Opinion ID: 203587
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Substantive Due Process Protections for SDPs Under Hendricks

Text: Bearing in mind this less-rigid understanding of the Massachusetts SDP statute and state court interpretations thereof, we turn to the question of whether Hendricks requires a finding of facial invalidity. In Hendricks, the Supreme Court held constitutional an SDP statute that, unlike the Massachusetts statute at issue in this case, provided for automatic annual judicial redetermination of sexual dangerousness. Dutil relies on Hendricks for the proposition that SDPs have a right to more expeditious hearings to redetermine their sexual dangerousness than they are currently afforded, and he argues that the Massachusetts SDP statute must be invalidated as a matter of substantive due process. We disagree. To support his reading of Hendricks, Dutil adverts to language in that case discussing Kansas' then-current SDP statute, which provided for automatic annual judicial redetermination of sexual dangerousness. Specifically, the Supreme Court wrote: [C]ommitment under the Act is only potentially indefinite. The maximum amount of time an individual can be incapacitated pursuant to a single judicial proceeding is one year. If Kansas seeks to continue the detention beyond that year, a court must once again determine beyond a reasonable doubt that the detainee satisfies the same standards as required for the initial confinement. This requirement ... demonstrates that Kansas does not intend an individual committed pursuant to the Act to remain confined any longer than he suffers from a mental abnormality rendering him unable to control his dangerousness. 521 U.S. at 364, 117 S.Ct. 2072. This passage certainly can be read to articulate a right not to be confined past the point of dangerousness. Hendricks does not, however, establish that a statute's failure to provide an unambiguous timeline for a redetermination of an SDP's sexual dangerousness renders the statute unconstitutional. This is so for at least two reasons. First, the explicit language of Hendricks does not support the proposition Dutil advances. The passage quoted above does not specify how often the state must reassess an SDP's dangerousness. Rather, it indicates that an SDP statute providing for automatic annual judicial redetermination can be constitutionally acceptable. Additionally, Hendricks analyzes Kansas' SDP statute in a context meaningfully different from this case. The quoted passage from Hendricks supported the Court's conclusions that, for purposes of the double jeopardy and ex post facto clauses of the Constitution, the State of Kansas had established civil, not criminal, proceedings, and that incarceration under that act was not punitive. See id. at 360-69, 117 S.Ct. 2072; accord Seling v. Young, 531 U.S. 250, 261, 121 S.Ct. 727, 148 L.Ed.2d 734 (2001) (discussing Hendricks ). The Court thus focused on Kansas' redetermination provision as evidence of the state's non-punitive intent, not as a necessary element for an SDP statute to pass muster under the due process clause. [6] Moreover, even assuming, arguendo, that Hendricks did announce a substantive due process right to periodic redetermination hearings, Dutil has failed to show that no set of circumstances exists under which the [`speedy trial' language of the Massachusetts SDP statute] would be valid. Salerno, 481 U.S. at 745, 107 S.Ct. 2095. Despite the obvious ambiguity in the phrase speedy trial, those words permit interpretations that would be consistent with even an exacting due process requirement for redetermination hearings.