Judge Strikes Sex Offense Commitment Law

[samanthajane13]

By MIKE BAKER,
AP
Posted: 2007-09-12 22:02:39
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - The U.S. government cannot keep sex offenders in custody beyond the end of their prison sentences, a federal judge has ruled, striking down a law aimed at holding some in mental hospitals.

Federal prison officials have moved to prevent the release of five men at a facility in North Carolina, arguing that the men fit the category of "sexually dangerous."

The process of holding such offenders at hospitals, known as civil commitment, was approved under a federal law signed in 2006.

The prisoners won't be released immediately, because U.S. District Court Judge W. Earl Britt suspended the decision until the government has a chance to file a formal motion to stay.

Civil commitment is unconstitutional because the federal government cannot hold a person indefinitely out of fear that the individual will commit a crime in the future, Britt said in his ruling. To do so, he wrote, the government would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person is "sexually dangerous" to commit them indefinitely.

Even then, Britt wrote in the order filed Sept. 7, "there is serious question as to whether the federal government could ever prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an individual is both suffering from a mental illness or abnormality such as pedophilia and unlikely to refrain from sexually violent conduct in the future as a result of that illness."

The Federal Medical Center in Butner houses only male prisoners. And though the ruling immediately affects the Bureau of Prisons' procedures only in the eastern district of North Carolina, Butner is one of only a handful of such hospitals in the nation.

"That's one of the major sites where civil commitment takes place," said Corey Yung, a law professor at Chicago's John Marshall Law School. "So, it's ground zero for this sort of litigation."

Under the 2006 legislation, the government needs to prove only with "clear and convincing" evidence - a lower standard than reasonable doubt - that the person is "sexually dangerous." That's not enough proof to afford an offender due process, Britt said.

The federal public defenders who argued on behalf of the sex offenders declined to comment, and the U.S. attorney's office in Raleigh did not immediately return calls.

Several states, but not North Carolina, also use civil commitment to extend the confinement of sex offenders.

States will probably wait until the courts sort out the issue before changing their laws, especially since a court in Massachusetts wrote a much shorter decision recently upholding civil commitment there, Yung said.

"There's no point in rewriting a law until everyone's on the same page," he said.