Opinion ID: 223013
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Timing of the Commitment Petition

Text: As laid out above, § 4248 provides for the initiation of civil commitment proceedings against, inter alia, persons in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons. 18 U.S.C. § 4248(a). Shields argues that the Bureau of Prisons could not rightfully claim custody of him when the commitment petition was filed, as he should have been released the previous day. This purported defect in the legality of the Bureau's custody of Shields is indisputably minor, arising from a two-day miscalculation in Shields's sentence that led to his commitment petition being filed a day late. Notwithstanding the minimal nature of the error, Shields contends that we must construe the custody requirement strictly, and that the delay in filing the petition required his release. [10] We disagree. A similar question came before the Supreme Court in United States v. Montalvo-Murillo, 495 U.S. 711, 110 S.Ct. 2072, 109 L.Ed.2d 720 (1990). That case involved application of the Bail Reform Act of 1984, which specifies that a detention hearing must be held immediately upon a criminal detainee's first appearance before a judge, with provision for no more than a five-day continuance. Id. at 714, 110 S.Ct. 2072; 18 U.S.C. § 3142(f). En route to the Supreme Court, the district and appeals courts had both determined that the remedy for any failure to meet the statute's requirement for a timely hearing must be pretrial release of the detainee, regardless of whether the detainee posed a risk of flight and a danger to the community. 495 U.S. at 716, 110 S.Ct. 2072. The Court reversed. While acknowledging that the duty to abide by the statutory time limits for a detention hearing was a mandatory one, the Court held that the sanction for breach is not loss of all later powers to act. Id. at 718, 110 S.Ct. 2072. In so holding, the Court looked to the purposes of the Bail Reform Act and concluded that requiring release to remedy a defect in the timing of the detention hearing would defeat those purposes: Automatic release contravenes the object of the statute, to provide fair bail procedures while protecting the safety of the public and assuring the appearance at trial of defendants found likely to flee. The end of exacting compliance with the letter of § 3142(f) cannot justify the means of exposing the public to an increased likelihood of violent crime by persons on bail, an evil the statute aims to prevent. The Government's interest in preventing these harms remains real and substantial even when the time limits have been ignored. The safety of society does not become forfeit to the accident of noncompliance with statutory time limits where the Government is ready and able to come forward with the requisite showing to meet the burden of proof required by the statute. Id. at 720, 110 S.Ct. 2072 (citation omitted). We reach the same conclusion here. The Walsh Act's civil commitment scheme, like the Bail Reform Act, is intended to safeguard society from persons in federal custody who would pose a serious danger if released. Volungus, 595 F.3d at 6-7. To interpret the Walsh Act to mandate release of a potentially dangerous individual due to a de minimis mistake in the timing of initiating the commitment process would be manifestly inconsistent with the overall structure of the Act. Moreover, such an interpretation would contravene the great principle of public policy,. . . which forbids that the public interests should be prejudiced by the negligence of the officers or agents to whose care they are confided. Montalvo-Murillo, 495 U.S. at 718, 110 S.Ct. 2072 (quoting Brock v. Pierce Cnty., 476 U.S. 253, 260, 106 S.Ct. 1834, 90 L.Ed.2d 248 (1986)). We find nothing in the language of the Walsh Act to suggest that Congress intended such a reading. Shields resists application of Montalvo-Murillo 's reasoning on two grounds. First, he argues that more recent Supreme Court precedent has declined to countenance a general exception for de minimis or technical violations of an enactment's procedural requirements, citing Alabama v. Bozeman, 533 U.S. 146, 121 S.Ct. 2079, 150 L.Ed.2d 188 (2001). Second, he contends that the present case can be distinguished from Montalvo-Murillo because the reference to custody in § 4248(a) is jurisdictional, whereas the Bail Reform Act's requirement of a timely hearing is not. If custody is a jurisdictional prerequisite to civil commitment, as Shields urges, a defect in the legality of custody might indeed deprive a federal court of subject matter jurisdiction to hear a commitment petition under § 4248(a). To succeed, both of these lines of argument require a level of statutory specificity regarding the nature of the custody requirement and the consequences of imperfect custody that cannot be found in § 4248(a). Bozeman was not a repudiation of Montalvo-Murillo, but instead an example of the principle that a clear statement can trump background interpretive assumptions, such as Montalvo-Murillo 's allowance for de minimis exceptions to an enactment's procedural requirements. In Bozeman, the Supreme Court affirmed dismissal of criminal charges due to the government's failure to comply with the antishuttling provision of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers (IAD). [11] In so doing, the Court rejected the argument that the government's failure in compliance was de minimis and should be ignored under Montalvo-Murillo and related authority. The Court emphasized that the language of the IAD, unlike the provisions of the Bail Reform Act at issue in Montalvo-Murillo, stated in absolute and specific language the consequences that would flow from a violation of the antishuttling provision, namely, that `the court shall enter an order dismissing the [indictment] with prejudice.' Bozeman, 533 U.S. at 153, 121 S.Ct. 2079 (quoting 18 U.S.C.App. 2 § 2 (Art. IV(e))). There is no such specificity here; § 4248(a), like the Bail Reform Act, is silent on the issue of a remedy for violations of the custody requirement. Id. (quoting Montalvo-Murillo, 495 U.S. at 716, 110 S.Ct. 2072). Certainly, neither § 4248(a) nor the Walsh Act specify that a minimal defect in legal custody at the time that a commitment petition is filed requires dismissal of the petition. Shields's argument that custody is a jurisdictional requirement fails for similar reasons. The Supreme Court has cautioned that a threshold limitation on a statute's scope may not be branded jurisdictional unless Congress clearly states its intent for the limitation to be so treated. Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U.S. 500, 515-16, 126 S.Ct. 1235, 163 L.Ed.2d 1097 (2006) ([W]hen Congress does not rank a statutory limitation on coverage as jurisdictional, courts should treat the restriction as nonjurisdictional in character.). Here, there is no suggestion, let alone a clear statement, that Congress intended federal courts to treat the Bureau of Prison's custody of a respondent as a jurisdictional requirement for commitment proceedings under § 4248. Because § 4248(a) `does not speak in jurisdictional terms or refer in any way to the jurisdiction of the district courts,' id. at 515, 126 S.Ct. 1235 (quoting Zipes v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 455 U.S. 385, 394, 102 S.Ct. 1127, 71 L.Ed.2d 234 (1982)), we decline to grant it jurisdictional effect. For his last line of argument, Shields asserts that the miscalculation here was either reckless or negligent, and even if Montalvo-Murillo would permit a commitment proceeding to move forward in the face of a de minimis defect in the legality of custody, it can do so only where [the defect in custody] . . . did not result from bad faith, recklessness or negligence. The argument is unavailing. The record indicates that the mistake in the calculation of Shields's sentence was a clerical error. The error was certainly not reckless, [12] and whether it rose to the level of negligence is immaterial. Negligent departures or omissions by government officials are precisely the sort of de minimis mistakes addressed in Montalvo-Murillo, 495 U.S. at 717, 110 S.Ct. 2072. Indeed, it is this very negligence of [government] officers or agents that Montalvo-Murillo cautions should not ordinarily forfeit the government's ability to protect the public from potentially dangerous individuals. Id. at 718, 110 S.Ct. 2072. In sum, a fair reading of § 4248(a) cannot justify releasing Shields to remedy a one-day delay in filing his commitment petition as a result of a de minimis error in calculating his release date. [13]