Court Opinion

ID: 9750855
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 15:39:19.659078+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:24.290815
License: Public Domain

NEBEKER, Associate Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the court’s opinion in this case. In addition, it is evident that the *1239Supreme Court’s rationale in Addington v. Texas, - U.S. -, 99 S.Ct. 1804, 60 L.Ed.2d 323 (1979), concerning the material differences between civil commitment proceedings and juvenile delinquency or criminal proceedings should'prompt a reexamination of this court’s en banc decision in In re Lomax, D.C.App., 386 A.2d 1185 (1978) (vacating a panel decision reported at 367 A.2d 1272 (1976)). The central issue of Lomax was whether the government could appeal an adverse decision in a civil commitment proceeding. The en banc majority opinion held that the government had no such right. As the dissent observed, the Lomax majority decision is devoid of a rationale. Id. at 1189. However, there are general references in the en banc opinion to the constitutional rights of the individual within the civil commitment process and a likening of that process to a criminal proceeding. Specifically, the majority stated that the commitment “legislation operates to defeat this appeal just as certainly as the double jeopardy clause does in the criminal law context.” Id. at 1188. That statement is footnoted with a reference to the patient’s argument “that the double jeopardy clause applies to civil commitment proceedings just as it does to juvenile delinquency proceedings.” Id. at 1188 n.10. The Lomax opinion is replete with references analogizing the civil commitment process to a criminal proceeding and infers that the same constitutional rules should apply to both.1
It is undisputed that an individual’s liberty interest is at stake in an involuntary commitment proceeding and consequently procedural due process protections apply. Addington v. Texas, supra, 99 S.Ct. at 1809 (and citations following). However, the application of procedural due process does not result in the full panoply of rights accorded in a criminal proceeding. See In re Ballay, 157 U.S.App.D.C. 59, 60, 482 F.2d 648, 649 (1973). More than the individual’s liberty interest is at stake in a civil commitment.
The state has a legitimate interest under its parens patriae powers in providing care to its citizens who are unable because of emotional disorder to care for themselves; the state also has the authority under its police power to protect the community from the dangerous tendencies of some who are mentally ill. [Add-ington v. Texas, supra, 99 S.Ct. at 1809.]
It is a balancing of these interests that will establish the procedures that are constitutionally mandated in the civil commitment process. See Developments — Civil Commitment, 87 Harv.L.Rev. 1189,1272 (1974). In Addington, the Court rejected the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard for civil commitment proceedings and noted that the risk of error in a criminal conviction “must be minimized even at the risk that some who are guilty might go free.” Addington v. Texas, supra, 99 S.Ct. at 1810. However, the Court reasoned that although an erroneous “civil commitment is sometimes as undesirable as an erroneous conviction,” there are subsequent circumstances in a civil commitment proceeding which mitigate against a person’s continued confinement when he is no longer ill and poses no danger. These factors include the “layers of professional review and observation of the patient’s condition, and the concern of family and friends.” Id. 99 S.Ct. at 1811.2
Criminal convictions are viewed as stigmatizing an individual. Such stigma, as well as the loss of one’s liberty, has supported the Court’s rationale that due process requires the standard of proof used in criminal cases.3 The Court in Addington *1240reasons that the stigma attaches to a mentally ill person with his illness and not solely with the incident of his commitment. Addington v. Texas, supra, 99 S.Ct. at 1809. Thus, the individual’s interest in avoiding an erroneous determination in a civil commitment proceeding is not as significant as those of a defendant in a criminal proceeding. The balancing of the individual’s interest against those of the state, both in its parens patriae capacity and in the exercise of its police power, produces a different outcome for civil commitment proceedings from that of criminal proceedings. I suggest that since our statute requires proof of dangerousness to oneself or to others before commitment, the societal interest of preventing such injury outweighs the risk of an erroneous prolonged hospitalization during the time of a government appeal from an adverse trial ruling in a civil commitment proceeding. Such an appeal would not be undertaken for frivolous or technical reasons, but rather to correct manifest errors likely to result in dangerous individuals not getting needed treatment.
In light of the Addington decision and rationale, I suggest that our decision in Lomax, based as it is on glib and undefined statements of constitutional rights of the mentally ill and the likening of a civil commitment to a criminal conviction, no longer is valid. I submit that specific statutory authority for government appeals in mental commitment cases is not now barred, even if Lomax were earlier to have been read as erecting such a prohibition.

. See for example the majority statement at 1189 regarding the allowance of a government appeal to vindicate a public interest in halting the serious misconduct of a trial counsel where it is reasoned that “this is a problem which has been handled in the criminal law for centuries without allowing the government to appeal from an acquittal.”

. The District of Columbia statute requires periodic examination by hospital authorities no less than every six months to determine if the hospitalized individual should be released. D.C.Code 1973, § 21-548.

. See Justice Harlan’s analysis in In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 372, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970), of the considerations involved in setting the burden of proof standard in juvenile delinquency proceedings at beyond a reasonable doubt.