Judges, 3:7
Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, Ex. Rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942)[1], was the United States Supreme Court ruling which held that compulsory sterilization could not be sentenced as a punishment for a crime.
Under Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act of 1935, the state could sentence compulsory sterilization as part of their judgment against individuals who had been convicted three or more times of crimes "amounting to felonies involving moral turpitude." The defendant, Jack T. Skinner, had been convicted once for chicken-stealing and twice for armed robbery.
The motivation behind the law was primarily eugenic: to try and weed "unfit" individuals from the gene pool. Criminal sterilization laws like the one in Oklahoma were designed to target "criminality," believed by some at the time to possibly be a hereditary trait. Most punitive sterilization laws, including the Oklahoma statute, prescribed vasectomy as the method of rendering the individual infertile (which, unlike castration, does not affect sexual urge or function) in males, and salpingectomy in females (a relatively invasive operation, requiring heavy sedation, and hence with more risks to personal well-being).
In section 195 of the act, it was specifically outlined that "offenses arising out of the violation of the prohibitory laws, revenue acts, embezzlement, or political offenses, shall not come or be considered within the terms of this Act."
This particular exception is what was chiefly behind the ruling. The Court unanimously held that the Act violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because white-collar crimes like embezzlement were excluded from the Act's jurisdiction. Justice William O. Douglas concluded that:
Oklahoma makes no attempt to say that he who commits larceny by trespass or trick or fraud has biologically inheritable traits which he who commits embezzlement lacks. We have not the slightest basis for inferring that that line has any significance in eugenics, nor that the inheritability of criminal traits follows the neat legal distinctions which the law has marked between those two offenses. In terms of fines and imprisonment, the crimes of larceny and embezzlement rate the same under the Oklahoma code. Only when it comes to sterilization are the pains and penalties of the law different. The equal protection clause would indeed be a formula of empty words if such conspicuously artificial lines could be drawn.
Furthermore, because of the social and biological implications of reproduction, and the irreversibility of sterilization operations, Justice Douglas also stressed that compulsory sterilization laws in general should be held to strict scrutiny:
The power to sterilize, if exercised, may have subtle, far-reaching and devastating effects. In evil or reckless hands it can cause races or types which are inimical to the dominant group to wither and disappear. There is no redemption for the individual whom the law touches. Any experiment which the State conducts is to his irreparable injury. He is forever deprived of a basic liberty. We mention these matters not to reexamine the scope of the police power of the States. We advert to them merely in emphasis of our view that strict scrutiny of the classification which a State makes in a sterilization law is essential, lest unwittingly, or otherwise, invidious discriminations are made against groups or types of individuals in violation of the constitutional guaranty of just and equal laws.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_v._Oklahoma
Strength lies in the wisdom and conviction of our judges, not the faux-pragmatic deceptions of our 'elected' 'leaders'.
Under Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act of 1935, the state could sentence compulsory sterilization as part of their judgment against individuals who had been convicted three or more times of crimes "amounting to felonies involving moral turpitude." The defendant, Jack T. Skinner, had been convicted once for chicken-stealing and twice for armed robbery.
The motivation behind the law was primarily eugenic: to try and weed "unfit" individuals from the gene pool. Criminal sterilization laws like the one in Oklahoma were designed to target "criminality," believed by some at the time to possibly be a hereditary trait. Most punitive sterilization laws, including the Oklahoma statute, prescribed vasectomy as the method of rendering the individual infertile (which, unlike castration, does not affect sexual urge or function) in males, and salpingectomy in females (a relatively invasive operation, requiring heavy sedation, and hence with more risks to personal well-being).
In section 195 of the act, it was specifically outlined that "offenses arising out of the violation of the prohibitory laws, revenue acts, embezzlement, or political offenses, shall not come or be considered within the terms of this Act."
This particular exception is what was chiefly behind the ruling. The Court unanimously held that the Act violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because white-collar crimes like embezzlement were excluded from the Act's jurisdiction. Justice William O. Douglas concluded that:
Oklahoma makes no attempt to say that he who commits larceny by trespass or trick or fraud has biologically inheritable traits which he who commits embezzlement lacks. We have not the slightest basis for inferring that that line has any significance in eugenics, nor that the inheritability of criminal traits follows the neat legal distinctions which the law has marked between those two offenses. In terms of fines and imprisonment, the crimes of larceny and embezzlement rate the same under the Oklahoma code. Only when it comes to sterilization are the pains and penalties of the law different. The equal protection clause would indeed be a formula of empty words if such conspicuously artificial lines could be drawn.
Furthermore, because of the social and biological implications of reproduction, and the irreversibility of sterilization operations, Justice Douglas also stressed that compulsory sterilization laws in general should be held to strict scrutiny:
The power to sterilize, if exercised, may have subtle, far-reaching and devastating effects. In evil or reckless hands it can cause races or types which are inimical to the dominant group to wither and disappear. There is no redemption for the individual whom the law touches. Any experiment which the State conducts is to his irreparable injury. He is forever deprived of a basic liberty. We mention these matters not to reexamine the scope of the police power of the States. We advert to them merely in emphasis of our view that strict scrutiny of the classification which a State makes in a sterilization law is essential, lest unwittingly, or otherwise, invidious discriminations are made against groups or types of individuals in violation of the constitutional guaranty of just and equal laws.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_v._Oklahoma
Strength lies in the wisdom and conviction of our judges, not the faux-pragmatic deceptions of our 'elected' 'leaders'.
posted by Tristan Tzara at 9:42 AM
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