Powell v. Texas

Powell (defendant) was convicted of public intoxication and argued his chronic alcoholism made his public drunkenness involuntary, presenting psychiatric testimony that chronic alcoholics have an uncontrollable compulsion to drink excessively once they start; the trial court rejected chronic alcoholism as a defense but allowed findings that the disease overpowers a person's will to resist drinking, that a chronic alcoholic appears in public due to the disease rather than free will, and that Powell was in fact a chronic alcoholic, before convicting him anyway.