Court Opinion

ID: 7921581
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-08 22:24:06.577048+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:33:05.683774
License: Public Domain

LOCKETT, J.,
concurring: This case illustrates better than most that the process of judicial decision is often difficult to exercise. The hard fact is that sometimes we make decisions we do not like. We make them because they are right, right in the sense that the law and the Constitution as we see them compels the result.
Our colleagues in dissent advance powerful public policy arguments as to why the Kansas Sexually Violent Predators Act (Act) should be found not to violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. With all due respect to those views, I do not believe that the Constitution gives us the right to rule as the dissenting members of the court urge. In this concurring opinion, I will set out my reasoning for joining Justice Allegrucci’s majority opinion.
The dissent disagrees with the basic premise, the underlying reasoning, and the decision of the majority that the Act violates the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United-States Constitution. The dissent bases its reasoning on the decisions of the Supreme Courts of Washington and Wisconsin “which are almost identical and substantially similar legislation in their respective states.” The dissent failed to note that a United States District Court disagreed with the decision of the Washington Supreme Court and declared the similar Washington sexual violent predator act an unconstitutional violation of the Due Process, Ex Post Facto, and Double Jeopardy Clauses of the federal Constitution when the same offender later petitioned the district court for a writ of habeas corpus. Young v. Weston, 898 F. Supp. 744 (D. Wash. 1995).
The United States Constitution is our primary governing document. The Constitution permits the State to remove criminals and the mentally ill from society. Criminals and the mentally ill have separate rights under the Constitution. Under the Constitution, criminals have the rights of equal protection and due process and cannot be cruelly or unusually punished or punished twice for the same crime. The mentally ill have the rights of equal protection and due process and cannot be punished for being mentally ill.
*263The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires that before an individual may be involuntarily committed for control, care, and treatment, the State must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the individual is both mentally ill and dangerous. Under our statutory law a mentally ill person is any person who: (1) is suffering from a severe mental disorder to the extent that such person is in need of treatment; (2) lacks capacity to make an informed decision concerning treatment; and (3) is likely to cause harm to self or others. K.S.A. 59-2902(h). Individuals who are mentally ill may be civilly committed. The State is required to treat these individuals while committed and release them when the statute no longer applies.
A criminal may be sentenced to imprisonment because he or she broke the law and is a danger to others. Some individuals who commit crimes have a personality disorder termed antisocial. An antisocial person is an individual who has disregard for social expectations, social values, and social norms. The person’s behavior indicates a disrespect or unconcern about staying within acceptable boundaries of behavior. Usually the behavior includes disregard for others’ rights. The antisocial person may exploit another to that person’s detriment. In the worst cases, the individual turns to crime.
Leroy Hendricks has an antisocial personality. He is not mentally ill and could not be committed for treatment to protect society. Hendricks committed sex crimes against children. He was sentenced and imprisoned for those crimes. Without violating the Constitution, the State could have incarcerated Hendricks until he exhaled his last breath and his spirit departed this earth, but it did not. Hendricks has now served the criminal sentence imposed by the State and under the law must now be released, even if he has an antisocial personality.
In an effort to protect society from individuals, such as Hendricks, who are antisocial and will in all probability commit other sex crimes when released from prison, the Act was enacted. The Act reclassifies persons to be mentally ill who are antisocial, a danger to others, and have been convicted of a specific sex crime. The effect is that the criminal is reclassified as a mentally ill person. *264The Act permits the State to civilly commit the criminal for treatment as a mentally ill person because of a past criminal act and the fact that the individual has an antisocial personality.
The purpose of having a federal Constitution is to insure equal justice nationwide. In any action where there is a question regarding the United States Constitution, state courts have the power to determine whether the act or action violates the United States Constitution. State courts cannot disregard prior decisions of the United States Supreme Court which interpret the United States Constitution.
The United States Supreme Court in Foucha v. Louisiana, 504 U.S. 71, 118 L. Ed. 2d 437, 112 S. Ct. 1780 (1992), noted that to commit an individual to a mental institution in a civil proceeding, the State is required by the Due Process Clause to prove by clear and convincing evidence the two statutory preconditions to commitment: The person sought to be committed is mentally ill, and the person requires hospitalization for his or her own welfare and the protection of others.
The State of Louisiana asserted that because an individual, like Hendricks here, once committed a criminal act and now has an antisocial personality which sometimes leads to aggressive conduct, a disorder for which there is no effective treatment, the individual may be held indefinitely as being mentally ill. The United States Supreme Court stated that rationale would permit the State to hold indefinitely any other insanity acquittee, not only the mentally ill, who could be shown to have a personality disorder which may lead to criminal conduct. It noted that the same would be true of any convicted criminal, even though the person has completed his or her prison term. The Foucha Court pointed out that it would also be only a step away from substituting confinements for dangerousness for our present system which, with only narrow exceptions and aside from permissible confinements for mental illness, incarcerates only those who are proved beyond reasonable doubt to have violated a criminal law. The Supreme Court held that a convicted criminal, such as Hendricks, may not be held as a mentally ill person because of criminal dangerousness.
*265Because the Washington act, which is almost identical and substantially similar legislation to the Kansas act, was declared unconstitutional by the federal court, and the reasoning of the majority follows the prior decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, I must join the majority.
In this instance we may not be the court of last resort. Under the rules of the United States Supreme Court, the State may seek a writ of certiorari, and that Court has the power to make the final determination.