Disability Law

Federal Sex Offender Commitment Law Ruled Unconstitutional

By Danielle

Via Jurist:

A federal law allowing prison officials to indefinitely commit sex offenders to a mental hospital following their prison term is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, effectively freeing five convicted sex offenders pending the government’s filing of a motion to stay the order. Senior US District Court Judge Earl Britt [official profile] of the US Eastern District of North Carolina [official website] struck down the section of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 [text] allowing prosecutors to request that a sex offender be committed to a mental hospital upon “clear and convincing evidence” that the person is “sexually dangerous” and thus likely to commit the crime in the future. Britt ruled that Congress does not have the power to influence outcomes of criminal proceedings that fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of state courts.

The News & Observer has further coverage, as does the Associated Press.

The case is U.S. v. Comstock, and you can read the full text of Judge Britt’s 59 page order striking down § 4248 of the Walsh Act here.

For those of us here in NY, along with the at least 16 other states with statutes permitting post-conviction civil commitment of “sexually violent predators”, the key question is - will Judge Britt’s ruling, if upheld on appeal, invalidate SOMTA and similar statutes in other states?

The answer may lie here: Judge Britt based his ruling in part on the fact that most sex crimes and sexually violent conduct are regulated by state law. He reasoned that where the Federal goverment has no jurisdiction to prosecute a crime or set of crimes, it also lacks jurisdiction to act to prevent them, given that that power is not found in any other clause of the Constitution. That argument won’t apply to state laws governing civil commitment of “sexually violent predators”.

Judge Britt wrote:

In sum, section § 4248 unnecessarily and improperly deprives the states of parens patriae and police powers and impermissibly intrudes upon an area historically regulated by the states.

Doesn’t sound like a helpful argument for invalidating a state law, does it?

There are a few other distinctions that make application of Comstock to similar state laws unlikely. Unlike SOMTA, the Walsh Act permits any federal prisoner to be certified as “sexually dangerous”, regardless of the nature of his or her conviction. Also unlike SOMTA (and, I believe, most if not all similar statutes in other states), the Walsh Act requires that the government meet only a “clear and convincing” burden of proof in order to commit a federal prisoner, rather than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” burden required in criminal proceedings.

I would love to be wrong in this, but based on the above, it does not seem likely that Judge Britt’s reasoning in Comstock could be extended to constitutionally invalidate SOMTA and other similar state laws.

As an interesting sidenote, this case is not the first time Judge Britt has ruled on civil commitment matters. Here is the full text of the 4th Circuit’s decision in U.S. v. Baker, affirming Judge Britt’s ruling that holding Baker’s commitment hearing by video conference did not violate his statutory or constitutional rights.

Full post as published by Mental Disability Law Blog on September 17, 2007 (boomark / email).