United States et al. v. Stanley (483 U.S. 669)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 25, 1987 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 483 U.S. 669 · 107 S. Ct. 3054
- Decided
- June 25, 1987
- Term
- October Term 1986
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Scalia
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court. In February 1958, James B. Stanley, a master sergeant in the Army stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky, volunteered to participate in a program ostensibly designed to test the effectiveness of protective clothing and equipment as defenses against chemical warfare. He was released from his then-current duties and went to the Army’s Chemical Warfare Laboratories at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. Four times that month, Stanley was secretly administered doses of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), pursuant to an Army plan to study the effects of the drug on human subjects. According to his Second Amended Complaint (the allegations of which we accept for purposes of this decision), as a result of the LSD exposure, Stanley has suffered from hallucinations and periods of incoherence and memory loss, was impaired in his military performance, and would on occasion “awake from sleep at night and, without reason, violently beat his wife and children, later being unable to recall the entire incident.” App. 5. He was discharged from the Army in 1969. One year later, his marriage dissolved because of the personality changes wrought by the LSD. On December 10, 1975, the Army sent Stanley a letter soliciting his cooperation in a study of the long-term effects of LSD on “volunteers who participated” in the 1958 tests. This was the…
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