia’s “general vagrancy” law2 are 
unconstitutionally vague. Before us now is a similar chal­

1 No. 20,919, Ricks v. District o f  Columbia, hereinafter cited 
“Ricks I.”

2D.C. Code §§ 22-3302 to 22-3306 (1967 ed.).



2

lenge3 to the “narcotic vagrancy” act4 in operation in the 
District. Like its Ricks I  prototype, this statute sets forth 
alternative definitions of a “vagrant”5—a term here involving 
indispensably narcotic drug usage or past conviction of a 
narcotic offense6—and makes vagrancy under its provisions a 
misdemeanor.7 And like the general vagrancy enactment,8 
the narcotic vagrancy law has been implemented administra­
tively with police observation procedures which are pursued 
before vagrancy arrests are made.9

Both appellants were subjected to a series of pre-arrest 
observations, all in the 1200 block of Seventh Street, North­
west, and the testimony at trial described what was seen on 
each occasion. On January 6, 1966, at 11:00 p.m., appel­

3D.C. Code § 33-416a (1967 ed.).
4Appellants also urge other grounds of unconstitutionality but, in 

our view of the case, it is unnecessary to consider them.
SD.C. Code § 33-416a(b)( 1) (1967 ed.). And see text infra at notes 

14 and 15.
6D.C. Code § 33-416a(b)(l) (1967 ed.). And see text infra at notes 

14 and 15, and note 14, infra.
7D.C. Code § 33-416a(g) (1967 ed.). It is further provided that 

“ [t]he court, in sentencing any person found guilty under the provi­
sion of this section, may in its own discretion or upon the recom­
mendation of the probation officer, impose conditions upon the 
service of any such sentence. Conditions thus imposed by the court 
may include submission to medical and mental examination, and 
treatment by proper public health and welfare authorities; confine­
ment at such place as may be designated by the Commissioners of the 
District of Columbia, and such other terms and conditions as the 
court may deem best for the protection of the community and the 
punishment, control, and rehabilitation of the defendant.” D.C. Code 
§ 33-416a(h) (1967 ed.).

8Ricks I, supra note 1, at 2.
9Narcotic vagrancy observations involve periodic police surveillance 

and questioning of a suspected narcotic vagrant, and are mechanically 
similar to the general vagrancy observations described in Ricks I, supra 
note 1, at note 10. Two observations normally precede a narcotic 
vagrancy arrest, the suspect becoming subject to arrest upon the third 
observation.



3

lant Williams was on the street with two women said to be 
convicted narcotic offenders. On January 13, at 11:30 p.m., 
he conversed with another female narcotic user in front of 
a building. Both appellants, on January 22 at 3:20 a.m., 
crossed Seventh Street, entered a building and remained in 
the hallway for 15 minutes. Needle marks were discerned 
on appellant Williams’ arm each time, and one of these 
marks was said to be fresh. Each time, however, question­
ing by the observing officers produced an explanation for 
his presence in the neighborhood and a denial that he was 
using narcotics.

Observations on appellant Ricks10 began on February 21, 
1966, when she sat, for short periods after midnight, in a 
carry-out shop before twice leaving with different men and 
later returning alone. Two days later, at 9:30 and 9:45 
p.m., she stood on the street with two women reputed to 
be narcotic law violators and prostitutes; within the hour, 
she was on the street alone, and at 11:00 p.m. she entered 
a bar. On February 24, between 4:00 and 4:45 a.m., she 
got into and out of parked cars with men behind the 
wheels. On March 1, at 10:50 p.m., she was on the street 
for ten minutes. She had old and new needle marks on her 
arm, so the testimony ran, but on all but one occasion she 
denied the use of narcotics. And each time she gave expla­
nations for her presence on Seventh Street, but once admit­
ted to two acts of prostitution.

The arrests occurred on March 8, 1966, about 10:15 p.m. 
As officers watched from across the street, appellants stood 
in the 1200 block of Seventh Street, Northwest, in the 
company of “a known and admitted” gambler and two 
“known and convicted” narcotic violators and prostitutes. 
Appellant Williams was then engaged in an argument with 
one of the women who claimed that he had “sold me some 
bad stuff.”11 The accuser called the officers over and

10Also the appellant in Ricks I, supra note 1.
11 In the context of the record, the reference was to an alleged sale 

of narcotic drugs.



4

repeated the accusation, which was promptly denied.12 
Examination revealed “fresh marks” on both appellants’ 
arms and, after questioning,13 each was placed under arrest.

Appellants were prosecuted on separate informations 
charging vagrancy within two of the statute’s specifications: 

“(b) For the purpose of this section­
’l l )  The term ‘vagrant’ shall mean any person who 

is a narcotic drug user14 or who has been convicted 
of a narcotic offense in the District of Columbia or 
elsewhere and who—

“(A) having no lawful employment or visible means 
of support realized from a lawful occupation or 
source, is found mingling with others in public or 
loitering in any park or other public place and 
fails to give a good account of himself; or . . .

“(C) wanders about in public places at late or unu­
sual hours of the night, either alone or in the 
company of or association with a narcotic drug 
user or convicted narcotic law violator, and fails 
to give a good account of himself;” 15

At a joint trial in the Court of General Sessions, appellants 
moved to dismiss the informations for alleged unconstitu­
tional vagueness in the statutory proscriptions. Chief Judge 
Greene, noting the similarity of the general and the narcotic 
vagrancy statutes, and relying upon his opinion in Ricks I ,16 
was of the opinion that the latter was unconstitutional. 
Considering, very properly, that he was bound by decisions

12Appellant Williams repeated this denial at trial.
13Appellant Williams responded to many of the questions. Appel­

lant Ricks refused to answer any at all.
14“ [T]he term ‘narcotic drug user’ shall mean any person who 

takes or otherwise uses narcotic drugs, except a person using such 
narcotic drug as a result of sickness or accident or injury, and to 
whom such narcotic drugs are being furnished, prescribed, or adminis­
tered in good faith by a duly licensed physician in the course of his 
professional practice.” D.C. Code § 33-416a(b)(2) (1967 ed.).

1SD.C. Code § 33-416a(b)( 1)(A), (C) (1967 ed.).
16District o f  Columbia v. Ricks, 94 Wash.L.Rptr. 1269 (1966).



5

of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to the con­
trary,17 he denied the motions, found each appellant guilty, 
and sentenced each to a term in jail. The Court of Appeals 
affirmed,18 and the importance of the constitutional issues 
raised led to allowance of this further appeal. Without 
reaching other contentions advanced by appellants, we hold 
that the statutory provisions upon which they were con­
victed in this case are vague to the point that they contra­
vene the Fifth Amendment, and accordingly reverse.

I
We are greeted at the outset with the Government’s pro­

test that appellants lack standing to urge the unconstitu­
tionality of the narcotic vagrancy statute on its face. The 
Government expresses concern that appellants will be per­
mitted to “attack the statute on the ground that its language 
might permit it to be applied in an unconstitutional manner 
to other people in hypothetical situations not involved in 
the instant case.” We think it clear, however, that the 
Government has misconceived appellants’ point of view. For 
this reason, we deem it helpful to mark out the contours of 
this litigation, to identify what is involved, and to shape the 
issue we are summoned to decide.

Appellants contend that they have been arrested and con­
victed for violation of two statutory subsections framed in 
language too imprecise to fairly warn them of the conduct 
sought to be prohibited.19 Appellants also say that the 
ambiguities in these two subsections left police officers free 
to charge, and judicial officers free to assess, their guilt

17See Wilson v. United States, 212 A.2d 805 (D.C.App. 1965), 
rev’d on other grounds 125 U.S.App.D.C. 87, 366 F.2d 666 (1966); 
Rucker v. United States, 212 A.2d 766 (D.C.App. 1965); Brooks v. 
United States, 208 A.2d 726, 728 (D.C.App. 1965); Harris v. United 
States, 162 A.2d 503, 505 (D.C.Mun.App. 1960); Jenkins v. United 
States, 146 A.2d 444, 447 (D.C.Mun.App. 1958).

1&Ricks v. United States, 228 A.2d 316 (D.C.App. 1967).
19See discussion in text infra pt. II.



6

solely on the basis of conjecture.20 Appellants’ complaint is 
addressed to the two subsections upon which their convic­
tions were rested,21 and to the impact of those subsections 
upon them alone.22 Their position is not camouflaged by 
makeweight hypotheticals in an effort to induce us to “con­
sider every conceivable situation which might possibly arise 
in the application of complex and comprehensive legisla­
tion,’ 23 nor do they call upon us “to anticipate a question 
of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding 
it.”24 Appellants, in endeavoring to demonstrate their thesis, 
of unconstitutional personal harm, are at liberty to resort 
to the linguistic sources of their present legal difficulties.25

II
Proceeding now to the merits, and examining the two 

subsections of the narcotic vagrancy law under which appel­
lants were convicted, we see the substantial similarity of the 
statutory proscriptions which were applied against appellants 
in this case and those which in Ricks I  we held to be con­
stitutionally insufficient.

Subsection (A), upon which the first charge against appel­
lants was laid, defines as a vagrant any unemployed narcotic 
user or convicted narcotic offender26 without lawful and

20See discussion in text infra pt. II.
21 And we, of course, do not consider the validity of any other 

parts of the statute.

22Thus we deem inapposite the proposition, relied on by the 
Government, that “one to whom application of a statute is constitu­
tional will not be heard to attack the statute on the ground that impli­
edly it might be taken as applying to other persons or other situations 
in which its application might be unconstitutional.” United States v 
Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 21 (1960).

2i Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249, 256 (1953). See also United 
States v. Raines, supra note 22, 362 U.S. at 21.

24 United States v. Raines, supra note 22, 362 U.S. at 21.
We distinguish this point from the facet of the Government’s 

argument discussed in the text infra at notes 10-15.
26See note 14, supra. Both appellants had previously been con­

victed of offenses against the narcotic laws.



7

“visible means of support” who “is found mingling with 
others in public or loitering in any . . . public place and 
fails to give a good account of himself.”27 The striking 
resemblance of this subsection to the invalid Ricks I  subsec­
tion ( l ) 28 is apparent.

Subsection (C), the statutory predicate for the second 
accusation against appellants, extends the vagrant definition 
to any narcotic user or convicted narcotic offender29 who 
“wanders about in public places at late or unusual hours of 
the n ight. . . and fails to give a good account of himself.”30 
The close likeness this subsection bears to the infirm Ricks 
I  subsections (8)31 is manifest.

The same fatal statutory generalities discussed in Ricks 
/ —“loitering,”32 failure to give “a good account,”33 “wan­
ders,” 34 and without “visible means of support”35—pervade 
the enactment under scrutiny,36 without any legislative def­
inition whatever. Both of the subsections involved in this 
appeal incorporate at least two of them as essential elements 
of the crimes of which appellants were found guilty. As 
was the situation in Ricks I, there is no body of limiting 
judicial construction helpful to the problems presented 
here.37

27D.C. Code § 33-416a(b)(A) (1967 ed.).
28Ricks I, supra note 1, at 9-10.
29See note 14, supra.
30D.C. Code § 33-416a(b)(C) (1967 ed.).
31 Ricks I, supra note 1, at 17-18.
32Ricks I, supra note 1, at 9-12.
33Ricks I, supra note 1, at 12-15.
34Ricks I, supra note 1, at 17-18.
35Ricks I, supra note 1, at 17-18.
36Similarly “mingling with others,” even as applied to convicted 

offenders, is an expression imprecise in content. Compare Lanzetta v. 
New Jersey, 306 U.S. 451, 456-58 (1939). See also Bakery. United 
States, 228 A.2d 323 (D.C.App. 1967).

37See Lyons v. United States, 221 A.2d 711, 712 (D.C.App. 
1966) (prior knowledge that accused is narcotic user or convicted



8

Thus we cannot find in the statutory language a degree 
of specificity that would enable citizens of ordinary intellect 
to distinguish wrong from right, or administrators or jurists 
to confidently make applications. And like the provisions 
involved in Ricks I, those here in issue open the door wide 
to convictions on suspicion in lieu of proof of criminality. 
A vagrancy conviction is precipitated by the police record 
accumulated from vagrancy observations, and the observa­
tions enable the building of that record on suspicion alone. 
The process is well illustrated by the testimony of the offi­
cer who made the first observation of appellant Ricks. She 
was selected for a vagrancy observation “ [b]ecause in my 
opinion she was involved in some sort of an illegal activity” 
which the witness suspected was prostitution. “ [T]he basis 
for that suspicion” was that “she’s a known prostitute” and 
because the officer twice saw her leave the carry-out with 
different men and return shortly thereafter. Admittedly 
these circumstances created no ground for a prostitution 
arrest, but they “did justify . . . making an observation on 
her as a vagrant.” So, as the officer further admitted, “the 
reason that she was singled out from among the other peo­
ple on the street derives from the fact that [the officer] 
had suspicions of her regarding illegal conduct that [he] did 
not have regarding other people on the street.”

Although appellants were arrested for and convicted of 
narcotic vagrancy, the Government conceded at trial that at 
no time were they found in the possession of narcotic drugs. 
While needle marks were seen on their arms when inspected 
at the observations, the evidence would not sustain the con­
clusion that they connoted present, as distinguished from 
possibly recent, narcotic use. The testimony discloses, too, 
that if the observing officers had had reasonable cause to 
believe that appellants were then in violation of the narcotic

narcotic offender is prerequisite to narcotic vagrancy arrest); Jenkins 
v. United States, supra note 17, 146 A.2d at 446 (statute applies even 
though defendant did not know his associates were drug users and 
convicted narcotic offenders).



9

laws, they would have been arrested for such violations 
rather than made the subjects of vagrancy observations. 
More broadly, if there had been grounds for arrest for any 
kind of criminal conduct, the arrest would have superceded 
the observation. Thus, as one officer put it, when you 
“suspect” a person “of some form of crime,” a narcotic 
vagrancy observation is “sort of something you do instead 
of making an arrest.”

A basic suspicion underlying narcotic vagrancy enforce­
ment, the testimony further disclosed, is that “sometimes” 
when addicts are on the streets they “may” be plotting 
crime. This was vividly confirmed by the prosecutor in 
colloquy with the judge at trial:

“THE COURT: . . . What are these people doing in your 
view when they are loitering or mingling and failing to 
give a good account of themselves? . . . What are they 
doing that is harmful to the public? What is the stat­
ute addressed to?

“ [THE PROSECUTOR]: They are . . .  in a position where 
from their way of life there is a real danger that they 
will commit some other crime, not this particular crime 
[narcotics vagrancy], but some other crime.

“THE COURT: So, we suspect that because of what they 
are doing here, they might well engage in criminal con­
duct? Is that what it comes down to?

“ [THE PROSECUTOR]: That is correct.
“THE COURT: And you think that under our system 
you can have a statute which essentially proceeds on 
the principle that because the police officer or prosecu­
tor or a court suspects that because of presence or 
activity or whatever, a person may commit an offense, 
that that in itself may be made a crime?

“ [THE PROSECUTOR]: Absolutely.”
As Ricks I  forecasts, we do not agree with the prosecu­

tor.38 And it is evident from our exposition in Ricks I  that, 
unless somehow otherwise saved, we must hold that both of 
the subsections underpinning appellants’ convictions fall

38Ricks I, supra note 1, at 10-12.



10

short of the constitutional dictate that criminal conduct be 
defined with reasonable certainty.39

Ill
The Government would find the antidote for the ills 

plaguing the narcotic vagrancy statute in the mode of its 
accustomed administration. Bypassing the statutory language 
in favor of its particular application to appellants, the Govern­
ment endeavors to construct a more palatable decisional 
context for the vagueness problem. Appellants were narcotic 
users, it points out, who loitered nightly with other narcotic 
users in a block where narcotic traffic was dense. It is only 
in a “pocket of narcotic activity,” it asserts, that police 
officers invoke the statute. These pockets are said to be 
the points at which addicts congregate while awaiting a 
“connection”—a contact with a peddler of narcotic drugs; 
these circumstances of “sinister significance,” it is claimed, 
warrant vagrancy observations and justify a “good account” 
on pain of ultimate arrest. An enforcement policy so 
limited as to area, subjects and purposes, the Government 
urges, brings the statute in line with the Constitution.

We cannot accept this argument. To begin with, the rec­
ord does not adequately sustain the Government’s factual 
premises. Narcotic vagrancy enforcement, the record shows, 
is stepped up in four precincts in the District of Columbia 
where the police consider the incidence of vice to be particu­
larly high.40 Officers specializing in the suppression of 
drug traffic bear down in these sections of the city.41 The

39Ricks I, supra note 1, at 6-9.
40This is based on a belief that these precincts embrace areas 

prone to illegality, but yet a belief not based on facts rising to the 
dignity of probable cause. Suspect establishments thus continue to 
operate, but residents of these neighborhoods who are thought to be 
frequenting them are observed, arrested and convicted for vagrancy.

41 We have frequently noted that the police constantly receive 
complaints of narcotic activity in certain areas of the city. See Dorsey 
v. United States, 125 U.S.App.D.C. 355, 356, 372 F.2d 928, 929 
(1967); Hutcherson v. United States, 120 U.S.App.D.C. 274, 281, 345



11

testimony describing the 1200 block of Seventh Street, 
Northwest, made out plainly enough its unwholesome char­
acteristics,42 but hardly the “pocket of narcotic activity” the 
Government tries to picture.

While suspected narcotic users frequented the block, the 
record is bare of evidence that sales of narcotic drugs 
occurred there. While reputed narcotic users and prostitutes 
were familiar characters in the testimony recounting the 
observations in this case, the dealer in narcotics was totally 
absent. The observations themselves—particularly those on 
appellant Ricks, which smack of surveillance for prostitu­
tion—are devoid of the “sinister significance” of trafficking 
in drugs. While the 1200 block may have been one of the 
police department’s favorite targets, there is nothing to sug­
gest that it was driven home to the citizenry that conduct 
unmolested in the city generally43 would become criminal in 
that block by reason of concentrated narcotic vagrancy 
enforcement there.

Moreover, error in the Government’s legal thesis mounts 
with the Government’s increase in overstatement of pertinent 
doctrine. We are not at liberty to ignore the shortcomings 
of the statutory language, or rationalize its validity, simply 
on the basis of the methods associated with its administra­
tion. “ [A] statute attacked as vague must initially be 
examined ‘on its face,’ ”44 and many times the inquiry need
F.2d 964, 971, cert, denied 382 U.S. 894 (1965); Freeman v. United 
States, 116 U.S.App.D.C. 213, 214, 215, 322 F.2d 426, 427, 428 
(1963).

42At the time of appellants’ arrests, the 1200 block of Seventh 
Street, Northwest, was lined by two-story buildings with stores on the 
street floors and rooming houses on the upper floors. In the testimony, 
the block was described as “an area frequented by known and con­
victed con artists, [and] known and convicted narcotic violators,” 
and the rooms as “dens of vice” for “the prostitutes and the junkies 
and the con artists, to perform their trades.”

43By reason of general non-enforcement of the narcotic vagrancy 
statute.

44United States v. National Dairy Corp., 372 U.S. 29, 32 (1963).



12

extend but little further.45 The sine qua non of constitu­
tional certainty in the definition of crime is fair warning of 
the statutory prohibitions to those of ordinary intelligence- 
notice of the proscribed activities which is reasonable when 
gauged by common understanding and experience.46 But “it 
does not follow that a readily discernible dividing line can 
always be drawn, with statutes falling neatly into one of 
the two categories of ‘valid’ or ‘invalid’ solely on the basis 
of such an examination,”47 so that “ [i]n determining the 
sufficiency of the notice a statute must of necessity be 
examined in the light of the conduct with which the defend­
ant is charged.”48

Thus a statute making unlawful sales at “unreasonably 
low prices for the purpose of destroying competition or 
eliminating a competitor” may adequately admonish that 
sales made below cost with that intent fall under the ban.49 
Similarly, a statutory prohibition on demonstrations “near” 
a courthouse, despite its ambiguity in other contexts, may 
convey an exhortation against “a demonstration within the 
sight and hearing of those in the courthouse.”50 In these 
illustrative situations, criminal statutes that might have been 
plainer were applied to the infringing conduct of those who 
should have known better, and were left none the worse off 
by the lack of further elucidation. But “ [t ]his is not to say 
that a bead-sight indictment can correct a blunderbuss stat­

45See, e.g.. Giacco v. Pennsylvania, 382 U.S. 399, 403 (1966); 
Wright v. Georgia, 373 U.S. 284, 293 (1963); Lametta v. New Jersey, 
supra note 36, 306 U.S. at 453-58; Cline v. Frink Dairy Co., 274 
U.S. 445, 453-57 (1927); Connally v. General Constr. Co., 269 U.S. 
385, 393-95 (1926); United States v. L. Cohen Grocery Co., 255 U S 
81, 89 (1921).

46 Ricks I, supra note 1, at 6-8.
47 United States v. National Dairy Corp., supra note 44, 372 U S 

at 32.
4SId. at 33.
49Id. at 34.
50Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559, 568-69 (1965).



13

ute, for the latter itself must be sufficiently focused to 
forewarn of both its reach and coverage.”51

We have before us a blunderbuss statute without a bead- 
sight enforcement policy. Since nothing in the police 
department’s administrative practices gave the advance 
warnings which the statute omitted, those practices could 
not in any event supply the constitutional deficiencies. 
Moreover, the statute before us does not afford reasonable 
warning as to the activities it undertakes to make criminal. 
In Lanzetta v. New Jersey,52 the Supreme Court held that 
an unconstitutionally vague statute could not be saved by 
definition in the indictment “ [ i] f on its face the challenged 
provision is repugnant to the due process clause, specifica­
tion of details of the offense intended to be charged would 
not serve to validate it,”53 for “ [i]t is the statute, not the 
accusation under it, that prescribes the rule to govern con­
duct and warns against transgression.” 54 For similar reasons, 
the narcotic vagrancy statute, so indistinct from overbreadth, 
cannot be cut down to constitutional size by the unpubli­
cized scope limitations which its enforcement plan espouses.55

51 United States v. National Dairy Corp., supra note 44, 372 U.S. 
at 33.

52Supra note 36.
53Id. at 453.
54 Id.
ssCompare United States v. Five Gambling Devices, 346 U.S. 441 

(1953), involving a statute prohibiting transportation of “any gambling 
device” in interstate commerce, and requiring “every . . . dealer” in 
such devices to register with the Attorney General “the addresses of 
his places of business in such district” and to report to the Attorney 
General all sales and deliveries of gambling devices “for the place or 
places of business in the district.” Indictments against two dealers, 
and a libel to forfeit five gambling machines, for violation of the regis­
tration and reporting requirements failed to allege that any gambling 
devices had moved in interstate commerce. Judgments dismissing the 
indictments and libel were affirmed. Three justices joined in an opin­
ion expressing the view that the statute, as a matter of construction, 
did not sustain the indictments and libel. Id. at 442-52. Justices



14

The flow and use of narcotic drugs in the Nation’s Capital 
presents a critical social problem of monumental dimensions, 
and the need for effective legislative curbs is great. But as 
we pointed out in Ricks I, even desirable goals “cannot be 
achieved through techniques that trample on constitutional 
rights.”56 In disposing of this appeal, we do not enter the 
debate as to whether the narcotic vagrancy statute fulfils its 
intended mission.57 What is clear to us, and what we hold,

Black and Douglas, in a concurring opinion, delineated the position 
that the registration and reporting requirements were unconstitution­
ally vague. “ [T]he use of the phrase ‘such district’ is bound to leave 
a dealer bewildered. Does the phrase refer to the place where a dealer 
is compelled to file his papers? Or does it simply force him to tell in 
what ‘district’ he maintains ‘places’? If a dealer is able to solve this puz­
zle, how is he to find ‘such district’? The Act gives no hint as to 
where the ‘district’ is or how a person can locate it. It never 
describes any ‘district.’ ” Id. at 453.

We focus on the concurring opinion primarily for what it says with 
respect to an administrative effort to rectify the statutory ambiguities. 
The Attorney General promulgated a regulation which clarified the 
matter, but the two concurring justices deemed it inefficacious for 
that purpose. “Nor can a criminal statute too vague to be constitu­
tionally valid be saved by additions made to it by the Attorney Gen­
eral. Of course, Congress could have prescribed that reports should 
be made at reasonably accessible places designated by the Attorney 
General. . . . But the Act under consideration did not do this.” Id. at 
453. Moreover, the statute upon which the Attorney General drew 
for authority to issue the clarifying regulation did not “support the 
Attorney General’s attempt to infuse life into an Act of Congress 
unenforceable for vagueness. The vital omission in this criminal stat­
ute can be supplied by the legislative branch of government, not by 
the Attorney General.” Id. at 453-54.

56Ricks I, supra note 1, at 22. Compare Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 
supra note 36, 306 U.S. at 453-58 (statute banning gangsterism held 
void for vagueness); Bolin v. State, 266 Ala. 256, 96 So.2d 582, 
583-86 (1957) (statute denouncing possession of ingredients for mak­
ing tear gas bombs held void for vagueness); Hanell v. Texas, 166 
Tex.Cr.App. 384, 314 S.W.2d 590, 592 (1958) (statute prohibiting 
possession and delivery of narcotics held void for vagueness).

57“Aside from its legal vulnerability, the law appears to have mini­
mal law enforcement value, no treatment orientation and a potential



15

is that the subsections impugned in this case cannot con­
tribute to that end consistently with the Constitution.

We reverse the judgment of the District of Columbia 
Court of Appeals with direction to remand the case to the 
District of Columbia Court of General Sessions for dismissal 
of the informations.

Reversed.

for harassment of addicts dependent on their status alone. Construed 
literally, the statute might forbid gatherings of narcotic addicts for 
self-help in group therapy or Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Although 
it allows medical or psychiatric treatment as sentencing alternatives, 
these devices have not in fact been used to secure help for the addict. 
We believe that any preventive aspects of the law would be better 
achieved through a comprehensive drug treatment program and a more 
rational application of the District’s civil commitment law to compel 
known addicts to submit to treatment in appropriate cases. The 
Commission therefore recommends repeal of the Narcotics Vagrancy 
Act.” Report o f  the President’s Comm’n on Crime in the District o f  
Columbia 580 (1966).



Administrative Office, U.S. Courts -  T H IE L  P R E SS  -  Washington, D. C.