United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit 

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No. 22-2324

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United States of America

 Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Luis Vazques

 Defendant - Appellant

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Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Western District of Missouri - Springfield

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Submitted: April 11, 2023

Filed: August 31, 2023

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Before LOKEN, SHEPHERD, and KELLY, Circuit Judges. 

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SHEPHERD, Circuit Judge. 

Appellant Luis Vazques was civilly committed pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 4246 

in February 2009 due to a mental disease or defect that created a substantial risk of 

harm to the public. After several conditional releases and revocations, in April 2022, 

and while represented by counsel, Vazques filed a motion for discharge pro se, which 
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the district court1 denied on the basis that a motion for discharge may not be filed by 

a pro se petitioner. Vazques appeals, asserting that prohibiting him from seeking a 

discharge pro se is a violation of his Fifth Amendment due process rights. Having 

jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm. 

Civil commitment proceedings against Vazques originated in September 

2008, when the government filed a petition to determine the mental condition of an 

imprisoned individual. At the time, he was incarcerated in a mental health treatment 

unit at a Bureau of Prisons facility after being found incompetent to stand trial for 

the offense of threatening a federal judge. Following evaluation by a risk assessment 

team, the district court entered an order directing that Vazques be civilly committed 

based on its conclusion that Vazques suffered from a mental disease or defect and 

that his unconditional release would create a substantial risk of bodily injury to 

another person or serious damage to the property of another. Since the district 

court’s civil commitment order in 2009, the district court has received annual reports 

on Vazques’s condition and has ordered Vazques’s conditional release at least three 

times. Each of Vazques’s conditional releases were later revoked, most recently in 

August 2021 after Vazques violated the terms of his release by failing to participate 

in required treatment and exhibiting threatening behavior. 

In April 2022, Vazques filed a pro se motion seeking discharge from his civil 

commitment, asserting that he had been “illegally held incarcerated: since, 

November 7, 1995, because[] of personal problems by satanic polices in New York 

City and Reading, Pennsylvania, and also, satanic correctional staff – employees.” 

R. Doc. 107, at 2. The matter was first referred to a magistrate judge who 

recommended that Vazques’s motion be denied because an individual civilly

committed under 18 U.S.C. § 4246 is not legally authorized to file a pro se motion 

seeking discharge, relying on 18 U.S.C. § 4247(h). Vazques, through his public 

1

The Honorable M. Douglas Harpool, United States District Judge for the 

Western District of Missouri, adopting the report and recommendation of the 

Honorable David P. Rush, United States Magistrate Judge for the Western District 

of Missouri. 
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defender, filed objections to the report and recommendation, asserting that the

application of § 4247(h) to bar Vazques’s motion violated Vazques’s Fifth 

Amendment due process rights. The district court overruled the objections, adopted 

the report and recommendation, and entered an order denying Vazques’s pro se 

motion. In its order, the district court first noted that Vazques had “received legal

representation throughout his entire proceedings” before discussing § 4247(h), 

which identifies parties allowed to seek discharge on behalf of a civilly committed 

individual and excludes from this list the civilly committed individual proceeding 

pro se. Given that Vazques had, at all times, been represented by counsel, and that 

the relevant statutory provision excluded Vazques from proceeding pro se, the 

district court denied the motion.

Vazques appeals, renewing his argument that the prohibition against filing a 

pro se motion for discharge violates his Fifth Amendment rights by depriving him 

of access to the courts and by creating an arbitrary distinction between civilly 

committed persons with attorneys or guardians to file discharge motions and those 

without. We review Vazques’s constitutional claim de novo. United States v. 

O’Laughlin, 934 F.3d 840, 841 (8th Cir. 2019). Section 4247(h) provides the 

process by which a civilly committed person may seek a discharge, stating:

Regardless of whether the director of the facility in which a person is 

committed has filed a certificate pursuant to the provisions of 

subsection (e) of section 4241, 4244, 4245, 4246, or 4248, or 

subsection (f) of section 4243, counsel for the person or his legal 

guardian may, at any time during such person’s commitment, file with 

the court that ordered the commitment a motion for a hearing to 

determine whether the person should be discharged from such facility, 

but no such motion may be filed within one hundred and eighty days of 

a court determination that the person should continue to be committed. 

This provision plainly permits only counsel or the legal guardian of the committed 

person to file a motion to discharge. See O’Laughlin, 934 F.3d at 841 (recognizing 

“the specific requirement of 18 U.S.C. § 4247(h) that motions for release from civil 

commitment be filed by an attorney or legal guardian for the committed person”). 
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Accordingly, it follows that a committed person may not file such a motion pro se. 

Vazques asserts that this amounts to denial of access to the courts. This Court has 

previously addressed the Sixth Amendment right of self-representation in the context 

of civil commitment, concluding that this right does not apply to civil commitment 

proceedings. O’Laughlin, 934 F.3d at 841. However, we have not had the occasion 

to address the right of self-representation in the context of a Fifth Amendment 

access-to-the-courts claim. See Chistopher v. Harbury, 536 U.S. 403, 415 n.12 

(2002) (stating that “this Court ha[s] grounded the right of access to courts in . . . the 

Fifth Amendment Due Process clause” among other constitutional provisions). 

Even assuming that the right of self-representation applies to a Fifth 

Amendment access-to-the courts claim, Vasquez’s claim would still fail because he 

cannot show the requisite prejudice. Kind v. Frank, 329 F.3d 979, 981 (8th Cir. 

2003) (stating that to prevail on an access-to-the-courts claim, the plaintiff must 

show actual injury or prejudice). Here, Vazques was represented throughout the 

entire civil commitment proceedings and makes no allegations that his counsel was 

derelict, negligent, or otherwise refused to file a motion for discharge on his behalf. 

Therefore, even if we were to recognize such a right, Vazques would not prevail. 

The district court did not err in denying Vazques’s pro se motion for discharge.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court. 

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