Proportionality .–Justice Field in O’Neil v. Vermont 148 argued in dissent that in addition to prohibiting punishments deemed barbarous and inhumane the Eighth Amendment also condemned ”all punishments which by their excessive length or severity are greatly disproportionate to the offenses charged.” In Weems v. United States, 149 this view was adopted by the Court in striking down a sentence in the Philippine Islands of 15 years incarceration at hard labor with chains on the ankles, loss of all civil rights, and perpetual surveillance, for the offense of falsifying public documents. The Court compared the sentence with those meted out for other offenses and concluded: ”This contrast shows more than dif ferent exercises of legislative judgment. It is greater than that. It condemns the sentence in this case as cruel and unusual. It exhibits a difference between unrestrained power and that which is exercised under the spirit of constitutional limitations formed to establish justice.” 150 Punishments as well as fines, therefore, can be condemned as excessive. 151   In Robinson v. California 152 the Court carried the principle to new heights, setting aside a conviction under a law making it a crime to ”be addicted to the use of narcotics.” The statute was unconstitutional because it punished the ”mere status” of being an addict without any requirement of a showing that a defendant had ever used narcotics within the jurisdiction of the State or had committed any act at all within the State’s power to proscribe, and because addiction is an illness which–however it is acquired–physiologically compels the victim to continue using drugs. The case could stand for the principle, therefore, that one may not be punished for a status in the absence of some act, 153 or it could stand for the broader principle that it is cruel and unusual to punish someone for conduct he is unable to control, a holding of far-reaching importance. 154 In Powell v. Texas, 155 a majority of the Justices took the latter view of Robinson, but the result, because of a view of the facts held by one Justice, was a refusal to invalidate a conviction of an alcoholic for public drunkenness. Whether the Eighth Amendment or the due process clauses will govern the requirement of the recognition of capacity defenses to criminal charges, or whether either will, remains to be decided in future cases.