Supreme Court Ruling on Sex Offenders

[house_pundit]

Most people who are crying that the sky is falling with this are unfamiliar with the legal history of government powers regarding deciding who's insane and what to do about them, and the legal history of what constitutes "Due Process of Law" if Joe Sixpack is formally alleged to be insane or mentally incompetent

Comments

[house_pundit]

In case anyone missed it, here's the fundamental difference. If you get convicted of a crime and sentenced to 20 years no parole, sooner or later you run out of opportunities or legal grounds to contest that sentence and your butt is sitting there for 20 years.

If you're civilly committed, then with whatever time period applies to everybody else committed to have their mental state, etc., reviewed again, you have the right to go into court and get reviewed again, and again, and again, until they let you go or you die of old age.

At no point can the government legally just throw away the key and disappear you.

[house_pundit]

Where this functionally makes a difference to the sex offenders who get adjudicated insane and dangerous is that if psychiatry develops a cure, government has to let them have that cure, and when the patient goes before the court and says, "Hey, I'm cured, I'm not dangerous anymore," and the court looks at the cure and the patient and says, "By George, you aren't dangerous anymore," the guy walks right out on the street.

As, if he's not dangerous and has served the criminal sentence for any crimes he committed, he should.

[house_pundit]

Why government has to allow the institutionalized patient to have the cure is because the court ruling that the patient has the right to be cared for in the least restrictive setting that protects both himself and society still applies

[skellington]

Your last caveat, about serving the criminal sentence for any crimes committed..

If you're judged insane, aren't you generally "not guilty by reason of insanity", but then locked up as a danger to society if the condition still exists?

To pick a more medical example, if your electrolytes or sugar gets completely messed up (especially if you have no history of problems), you swerve off the road, and kill someone, you won't generally get convicted of a crime.

If someone has a psychotic break, kills someone, and then gets treated, generally we don't lock them up forever..

[house_pundit]

A law does not have to have "by reason of insanity" as an affirmative defense. It can, but it does not have to. If you were able to tell the difference between right and wrong *at the moment you committed the crime*, then you are guilty. But you may be "insane" in the sense of unable to tell the difference between right and wrong at some point in your incarceration, moved around as needed within the system, become able to tell the difference between right and wrong again and also no longer be a danger to society on the "insane" part, but you still have to serve the remaining time out on your sentence. Or maybe you committed a crime while sane, you become insane in the sense of incompetent to stand trial *but* are also actively dangerous. So you get cured or temporarily improved and.......you are competent to stand trial, and now you get tried for what you did before, and now you have your whole sentence in front of you in jail

[wyrdling]

well, as long as we don't go back to things like "being too outspoken/wearing pants" (in women) or "being homosexual" as definitions of insanity via the government...

[house_pundit]

Word.