Outreach
July 1997

Read the text of the court's decision

U.S. Supreme Court decision may
affect SVPs in California facilities

By KEITH HEARN
Editor

The U.S. Supreme Court says violent sexual predators -- such as those at Atascadero State Hospital -- can be kept in custody even after they have served their prison terms.

The June 23 decision concerning a Kansas law could affect hundreds of cases in California, where the state Supreme Court is considering legal challenges to this state's 1995 sexual predator law.

By a 5-to-4 vote, the court said a state can confine to a mental institution inmates who have served their time in prison but are found to be violent sexual predators with "mental abnormalities" and who remain a danger to society.

The court rejected the argument by Leroy Hendricks, an admitted pedophile, that the law violates his constitutional rights because it imposes an additional penalty to his original sentence.

The court said: "Although Hendricks ... hoped he would not sexually molest children again, he stated that the only sure way he could keep from sexually abusing children in the future was to die," the court said.

The high court ruled that the extended confinement is not a criminal punishment but a "civil commitment" to treat inmates for their mental disorders.

"The Act does not establish criminal proceedings, and involuntary confinement under it is not punishment," said Justice Clarence Thomas in writing the majority opinion. "Nothing on the face of the Act suggests that the Kansas Legislature sought to create anything other than a civil commitment scheme. ..."

"The confinement's potentially indefinite duration is linked, not to any punitive objective, but to the purpose of holding a person until his mental abnormality no longer causes him to be a threat to others. He is thus permitted immediate release upon a showing that he is no longer dangerous," the court said.

California's SVP law applies to those who have been convicted of a violent, sexual offense against at least two people and who have a diagnosed mental disorder that makes them likely to repeat their crimes if released.

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