involuntary admission in a mental health facility the core question in this case involves an issue of statutory interpretation and that is whether section three d s eight zero one of the mental health code imposes upon a circuit court presiding over an involuntary commitment proceeding any affirmative duties with respect to the respondents request or desire for voluntary admission to the facility the facility director has not approved that request and i urge the court to answer that question in the negative to find the section three dish you know one does not impose on the circuit court in such circumstances in the management of the case and in light of the circumstances presented to allow the respondent to seek a continuance to prepare and submit an application to the facility director and  even to wait until the facility director decides that request before continuing the case but i want to make this distinction clear it does not impose upon the circuit court an affirmative duty to suspended the proceeding simply when the respondent says oh i'd like to be admitted on a voluntary basis deal greed can see that the world request is very very hearing for involuntary it is a no no our position is that the structure of the mental health code is very clear article fo governs voluntary admission proceedings it specifies in detail the requirements for applications it says that they have to be in writing they have to be executed and they have to be submitted to the facility director and our position is that eight zero one says nothing to the contrary it does not authorize a respondent in an involuntary case to bypass and circumvent all of those carefully structured rules and simply say to somebody other than the facility director in this case the circuit court that has a job at hand which is the decide the involuntary commitment case i want to be admitted on a voluntary basis the he's in the wrong place to ask for that the court doesn't have authority to  be that messenger or the agent for the facility director with that type of thing again though the court does have the power not the statutory duty but the discretionary power in the management of its case to say ok do you want to continu i can grant a continuance here for you to submit a proper application to the facility director for the facility director to decide that but if the section three days she had a one is clear that even if the facility director approves the request that doesn't require the circuit court to stop the involuntary commitment proceeding it's clear that even if that's approved the court can go ahead with the involuntary commitment proceeding then it's hard to imagine that an said i want to inform the board that the respondent indicates he'd like to be admitted on a voluntary basis and deuced testimony and i think the final statement by the research by the lawyer was to ask his client to respond here a nd do you understand yourself to be requesting voluntary admission that he said yes i am of course that you know directing the request to the wrong person in the wrong place and so if i could follow up briefly on  point that we made in our reply brief and i think bill is emphasis here which is that because the respondent represented by counsel didn't ask for a continuance in the court's discretion and didn't argue in the appellate court that it was an suspend the proceeding and i position is that that is nowhere found in the language of section three days she had a want the courts can manage their boardrooms as they must with respect to the matters before them but it doesn't mean that this statute creates upon  imposes upon the court in these circumstances some mandatory duty that may be totally unwarranted it could have been this could be the deadline for the for the case to be subject to the requirements of the fifteen day requirement of section three da eight hundred b that was the subject of the court's recent decision in the james w case where we had to deal with a court had to deal with the the jury demand made at the last minute case and and that it did it was a troubling issue here there's still a similar concern what if at the last minute the deadline for the for the case to be decided the response says i want to be admitted on a voluntary basis in the courts says are you asking for a continuance and response says no no i just want to be continuance that tolls the deadline under three dash eight hundred b that would give the court the opportunity to say ok i'm not running up against the clock now and you may well be a suitable candidate for voluntary admission i want the facility director to decide that make sure you've got your counsel to you know help you prepare your application submit it to the facility director let the facility director decided i might prejudging by the way whether if that petition is granted i'm going to dismiss this it's i've got a statutory responsibility to decide even if it is granted and whether i will dismiss this case but let's see first what the facility director settles and then take it from there and that's clearly what section three eight zero one intends is for the courts if it to give in responding to an opportunity to make a formal request in accordance with the mental health code and if it's granted for the circuit court to say hey maybe i should dismiss this maybe in light of the third putin clinical considerations and it doesn't look like they respond is trying to play a little game of revolving door game the system you know shenanigans here but maybe it should be appropriate to dismiss the involuntary proceeding after i hear any objections by and by the petitioner or by the people in this case so our view is that as a matter of statutory interpretation three d a shade of one it is very clear in what it says it says that the respond we can can seek bound to remission any time up until there's an adjudication of involuntary commitment and that if that request is granted by the facility director then the circuit court may nonetheless still border involuntary commitment that's all it says it doesn't say any of these things that the respondent the appellate court want to read into the statute in and our assumption is that the goal of statutory interpretation is to determine what the legislature intended by what demanded not to take omissions in the statute and we need into them all sorts of things that may make sense as a matter of policy but especially here where the structure of the mental health code is explicit and detailed and specific involuntary commitment proceeding that the legislature ten in did to create this other parallel universe with all the details to be fleshed out by the courts as part of their responsibility to interpret statutes and it just doesn't make any sense that they would have intended that now the genesis of this problem i think unfortunately is a appellate court case decided before the current mental health code thirty five years ago where the respondent submitted a written request for a voluntary admission to the circu court and the appellate court said it was wrong for the circuit court not to decide that request for voluntary admission our position is that there wasn't even any authority under the bed version of the mental health code for the for the circuit court to be deciding whether to grant voluntary admission or not there's the sort of the elephant in the room here is the constitutional right to due process if a court is being asked to confine somebody in voluntarily that is a government imposed deprivation of a liberty interest that implicates due process there is no doubt about that the u s supreme court has spoken this court has spoken involuntary commitment is the type of thing that requires due process to be complied with a request for vol for voluntary admission isn't the same at all we're saying no we won't we won't deny your voluntary request to go into a mental health facility that's a horse of a different comma and so the mental health code recognizes that there is this spectrum of treatment conditions and possibilities if there's a preference for voluntary admission for their putative reasons the court made that clear in the hayes case there is a preference for less restrictive conditions but it's not a one size fits all situation the facility directors and the courts sheer separate responsibilities in connection with the determination what's the appropriate status for an individual and a request for voluntary admission then does not become some get out of involuntary commitment free card the section three day sheet a one it's absolutely clear on that point just because the facility director has approved  admission doesn't mean you get out of involuntary commitment automatically and then the request certainly doesn't get you out of involuntary commitment so the idea here is that not every person who may be voluntarily or involuntarily committed has the right to say oh i want voluntary commitment therefore you can't involuntary commitment the code doesn't create any such a proposition which would not be in the individual's interest necessarily in certain we certainly would not be in the interest of the public at large  those are you know that's the framework in wish this is decided and other than you know referring to the you know the key parts of my brief what i want to emphasize is that the appellate court in this case relying heavily on the byrd decision which has been repudiated by subsequent appellate decisions in finding no real support in the procedural language of three day to one his created this one list of responsibilities that circuit courts have to follow with no real support in the text and contrary to the structure of the mental health code as a whole we think that the concerns that the appellate court was trying to address can be fully accommodated and if the court sees fit to provide guidance to the circuit circumstances but to say that they have an affirmative duty to hold the proceedings to treatment will request as if it's a valid request for voluntary admission out of the code to decide themselves whether voluntary admission should be granted or to create some strange hybrid bridgeview proceeding in which they're taking lie get evidence to conduct administrative review with facility to facility director's decision to deny such a request none of them finds any support in section three eighty one it's inconsistent with the structure of the code for voluntary mission which violates not only the mental health code but this court's precedent policy of encouraging voluntary admission as i can see lance h has extensive mental health history but he was making well i'm there's only two ways to consider this the court has a on that statute says at any time prior to the education so if you look at the statute if they want to have it not be for th during the trial they would have had clearly state then the statute but also the court has a purpose apprentice present type role of ensuring that the rights and responsibilities of in the mental health code are enforced two concerns on this it's almost like a person confessing error that they're accepting responsibility oftentimes and practical cases this is the first time the respondent has heard the whole mental health history m in the statute it's very clear at any time prior to adjudication they can request the state in their brief is asking the court to add additional requirements to make it a room request to waive the facility director but then  time prior to the judy cation and then the thing is if we accept the state's argument that that's not a valid time what is the time it will create more confusion if the court in fact  plan i think so because they're requesting it were any of these arguments made in the trial court now i'm though the public defender and i think there needs to be guidance on this i mean the public defender did ask twice in the my client was clear that i want to request to be voluntary on this i think there is some confusion on whether the issue we should restrict their form of treatment which is a voluntary mission and what kind of that let's say that  the application what can the court consider on that issue of voluntary and we would say because of due process that could be a defense of the least restrictive environment but the key questions here is the state is trying to add a qualifier think so it's key part it's like a asking for a jury demand or independent examiner and your mental health of the it is to encourage voluntary admissions and if you chicken now it's just situations like someone confessing  o basically you know my crime is making progress he's making steps toward this we're not asking for any additional requirements within the copa just to simply follow it that so if if the co one had the room application to apply to sectional into one they would have said application written application to facility director but think and precisely use the term request which can encompass bufferin and or forms it seems that the state is ordering able one just simply says time when there's a time when the request in them for three poor hundred series kicks in you you've had numerous reviews and so on but now he's volunteer so there hasn't been court proceedings against him since july of two thousand and thirteen so you know it does save judicial proceedings and i therapeutic because she was going to use the system i think it's analogous to the situation i think in just troubling your plea affirm the circuit court's just totally ignoring this i think there needs to be guidance that a voluntary mission which is almost like a confession of judgment or agreeing to treatment should be taken like a jury to vandar or independent examination demand that the circuit court should any knowledge us adjourn the case and then most a time ninety nine get confirmation and you get less collateral consequences so if the state really wanted the that even though the voluntary was granted if they wanted the collateral consequences i guess they could proceed that way so it's  hospital has five days to five business days to file a written petition for involuntary commitment so it doesn't affect the public health and safety by letting a person be voluntary that there is a is mental retardation development was guilty there was no stating that he lacked the mental capacity to make this but there was no testimony like in other cases which affirmed involuntary where the person signed or origami to escape escape attempts there is no indication that he was voluntarily taking medication which is another sign for  you know we're not disputing that party needs to file a written application form but common sense is that the party first must request it orally and the statues very clear that it can be any time prior to education if weeks that except the state's argument where adding language and making it harder for someone to become voluntary where the policy the president and the statute itself encourages voluntary emission there may be some confusion of the issue of time and just when dress a brief leaves but if someone's denied it can be a defense under the weakest restrictive process so for these reasons the court i just have a few observations that primarily in response to the court's questions to me is given it is correct that the mental health code sets forth two separate tracks or two different determinations based upon different substantive standards and made by different decision makers the decision of whether to approve a request for voluntary admission is made by the facility director subject to the right of administrative review in the decision whether to involuntarily commit someone in deprive them of their liberty in voluntarily is made by the circuit court those are different tasks different questions different substantive standards in different procedures that apply and so the idea that it is some how the circuit court's responsibility to oversee and supervise the process of a voluntary admission determination by the facility director does not find any support in section three dash into one of the mental health code my opposing counsel indicates that we are trying to write new sorts of conditions into section three eight zero one i would respectfully submit that exactly the opposite is true for all the section three  one says with respect to the to the court's responsibility or or the what happens during an involuntary case is that the the respondent can submit it at any time and can make a request  any time before there's a final involuntary adjudication doesn't impose upon the circuit court any responsibilities with respect to that there's nothing in the text of this statute that says it has to suspend the case it has to process the application it has to shepherd it over to the facility director none of that appears the the other side however is trying to suggest that all those to you should somehow be written into sections three to one and if we're at focusing on a question of a state for interpretation the starting point is the text of the statute and i say if you look for any of these duties that they say are in section three zero to one where are they worth the language to support them they aren't there in it it's important to emphasize that even section three d s dash eight zero one itself makes clear that it's the facility director not the court that has the responsibility to make a decision with respect to a request for a voluntary admission to the extent that as i indicated earlier a statement like the respondent made in this case might be deemed to be a request for a continuance to follow the procedures to submit a written application of the soldier director we don't have any objection to the notion that the court has that discretionary power we don't think that issue is doing to suspend the case for automatically even at the twelfth hour just because the person says i'd like to be admitted on a voluntary basis and it is not an either or proposition again it is not the admitted on a voluntary basis or on an involuntary basis somebody who is denied voluntary admission may not be found subject to involuntary mission and conversely somebody who is granted a request for voluntary admission doesn't necessarily ovoid involuntary commitment there can be this separate decisions by the two decision makers in this case that that either work together who or that are in potential conflict and the court has the final word on whether there will be an involuntary commitment so i disagree with the notion that the response offered to go in on a voluntary basis is tantamount to a confession of judgment it isn't the petition ask for involuntary commitment to say oh well i'll go in on a voluntary basis which means that i have the right to leave whenever i want to but there's a presumption of the ability to leave upon request subject to five days notice to the so director that's not anywhere close to a confession of judgment the whole purpose of voluntary admission we agree in its suitable for many people in many circumstances it is to give them a greater sense of control over their own destiny a greater sense of responsibility for their own mental health and wellbeing and that may be suitable and appropriate in a lot of cases but it's not necessarily suitable and appropriate in all cases and when it's not the person who is subject to an involuntary commitment proceeding doesn't have the ability to say stop presses you can't proceed i want to go in on a voluntary basis and if that's granted then you know please go away i don't want to have anything to do with you and i don't want you to have anything to do with me that's not the way the system works  the i i do find it helpful that the opposing counsel agrees that the court can provide discretion with respect to the guidance it can give the circuit courts in treating these requests for suggestions of a desire to be voluntary admission as a basis for the circuit court exercised its discretion with respect to whether to grant a continuance and i think it would be helpful of the court makes clear that the respondent whether the respondent has to then  formally yes i am requesting a continuance or i'm not but because of their saying no then we have a deadline problem that we faced in in james w i also appreciate what i believe was the concession that the actual formal application of the facility director has to comply with the provisions in article four of chapter three the written application the court wants to give the responded to digital time to submit one that's fine but on this record we submit that the that the appellate court's decision both as to the reversal of the involuntary commitment order and as to its interpretation of section three eight zero one should be reversed in