Opinion ID: 152635
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Categorical Claim

Text: Young first argues that a diagnosis of APD can never serve as a sufficient basis for civil commitment because the disorder does not affect volition and is so prevalent among criminal offenders that it cannot be used to distinguish ordinary recidivists from the dangerously mentally ill. The Massachusetts Court of Appeals declined to adopt this argument in the abstract way in which Young presented it and instead disposed of the case by examining the evidentiary record to determine whether sufficient evidence was produced at trial to demonstrate that Young's APD seriously impairs his ability to control his sexual impulses. Young, 2006 WL 1042916, at . We hold that the state court's analytical choice represents a reasonable application of Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court has not decided whether a diagnosis of APD can qualify by itself as a sufficiently serious impairment to support the civil commitment of a dangerous individual. [2] The Court's decisions in Hendricks and Crane, however, suggest that the general issue as to whether a particular mental disorder can serve as a sufficient basis for civil commitment ordinarily is not susceptible to categorical analysis. In Hendricks, the court declined to give talismanic significance to the terminology used by the psychiatric community when evaluating the constitutionality of a state statute that based commitment on a finding of mental abnormality rather than mental illness. 521 U.S. at 359, 117 S.Ct. 2072. Instead, recognizing that civil commitment ultimately turns on law rather than psychiatry, the court gave state legislatures significant latitude in specifying the circumstances under which civil commitment will be warranted. Id. More recently, in Crane, the Court endorsed a contextual approach to the determination of whether an impairment results in serious difficulty in controlling behavior by stating that the determination should be made in light of such features of the case as the nature of the psychiatric diagnosis, and the severity of the mental abnormality itself.... 534 U.S. at 413, 122 S.Ct. 867. When read together, these decisions suggest that a diagnostic label such as APD, while relevant, will rarely be dispositive in determining whether an impairment is sufficiently substantial to seriously impair volition. Instead, it is the manner in which the condition manifests itself in the individual that will determine whether a particular commitment decision meets the requirements of the due process clause. Brown v. Watters, 599 F.3d 602, 614 (7th Cir.2010). Because the state court followed this approach, it did not unreasonably apply Supreme Court precedent when it refused to credit Young's categorical claim.