Federal Sex Offender Commitment Statute Unconstitutional

East North Carolina’s district court earlier this month issued an order that strikes down that portion of the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act that allows federal prosecutors to have sex offenders about to be released from prison committed to mental hospitals when “clear & convincing evidence” is present that the inmate is a “sexually dangerous person.”

Some 17 states, including New York, Kansas, Illinois, and Texas, have laws authorizing the civil commitment of sexually violent predators at the end of their criminal sentences, the Supreme Court having upheld the constitutionality each. [See Kansas v. Hendricks (1997) and Kansas v. Crane (2002)] The District Court agreed with respondents in the case who had argued that “the broadly applicable commitment scheme outlined in 18 U.S.C. § 4248 differs substantially from the carefully drawn, narrowly applicable scheme addressed in Hendricks and Crane.”

“Commitment pursuant to § 4248, as it is written,” the Court said, “would constitute a due process violation because such commitment, contingent upon a factual finding that an individual engaged in specific criminal conduct, is permitted on a proof of such conduct by clear & convincing evidence, where the reasonable doubt standard is necessary to ensure such due process.”



The North Carolina case, above, coincides with the release of a two-year study – according to a FindLaw article last week, the first comprehensive study of sex-offender policies in the United States – which concluded many of those laws are of questionable or limited value. (Human Rights Watch report)