Court Opinion

ID: 9463165
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:59:45.497542+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:57.605744
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
Following a non-jury trial before Judge John Lewis Smith, Jr., upon stipulated facts in May 1968, Lewis Ecker was acquitted by reason of insanity of the rape and murder of a senatorial aide. Ever since, he has been confined to Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital. The superintendent of that institution has now recommended, for the second time, that Ecker be conditionally released for a few hours each day to participate in a vocational training program. On December 27, 1974, Judge Smith rejected that petition, a decision which the majority today upholds. I concur.
The plain language of § 301(e) requires the district court to focus on the question of whether the patient whose release is proposed “will ... in the reasonable future be dangerous to himself or others.” There can be no doubt that Judge Smith was well justified in concluding that Eek-er’s release posed an unacceptable risk to the safety of the community. It is undisputed that, at the time of the instant petition, appellant continued to suffer from “chronic mental illness, namely anti-social personality disorder (with organic features), . and sexual deviation (sadism)” as well as experiencing an active fantasy life. Ecker seeks to minimize the severity of his condition by stressing that each of the experts who testified below advocated his conditional release. While deference is of course due the opinions of trained psychiatrists and psychologists, it is and must remain the responsibility of the court to weigh the patient’s individual therapeutic needs against the possibility of danger to society at large. See Dixon v. Jacobs, 138 U.S.App.D.C. 319, 322, 427 F.2d 589, 595 at n. 17 (1970). Judge Smith properly balanced those considerations in this case.
Indeed, the propriety of the district court’s ruling is so apparent from the record that I do not believe it is necessary to reach out and decide the novel question of where the burden of proof should lie in § 301(e) hearings. No matter on whom the burden is placed, Judge Smith’s decision that the confinement of Lewis Ecker be continued is supported by the evidence. Judge Wilkey nevertheless holds that in such proceedings, “there is no assignable burden of proof as we would know it in a criminal or civil case.”
I am constrained to disagree. The unfortunate but inescapable fact is that Ecker’s mental illness has already manifested itself in the commission of a violent and anti-so*201cial act. Under these circumstances, I would require the Hospital to show by a preponderance of the evidence that his release under the conditions herein proposed would not in the reasonable future endanger the lives and well-being of those with whom Ecker may come into contact. Such an allocation would be consistent with the standard employed in evaluating patient initiated habeas corpus petitions under § 301(g). See Bolton v. Harris, 395 F.2d 642, 653 (D.C.Cir.1968).
Ecker’s past conduct similarly justifies the requirement that those committed after a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity obtain judicial approval prior to their conditional or unconditional release although no such additional procedural hurdle is placed in the path of those civilly committed. An equivalent equal protection attack upon this disparity was dismissed by this Circuit in Bolton v. Harris, supra at 652. Nothing has transpired in the intervening years which would require us now to reconsider that decision. I am in complete accord with Judge Wilkey’s conclusion that Baxstrom v. Herold, 383 U.S. 107, 86 S.Ct. 760, 15 L.Ed.2d 620 (1966) and Jackson v. Indiana, 406 U.S. 715, 92 S.Ct. 1845, 32 L.Ed.2d 435 (1972), do not control the instant situation.
I would affirm the order of the district court denying appellant’s request for conditional release.