Opinion ID: 2691597
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Is R.C. 2945.39 Criminal in Nature?

Text: {¶ 21} The appellate court held that an involuntary commitment under R.C. 2945.39 is criminal rather than civil in nature and that Williams’s constitutional rights were therefore violated because in his R.C. 2945.39 commitment hearing, he was not afforded the procedural safeguards required by the Constitution for criminal prosecutions. In so holding, it applied the “intenteffects test” employed by this court in State v. Cook, 83 Ohio St.3d at 415, 700 N.E.2d 570, to consider whether sex-offender legislation enacted in 1996 was civil or criminal for purposes of conducting an analysis under the Ex Post Facto Clause, Section 10, Article I of the United States Constitution. {¶ 22} In applying the intent-effects test, a court first considers whether the legislature intended the statute to be remedial (and therefore civil) or penal (and therefore criminal). Id. If the intent was that the statute be penal and criminal, then the inquiry ends. However, if the intent was that the statute be remedial and civil, then the statute’s specific effects must be examined. The statute may still be determined to be punitive and criminal if its effects negate a 7 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO remedial intention. Id. at 417-418. See also United States v. Ward (1980), 448 U.S. 242, 248-249, 100 S.Ct. 2636, 65 L.Ed.2d 742. {¶ 23} The intent-effects test was also applied by the United States Supreme Court in Kansas v. Hendricks (1997), 521 U.S. 346, 117 S.Ct. 2072, 138 L.Ed.2d 501. In that case, the court evaluated the constitutionality of a Kansas statute permitting the state to institutionalize “sexually violent predators” who had completed their criminal sentences but who had mental abnormalities or personality disorders that indicated that they would likely reoffend. Id. at 350353. The court held that the statute was civil in nature and did not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause or the Ex Post Facto Clause. Id. at 370, 371. {¶ 24} The statute in Hendricks was determined to be civil for reasons that included the fact that the statutory provision was in the state’s probate code and not in its criminal code, id. at 361, the statute did not implicate retribution or deterrence, which are the primary goals of criminal punishment, id. at 361-363, and the statute did not require a finding of scienter, id. at 362. The appellate court in the case at bar distinguished Hendricks, pointing out that R.C. 2945.39 and other implicated statutes are in the state’s criminal code and that there is no explicit indication of a civil purpose in R.C. 2945.39. 179 Ohio App.3d 584, 2008-Ohio-6245, 902 N.E.2d 1042, at ¶ 43. {¶ 25} Although the appellate court here recognized that R.C. 2945.39 is meant to protect the public, it read the statute to “suggest” that “protecting the public from dangerous mentally ill persons is secondary to punishing those dangerous mentally ill persons who cannot be tried.” Id. at ¶ 45. In support of this view, the court noted that the criminal indictment remains pending after the trial court commits the defendant under R.C. 2945.39. Id. at ¶ 46. {¶ 26} As to the requirement that the evaluator conducting the periodic reviews under the statutes must express an opinion as to whether the defendant remains incompetent to stand trial, the appellate court considered the requirement 8 January Term, 2010 to be an indicator that a key statutory purpose is to “confine” the defendant in case he regains competency to be tried. Id. The court found fault with the way the relevant statutes link the maximum length of detention to the maximum criminal sentence the defendant could have received if convicted. It determined that this connection bears no relation to the purposes of civil commitment and shows that the charged offense is not used solely as evidence of dangerousness or mental illness in determining whether commitment is appropriate. Id. at ¶ 47. {¶ 27} According to the appellate court, the statutory framework “strongly suggests that commitment procedures under R.C. Chapter 5122 are adequate to address society’s interest in confining dangerous mentally ill persons.” Id. at ¶ 48. The appellate court stated that “although R.C. 2945.39 attempts to accomplish some of the same goals as civil commitment, the commitment procedures of R.C. 2945.39 reflect an overriding intent to confine incompetent defendants who have been charged with serious felonies as if they had been convicted or until they can be tried.” Id. at ¶ 49. {¶ 28} Because the appellate court found that the intent of R.C. 2945.39 is penal, and that the statute is criminal for that reason, it did not consider the “effects” prong of the intent-effects test. {¶ 29} In contrast, the dissent agreed with the trial court that R.C. 2945.39 is civil in nature and functions as “merely a transfer of commitment authority to the criminal court from the probate court for mentally ill persons subject to hospitalization by court order, whose present dangerousness is demonstrated by the commission of a serious felony.” Id. at ¶ 87 (Wolff, P.J., dissenting). {¶ 30} Our consideration of R.C. 2945.39 and related statutes leads us away from the view that the commitment of an incompetent defendant under R.C. 2945.39 is the functional equivalent of criminally confining the defendant. Nor do we see any indication of an overriding intent to punish or confine criminal defendants within the statutory framework. 9 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO {¶ 31} Rather, we view R.C. 2945.39 and related statutes as designed primarily for the purpose of protecting the public. In particular, we note that R.C. 2945.39(D)(1), which requires the trial court to order the least-restrictive commitment alternative available consistent with public safety and the defendant’s welfare if it enters a commitment order under R.C. 2945.39, explicitly states that the court “shall give preference to protecting public safety.” This statement gives voice to the predominant intent underlying R.C. 2945.39. {¶ 32} The present dangerousness of a specific offender (who, as a threshold matter, must have been charged with a serious offense, R.C. 2945.38(C)(1), to be subject to the statutes at issue) is the critical component of an R.C. 2945.39 proceeding. The type of offense charged is a reasonable indicator of the level of the offender’s dangerousness. The seriousness of the charged offense plays a permissible and highly relevant role in the trial court’s determination whether the offender’s commitment under R.C. 2945.39 is appropriate. See Hendricks, 521 U.S. at 362, 117 S.Ct. 2072, 138 L.Ed.2d 501 (a person’s prior conduct may permissibly be considered to support a finding of dangerousness). {¶ 33} Moreover, R.C. 2945.39, as with the statute under consideration in Hendricks, does not require a finding of scienter, nor does it implicate retribution or deterrence, which are the primary objectives of criminal punishment and the two most telling factors that a particular statute is criminal in nature. See id. at 361-363. R.C. 2945.39 does not implicate retribution, because it does not affix culpability for prior criminal conduct. See id. at 362. A trial court’s determination by clear and convincing evidence under R.C. 2945.39(A)(2) that the defendant committed the offense does not require a finding of scienter and is merely a factor considered in determining the propriety of the commitment; it plays no role beyond that limited purpose. R.C. 2945.39 does not implicate deterrence, because a defendant to whom it applies is unlikely, by the very nature 10 January Term, 2010 of his mental illness, to possess the ability to tailor his behavior to the requirements of the law upon the threat of commitment. See id. at 362-363. {¶ 34} Although it is true that R.C. 2945.39 and its related statutes are contained within Title 29 of the Revised Code, that fact is not dispositive as to whether these statutes are civil or criminal. The sum of the statutory attributes must be examined. See Cook, 83 Ohio St.3d at 417, 700 N.E.2d 570. Similarly, the fact that the statutes refer to the person being considered for commitment as the “defendant” does not mean that proceedings under R.C. 2945.39 are necessarily criminal in nature. We view both of these statutory characteristics as naturally flowing from the reality that the person has been charged with a serious criminal offense and is subject to proceedings under R.C. 2945.38, and not as any particular indication of an intent to punish. Moreover, although periodic reviews of a person committed under R.C. 2945.39 include an assessment of his ability to stand trial, see R.C. 2945.401(C), that fact does not transform proceedings that are inherently civil into ones that are criminal. {¶ 35} We therefore determine that R.C. 2945.39 is manifestly civil in its intent. As the dissent in the appellate court noted, “[I]ndividuals committed under R.C. 2945.39 must be released when they have been found to be no longer a mentally ill person subject to hospitalization by court order.    [T]he release provision emphasizes that the primary purpose of R.C. 2945.39 is to provide stricter confinement for mentally ill persons who are particularly dangerous. As noted by the United States Supreme Court in Hendricks, the confinement of the dangerously mentally ill ‘is a legitimate nonpunitive governmental objective and has been historically so regarded.’ 521 U.S. at 363, 117 S.Ct. 2072, 138 L.Ed.2d 501.” 179 Ohio App.3d 584, 2008-Ohio-6245, 902 N.E.2d 1042, ¶ 87 (Wolff, P.J., dissenting). {¶ 36} The question that arises next, under the second prong of the intenteffects test, is whether the statute operates in such a way that the statute’s effects 11 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO negate the civil intent. We see nothing in the effects of the statutory framework that negates its civil intent. The same features that have caused us to conclude that the statute is intended to be remedial in nature with an overriding purpose of protecting the public also support the conclusion that the effects of the statute are remedial in nature and consistent with the remedial intent. In particular, R.C. 2945.39 does not implicate retribution or deterrence, does not require a finding of scienter, and provides that commitments under the statute must terminate when the person is no longer mentally ill and subject to hospitalization by court order. {¶ 37} We conclude that R.C. 2945.39 is a civil statute. Consequently, a person committed under the statute need not be afforded the constitutional rights afforded to a defendant in a criminal prosecution. The judgment of the court of appeals on this issue is therefore reversed.