Court Opinion

ID: 9741191
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:51:06.599025+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:22.787289
License: Public Domain

PAGE, Justice
(dissenting).
I join the dissent of Justice Tomljanovich. I write separately to note that there is no question that Dennis Linehan is an extremely dangerous person. There is also no question that he has been tried, convicted, and punished under our criminal law. Some might argue, myself included, that the sentence 1 he received was not severe enough and that it should have been longer. Certainly if constitutional limitations did not exist, I would have' no qualms about Linehan remaining in preventive detention for the rest of his life. However, constitutional limitations do exist, and we must respect those limitations even if it means that the Dennis Linehans of the world must be set free after completing their criminal sentence. Thus, I respectfully dissent because I believe that the Sexually Dangerous Persons Act goes well beyond the limits imposed by our constitution and permits unrestrained preventive detention based solely on an individual’s dangerousness.
I also write separately to comment on the court’s treatment of Blodgett. Blodgett was a 4-3 decision of this court which I joined. In re Blodgett, 510 N.W.2d 910 (Minn.1994). I joined that decision because I believed the court’s holding fit within constitutional limitations. While I did believe then, and still believe now, that our decision in Blodgett fit within constitutional limits, I also believe that with that decision we reached the extreme outer limits of constitutionally permitted preventive detention. The court now holds that Blodgett would have to be overturned if we were to find the Sexually Dangerous Persons Act unconstitutional. I disagree. My reading of Blodgett is that the “inability to control” sexual impulses has constitutional significance and represents a substantive due process threshold for preventive detention. That is the basis on which I joined the court’s opinion. Indeed, this requirement previously saved the Psychopathic Personality Commitment Act from a vagueness challenge in Pearson v. Probate Court of Ramsey County, 205 Minn. 545, 287 N.W. 297 (1939), aff'd, 309 U.S. 270, 60 S.Ct. 523, 84 L.Ed. 744 (1940). In Pearson, this court stated:
Applying these principles to the case before us, it can reasonably be said that the language of Section 1 of the [Psychopathic Personality Commitment Act] is intended to include those persons who, by a habitual course of misconduct in sexual matters, have evidenced an utter lack of power to control their sexual impulses and who, as a result, are likely to attack or otherwise inflict injury, loss, pain or other evil on the objects of their uncontrolled and uncontrollable desire. It would not be reasonable to apply the provisions of the statute to every person guilty of sexual misconduct nor even to persons having strong sexual propensities. Such a definition would not only make the act impracticable of enforcement and, perhaps, unconstitutional in its application, but would also be an unwarranted departure from the accepted meaning of the words defined.
Id. at 555, 287 N.W. at 302-03 (emphasis added).
The court now holds that the instant case is indistinguishable from Blodgett despite the fact that the “inability to control” requirement articulated in Blodgett is not contained in the Sexually Dangerous Persons Act. In upholding the psychopathic personality statute, the Blodgett court made clear that there are constitutional limitations to the state’s use of preventive detention. However, no such limitations are found in the Sexually Dangerous Persons Act. The only real criteria for commitment under the Sexually Dan*202gerous Persons Act is dangerousness. Thus, the court’s decision today goes well beyond Blodgett The court has, in essence, concluded that there are no constitutional limitations on the state’s use of preventive detention.
Today the target is people who are sexually dangerous. Which class of people, who are different from us and who we do not like, will it be tomorrow?
As Justice Simonett wrote in Blodgett, at issue is not only “the safety of the public on the one hand and, on the other, the liberty interests of the individual * * *. In the final analysis, it is the moral credibility of the criminal justice system that is at stake.” 510 N.W.2d at 918. By the court’s decision today, that credibility is placed in jeopardy.

. A sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release may well have been appropriate based on the criminal conduct for which Linehan was convicted. Indeed, it may have been better than he deserved. In any event, such a sentence would have certainly met constitutional muster. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, at the time Linehan’s crime was committed, the legislature did not see fit to provide for such a sentence.