Opinion ID: 184750
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Case Law Addressing Section 301 and Conditional Release

Text: 23 Hough v. United States, 271 F.2d 458 (D.C.Cir.1959), the only case that addresses the meaning of conditional release under section 301, bolsters the point that conditional release from custody or confinement, as used variously throughout the statute, means conditional release from Hospital guard or restraint. 24 In Hough, this court answered the question of whether an individual committed under section 301 could be permitted, without judicial approval, to leave the Hospital grounds on his own without a guard or attendant. We answered no and held that such an off-grounds visit was a conditional release under section 301(e). While cautioning that a person committed for treatment is not a prisoner, we said: 25 It does not follow, however, that the hospital authorities are free to allow such a patient to leave the hospital without supervision.... [T]he statute makes one in appellant's situation a member of an exceptional class of people. It provides, generally, that the District Court have a voice in any termination of her confinement, whether unconditional or conditional. 26 Although the statute does not speak of temporary leaves from the hospital, its purpose, as we read it, is to assure that members of the exceptional class to which appellant belongs be kept under hospital restraint until the District Court, in the exercise of a discretion, reviewable by this Court, approves a relaxation of that restraint. We read conditional release as used in the present statute to include the kind of temporary freedom which has been given this appellant. 27 Hough, 271 F.2d at 462 (citation omitted) (emphasis added). Despite Hough's unequivocal reliance on restraint as the touchstone for deciding whether a patient has been conditionally released, the government, citing dictum in another case, United States v. Ecker, 543 F.2d 178 (D.C.Cir.1976), asks us to expand Hough to hold that an off-campus visit with two Hospital escorts is also a conditional release under the statute. In Ecker, we held that a district court reviewing the Hospital's certificate for conditional release under section 301(e) must employ a de novo standard of review; we were not presented, as we were in Hough, with the meaning of conditional release. Although we referred to a patient's cross[ing] the hospital boundary as the point at which a court stops deferring to the Hospital's judgment, we also quoted Hough's pronouncement that the presence of Hospital restraint determines whether a patient has been conditionally released. Id. at 186. Ecker thus represents no persuasive authority at all for the principle that a patient has been released from custody when he leaves the Hospital grounds with a Hospital escort. 28 So, given that Hough stands only for the proposition--at most--that a patient's unrestrained release into the community is a conditional release, we conclude that prior case law, together with the syntactical usage of custody and confinement in the statute, compel the conclusion that a patient's off-campus visit with Hospital escorts (a B-City pass) is not a conditional release under section 301. This has certainly been the uniform assumption of every court in the District of Columbia--not to mention the government and the Hospital, discussed more fully below--that has ever considered a patient's motion for conditional release, a Hospital's certification of conditional release, or a revocation of conditional release. See, e.g., Ecker, 543 F.2d at 181; United States v. McNeil, 434 F.2d 502, 505 (D.C.Cir.1970) (Bazelon, J., concurring); Friend, 388 F.2d at 579 (D.C.Cir.1967); Darnell v. Cameron, 348 F.2d 64, 65 (D.C.Cir.1965); Jackson v. United States, 641 A.2d 454, 456 (D.C.1994); DeVeau, 483 A.2d at 310 n. 4; United States v. Charnizon, 232 A.2d 586, 587 (D.C.1967). The Hough court also expressly recognized the difference which we reiterate here between conditional releases and Hospital-accompanied off-campus excursions: it noted that the district court could require that [the patient] be restricted to the hospital grounds, or, if outside the hospital grounds, in the custody or company of a hospital attendant until such a time as the court orders the conditional release of [the patient]. Hough, 271 F.2d at 460 (emphasis added).