Court Opinion

ID: 9592731
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:16:35.300745+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:17.619876
License: Public Domain

PARKER, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent and suggest that this court is in danger of ignoring the supreme court’s direction in Linehan and Blodgett. The record in this case appears to present a menu of equivocal and conflicting testimony, yet we affirm the commitment of Michael Pirkl as a psychopathic personality in the face of the supreme court’s reminder that the standard of proof is clear and convincing evidence.
We are told in Linehan that all three of the Pearson elements must be shown by clear and convincing evidence and that the latter two elements must be so shown as a matter of law, yet we find testimony supporting commitment to have assumed the second element, that is, the “utter lack of power to control * * * sexual impulses,” to have been proved by the showing of the first element, “his habitual course of misconduct in sexual matters.” Thus, the expert witness testimony effectively eliminates an element of proof found by the court to be necessary in order to uphold the constitutionality of the statute. As a matter of common sense, if it is his past course of conduct for which he is now to be sentenced to indefinite commitment without a showing that he presently lacks the power to control his sexual impulses, then Pirkl is a victim of double jeopardy and is being punished again for those same offenses.
The initial commitment court’s findings of fact, made before the supreme court’s decision in Linehan, were adopted by the review court. The review court stated its heavy reliance upon the testimony of one of the experts (DeVries), who denies the trial court’s recitation of his testimony. The witness was told, in essence, that the court had found Pirkl to have met the Pearson standard two months previously, and he was then asked if there were any facts in his (the witness’s) evaluation to show a change in Pirkl that would lead him to believe Pirkl no longer fit the definition, and the witness responded, “Pirkl is the same person he was 60 days ago — there is no change in him.” He did not say that he agreed with the initial trial court’s characterization that Pirkl met the Pearson test. Thus, the trial court applied a logical fallacy (assuming the conclusion), but when the witness wrote him to point this out, his complaint was rejected out of hand. The majority treats this incident as insignificant, but this view is contrary to the explicitly stated weight to which the review court assigned it.
I would submit that the testimony in this case falls far short of the clear and convincing standard and that a careful examination of the record will show that the medical testimony is simply not present to justify the indeterminate commitment ordered.