Opinion ID: 1110277
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: indefinite commitment

Text: Indefinite commitments under the Ryce Act clearly do not present situations where compliance is a matter of convenience or inconsequential matters are at issue. To the contrary, under the Ryce Act, detainees could literally be committed indefinitely for the rest of their lives. The U.S. Supreme Court has stated that even in civil commitments [f]reedom from bodily restraint has always been at the core of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause from arbitrary governmental action. Foucha v. Louisiana, 504 U.S. 71, 80, 112 S.Ct. 1780, 118 L.Ed.2d 437 (1992). It is clear that `commitment for any purpose constitutes a significant deprivation of liberty that requires due process protection.'  Jones v. United States, 463 U.S. 354, 361, 103 S.Ct. 3043, 77 L.Ed.2d 694 (1983) (quoting Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418, 425, 99 S.Ct. 1804, 60 L.Ed.2d 323, (1979)). Obviously these commitments involve serious substantive rights with constitutional implications. Furthermore, as noted above, it appears that the Legislature intended that the State would initiate commitment proceedings while the inmate is still incarcerated. See § 394.915(1), Fla. Stat. (1999). In Valdez v. Moore, 745 So.2d 1009, 1012 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999), the Fourth District noted that the State in defending the constitutionality of the Ryce Act had repeatedly emphasiz[ed] that in the typical case the procedures in the act will be carried out while the person is still incarcerated pursuant to the criminal sentence, and accordingly the absence of a probable cause hearing would not violate due process. Although that does seem to have been how the legislature contemplated that the Act would work, and under those circumstances there would be no due process problem created by the lack of an adversarial probable cause hearing, the Act did not work that way for these petitioners. Nor has the state cited any authority which would justify detaining these petitioners, who have completed their sentences, beyond their release dates without an adversarial probable cause hearing. In fact, based on our review of the Ryce Act and the available evidence of legislative intent discussed above, we conclude that the Legislature intended that ordinarily the review process of potential sexual predators would be concluded while the person was still in prison. [7] The initial ex parte probable cause determination described in section 394.915(1) applies primarily to respondents who are still in prison, and a finding of probable cause under this provision simply requires that a respondent be transferred immediately to a secure facility upon the expiration of the sentence. Civil commitment proceedings involve a serious deprivation of liberty and, thus, such proceedings must comply with the due process clauses of the Florida and United States Constitutions. See Addington, 441 U.S. at 425, 99 S.Ct. 1804 (holding that civil commitment for any purpose constitutes significant deprivation of liberty that requires due process protection); Pullen v. State, 802 So.2d 1113, 1117 (Fla. 2001) (noting that an individual who faces involuntary commitment to a mental health facility has a liberty interest at stake). Presumably, if the State followed the time periods established in the Ryce Act, the commitment trial would take place well in advance of the respondent's date of release from prison and the due process concerns of commitment beyond imprisonment would be substantially alleviated. Under this scheme, the State would have multiple opportunities to initiate and pursue these commitments before the respondent's criminal sentence expires. [8] However, as the Second District Court of Appeal has pointedly recognized, virtually the only safeguard and limitation put on the State's continued detention is the statute's requirement that the court shall conduct a trial within thirty days of a determination of probable cause. See Kinder, 779 So.2d at 515. Further, as the Fourth District Court of Appeal has emphasized, the continued confinement of a person after he has served his full sentence for conviction of a crime is serious enough to warrant scrupulous compliance with the statute permitting such confinement, not to mention the applicable constitutional provisions. Johnson v. Dep't of Children & Family Servs., 747 So.2d 402, 403 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999). In sum, if the word shall is not construed as mandatory, a serious question would arise as to whether the Ryce Act itself provides the proper constitutional protections to detainees, particularly as it has been applied to the respondent in the instant case. Accordingly, based on the importance of the obvious liberty rights at stake, and consistent with the Kansas act upon which Florida's law is modeled, we agree that the Legislature intended that there should be scrupulous compliance with the statutory thirty-day time limit set forth in section 394.916(1). See id.