By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Keeping sexually violent predators confined after their prison terms expire does not automatically violate their constitutional rights, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
A state's failure to provide treatment required by law does not turn a lawful sex predator's confinement into unlawful punishment, said the 8-1 ruling in the case of a six-time rapist in Washington state.
Instead, the justices said sex predators can take other action, such as filing a civil-rights lawsuit, to try to force a state to provide proper treatment or otherwise improve conditions.
The high court held that such prisoners cannot win their release by merely challenging the conditions of their confinement. Instead, the justices said that sexual predators can take other action to try to force a state to provide proper treatment or otherwise improve conditions.
The case is a follow-up to the justices' 1997 ruling in a Kansas case that allowed states to keep sexually violent predators locked up even after they have finished serving their prison terms. Such confinement, intended to protect society, is not punitive and therefore does not amount to double punishment for the same crime, that 5-4 ruling said.
Washington state's sex predator law served as a model for the Kansas statute upheld by the Supreme Court.
Andre Brigham Young, who was convicted of six rapes over a 31-year period, challenged his confinement under the law, saying he should get a chance to show that he was being subjected to unconstitutional double punishment.
In 1990, shortly before Young was to complete a prison term for the last of his convictions, state officials began proceedings that resulted in him being confined indefinitely as a sexually violent predator.
Young sued the state in 1994, saying he was being denied the treatment required under state law and therefore his confinement amounted to punishment.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for Young, saying he should have a chance to prove to a federal judge that his confinement is indeed punitive because he was not receiving treatment.
In a separate lawsuit filed by another inmate, a federal court held the state in contempt in 1999 for failing to comply with an order to improve mental health treatment at the sex offender facility. The state has been spending millions of dollars to improve the facility.
The state, in appealing to the Supreme Court, said inmates had two other options besides the type of claim filed by Young: a state court lawsuit accusing the state of violating the law requiring treatment for sex predators, or a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking to improve the conditions of confinement.
The Supreme Court reversed the appeals court ruling and sent the case back to the lower courts.
The case, like the previous decision, turned on whether the post-sentence lockup was esentially the same thing as involuntary civil commitment for the mentally ill. If so, then the program passed muster.
In this case, the court started with the premise that Young's confinement was like civil commitment and then looked at his claim that conditions of his confinement meant that the state was punishing him, not treating him.
That kind of case-by-case analysis of whether an individual prisoner's confinement was civil or punitive is "unworkable," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the majority.
"An act, found to be civil, cannot be deemed punitive 'as applied' to a single individual," O'Connor wrote.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia wrote concurring opinions, with Justice David H. Souter joining Scalia's concurrence. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the lone dissent.
Stevens took issue with the majority assumption that Washington's law was civil, and agreed with Young that the state could be punishing him twice for the same crime.
"If conditions of confinement are such that a detainee has been punished twice in violation of the double jeopardy clause, it is irrelevant that the scheme has been previously labeled as civil without full knowledge of the effects of the statute," Stevens wrote.
The case is Seling v. Young, 99-1185.
