The U.S. Supreme Court, on January 17, 2001 strengthened the position that it is acceptable to lock up “sexually violent predators” following their release from prison. The Court issued its opinion in the case of Seling v. Young. Washington State passed into law a Community Protection Act (1990) which authorizes the civil commitment of sexually violent predators, defined as persons who suffer from a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes them likely to engage in predatory acts of sexual violence.
Young, the petitioner before the U.S. Supreme Court, is confined under the law at the Special Commitment Center (Center). He claimed in several state petitions that the treatment he was receiving at the Center was abusive and that no specific release date had been provided to him. After failing at the state level Young instituted a habeas action to the federal courts.
Initially Young was successful at the federal level when he argued that the law and his subsequent commitment violated the double jeopardy and ex post facto provisions of the U.S. Constitution. At the same time Young’s matter was before the federal court, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Kansas v. Hendricks, that a similar commitment scheme under Kansas’ Sexually Violent Predator Act was constitutional.
In order to get around this ruling Young made the argument that even though the law claimed to be civil, it was actually punitive in nature “as it applied to Young.” If that argument was persuasive to the court, Young’s claims of ex post facto and double jeopardy violations, which applied in the criminal law, survived.
The federal Ninth Circuit Court agreed with Young and reversed an earlier dismissal of his claims. The court reasoned that actual confinement conditions, if horrendous enough, could divest a facially valid statute of its civil label. The court required a showing on the highest proof that the statutory scheme had a punitive effect as applied to Young. Washington State’s agent, Seling, also the superintendent of the Center, appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court held that an Act, found to be civil, cannot be deemed punitive “as applied” to a single individual in violation of the Ex Post Facto clause or the Double Jeopardy clause. The court agreed that an “as applied” analysis of the Washington and other state statutes of a similar nature would be unworkable. It would never conclusively resolve whether a particular scheme was punitive or civil. Further, a confinement scheme’s nature should not be allowed to change from civil to punitive merely based on poor implementation by the state authorities. This would leave the question of civil or punitive as continually undecided and therefore continually before the courts.
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