State Ex Rel. Harper v. Zegeer

HARSHBARGER, Justice:

After Mark Harper, of South Charleston, was arrested and incarcerated for public intoxication more than a dozen times in 1980, he petitioned by habeas corpus to test the constitutionality of jailing chronic alcoholics who are intoxicated in public.1

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Medical experts and professional groups have concluded that alcoholism is a disease.2 The World Health Organization *745named it “alcohol dependency syndrome”, described to be:

“A state, psychic and usually physical, resulting from taking alcohol, characterized by behavorial and other responses that always include a compulsion to…