common cold," would be cruel and unusual. Additionally, Justice Stewart's opinion, in combination with Justice Harlan's concurring opinion, held that it is unconstitutional to criminalize behavior in the absence of a guilty act, or actus reus. Justice Stewart's opinion focused on the unconstitutionality of punishing a mere status or condition, Justice Harlan's concurring opinion focused, however, on the unconstitutionality of punishing a "bare desire.". Justice Clark dissented, first, because "[p]roperly construed, the statute provides a treatment, rather than a punishment." Second, "even if interpreted as penal, the sanction of incarceration for 3 to 12 months is not unreasonable when applied to a person who has voluntarily placed himself in a condition posing a serious threat to the State." Justice Byron White dissented. He argued, first, that "on this record, it was within the power of the State of California to confine him by criminal proceedings for the use of narcotics or for regular use amounting to habitual use." Second, the Court "has effectively removed California's power to deal effectively with the recurring case under the statute where there is ample evidence of use but no evidence of the precise location of use. Beyond this, it has cast serious doubt upon the power of any State to forbid the use of narcotics under threat of criminal punishment." Finally, he said that the Court was using "cruel and unusual punishment" as a disguise of "substantive due process": If this case involved economic regulation, the present Court's allergy to substantive due process would surely save the statute and prevent the Court from imposing its own philosophical predilections upon state legislatures or Congress. I fail to see why the Court deems it more appropriate to write into the Constitution its own abstract notions of how best to handle the narcotics problem, for it obviously cannot match either the States or Congress in expert understanding. Subsequent developments Robinson's death By June 25, 1962, the day the Court handed down this decision, Robinson had been dead for more than ten months. In fact, he was dead before his appeal papers were filed in the Supreme Court. The California Attorney General's office discovered this fact upon remand and notified the Court, since this arguably mooted the case long before its decision. The Court, however, did not vacate the Robinson decision as moot. Justices Clark, Harlan, and Stewart dissented, arguing that settled precedent required dismissal for mootness. Later