Attributing a California man’s 17-year detention awaiting trial for commitment as a sexually violent predator to a “systematic breakdown in the public defender system,” a California appellate court ruled Wednesday the man be released from a state hospital without trial. Full Article Opinion Related The Endless Punishment of Civil Commitment Action Alert: CA Dept. of State Hospitals Schedules Hearing on Sept. 20
Read MoreTag: Civil Commitment
The Endless Punishment of Civil Commitment
Prosecutors can subject those convicted of sexual offenses—and sometimes, those with no conviction at all—to an indefinite period of civil punishment at the end of their criminal sentence. In January, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Bianco ruled that after spending nearly two decades detained by the state of California without trial, ____ ____ was a free man. Unlike the 536,000 people held pretrial in the criminal justice system in America, ____ , 44, was not being held because he was accused of a crime. Instead, ____ was locked up for 17…
Read MoreIA: Civil Commitment of Sex Offenders Survives Court Challenge
A nearly six-year-old lawsuit challenging Iowa’s program for keeping sex offenders confined after they serve their prison terms has been dismissed by a federal judge in Sioux City. U.S. District Court Judge Mark Bennett ruled against patients in the Civil Commitment Unit for Sexual Offenders, or CCUSO, housed at the Mental Health Institute in Cherokee. Full Article
Read MoreMN: Protracted Sex Offender Program suit comes to end
A long-running class-action lawsuit over the constitutionally of Minnesota’s civil commitment program for sex offenders effectively ended Thursday when a federal judge dismissed the remaining claims but stood by his earlier statements that some revelations during the six-week trial shock his conscience. Full Article
Read MoreWA: Aging sex offenders on McNeil Island needed 557 medical trips last year
Serving the medical needs of an aging population civilly committed to the Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island means more doctor appointments and costs. The off-island trips for care, for a time, were starting to mean a decline in actual sex-offender treatment. Full Article
Read MoreIs a life sentence for child sexual abuse just?
Arguably Chicago’s most notorious figure in the national Roman Catholic priest sex abuse scandal was committed indefinitely Wednesday to a state facility for sex offenders. In refusing to release ____ ____ under strict monitoring, Cook County Judge Dennis Porter noted that the defrocked priest had never cooperated with treatment or even admitted to a problem. Full Opinion Piece
Read MoreMA: Changing sex offender law needs to be evidence-based
Massachusetts is hardly soft on sex offenders, being one of only 20 states and the District of Columbia that incarcerate people convicted of sex offenses after they’ve completed their criminal sentences based on what they might do in the future. This practice is so antithetical to our Constitution that sexually dangerous person laws require careful calibration. Full Article
Read MoreVA: Longer sentences for violent sex predators
[fredericksburg.com – 7/2/18] THE Commonwealth of Virginia recently announced plans to expand a facility that treats convicted sex offenders who have served their prison sentences, but are considered too dangerous to release back into the community. It is alarming that the center has already exceeded its initial residency projections just 10 years after opening in 2008. The Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation in Burkeville will increase its current capacity from 258 to 450 beds to make room for former inmates classified as sexually violent predators (SVPs). The $110 million project…
Read MoreVA: Groundbreaking Monday for $110 million expansion of treatment center for civilly committed sex offenders
Officials kick off a 258-bed expansion of Virginia’s sex offender treatment center Monday, but caution it could run out of room again not long after completion. The Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation holds and treats sex offenders after their prison terms have ended if they are deemed by courts to be “sexually violent predators” who remain too dangerous to be released. Full Article
Read MoreMA: Can there be life after civil commitment?
[narsol.org – 6/15/18] By Sandy . . . Over forty years ago, Wayne Chapman was convicted of raping two boys. He claimed to have had as many as a hundred victims. He was sentenced to thirty years in prison, and when that was completed, under Massachusetts’s civil commitment laws, was confined further in a non-criminal facility where he was to be treated and evaluated and from where he would be released when he was determined no longer to be a danger to society. That determination has been made. Chapman, now…
Read MoreCA: Federal Court Denies State Hospital’s Motion to Dismiss
[ACSOL – 6/6/18] A U.S. district court today denied a Motion to Dismiss filed by Coalinga State Hospital. Because of the denial, a lawsuit filed on behalf of two patients at that hospital will continue. “Today’s decision is a significant victory for hundreds of registrants who are also patients at Coalinga State Hospital,” stated ACSOL Executive Director Janice Bellucci. “The claims of the plaintiffs regarding retaliation for the exercise of their First Amendment rights are similar to claims that could have been made by many others.” In today’s decision, the…
Read MorePost-Prison Purgatory
[theinvestigativefund.org – 5/23/18] At Coalinga State Hospital, located in a desolate, dusty part of California’s Central Valley, 200 miles north of Los Angeles, 37-year-old Cory Hoch stands out. He’s well liked by other patients, and his dry sense of humor and lively intelligence come across almost immediately. His feathered earring and neon-green sneakers infuse some color into the surroundings, while his khaki scrubs identify him as a patient. Since the age of 19, Hoch has lived most of his life in some form of cage. He is one of the…
Read MoreSex Crimes and Criminal Justice
[washingtonspectator.org 5/4/18] Formerly incarcerated sex offenders say civil commitment programs deny proper rehabilitation May 4, 2018 By Barbara Koeppel Responding to several highly publicized sex crimes and public fears, legislatures across the country have adopted statutes that allow the continued imprisonment of sex offenders after they have completed their sentences. Veteran investigative reporter Barbara Koeppel has spent the past 12 months reporting on this third rail of the criminal justice system. Here are her findings. Since the 1990s, 20 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws that direct…
Read MoreMN: Minnesota Senate passes bill to tighten sex offender, mental health commitment rules
[startribune.com 4/23/18] A proposal that would make it more difficult to release convicted sex offenders and people with mental illness is gaining new momentum at the Minnesota Capitol, as the state faces growing legal pressure to free some patients from its embattled sex offender program. The proposal comes in direct response to a court decision earlier this year that permitted the full discharge of a 51-year-old sex offender, Kirk A. Fugelseth, who has admitted to molesting more than 30 boys and girls and who was confined to the Minnesota Sex…
Read MoreIA: 2 Convicted of Sex Crimes Can’t Be Held Indefinitely
The Iowa Supreme Court has dismissed the state’s efforts to confine two men convicted for sex abuse crimes indefinitely under the state’s law allowing civil commitment of sexually violent predators. Full Article
Read MoreNY: State police: Sex offender’s death accidental at Central New York Psychiatric Center
[lohud.com] State police have ruled that a sex offender’s death inside Central New York Psychiatric Center in Marcy was accidental. Investigators determined Philip Barbato, 47, accidentally hanged himself with string while alone inside a shower room, Trooper Jack Kelly said. Barbato had been locked up under the state’s Sex Offender Treatment Program, part of the civil-commitment law that allows for confining sex offenders who completed their criminal sentence, according to Kelly. Nursing staff tried to resuscitate Barbato and an ambulance responded Monday at 3:05 a.m. He was pronounced dead at…
Read MoreTX: Weekend Read: They served their prison sentences, but they’re still locked up
[splcenter.org] Jason Schoenfeld already served a full prison sentence, but he’s back behind bars — not because of what he’s done, but because of what the state of Texas says he might do. Schoenfeld entered a detention center in Littlefield, Texas more than two years ago. Located in a remote corner of the Texas Panhandle, it was once a prison and currently houses a rehabilitation program for men like Schoenfeld who have committed sex offenses. Schoenfeld used to attend therapy sessions every two weeks. They’ve slowed to once every three…
Read MoreCA: Child porn ‘epidemic’ triggers Coalinga hospital lockdown, patients file lawsuit
Two patients at Coalinga State Hospital, which houses nearly 1,000 sexually violent predators, have filed a federal lawsuit against the hospital’s executive director and 10 other staff members for allegedly violating their civil rights during a recent crackdown on portable electronic devices that hospital officials say was prompted by a “child porn epidemic.” Sacramento civil rights attorney Janice Bellucci filed the lawsuit on behalf of two patients, Michael Saint-Martin and an anonymous claimant, in federal court Tuesday night. It asks the court to immediately halt a newly implemented hospital policy…
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