United States v. Nathan Charles Kotrlik, and Craig Ronald Gaevert

All parties to these companion and consolidated appeals agree that the sole question involved is whether the 1969 draft lottery, which assigned appellants their induction priorities, was required to be “statistically random”.

Prior to 1970, Selective Service registrants were called for induction in order of their ages, the oldest first, in 1970, Random Selection Numbers (RSN’s) were chosen by assigning each day of the year a number from 1 to 366, and picking each number by random selection. Each number chosen was the RSN for all men whose birthdays fell on such date. Secondary numbers were assigned to the letters of the alphabet to distinguish among men with the same birthdate. Secondary numbers referred to the first letters of the registrants first and last names.

Appellants admit they cannot and are not seeking a “pure” or “scientifically perfect” random lottery, but assert that the selection should be “more random” than they assert it was.

The District Court’s opinion summarized the drawing procedure, as appears in Note 1. The full description of the mixing, tumbling, drawings, etc., which occurred appears in the Government’s Brief, pp. 3 to 7, and need not be repeated…