Due Process Dies
On Monday 17 May 2010 the Supreme Court of the United States of America handed down a 7-2 decision that affirms the ability of the federal government to hold inmates they deem as “sexually dangerous” in the future indefinitely.
Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin surely stir in their graves at the finally winning the wars they started so long ago.
In the last decade American have lost civil right after civil right; legal protection after legal protection — all in the name of making ourselves “safe”… but in fact all we are doing is making ourselves slaves.
Let me point out that in the United States, a person is found guilty by a trial of their peers, and a judge passes sentence for the crime… when the period of internment expires the criminal has paid his “debt” to society. Apparently we now believe that the United States government [though the Department of Justice] has the ability to adjust the term of a sentence indefinitely.
How long is it until the United States government just dispenses with the formality of a trial all together, and locks away individuals who they say are a threat… oh wait, that’s already happening — at Guantanamo Bay!
NOTES:
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the court’s majority opinion stating that it is “a ‘necessary and proper’ means of exercising the federal authority that permits Congress to create federal criminal laws, to punish their violation, to imprison violators, to provide appropriately for those imprisoned and to maintain the security of those who are not imprisoned by who may be affected by the federal imprisonment of others.”
The judgment reversed a lower court ruling that said Congress overstepped its authority in allowing indefinite detentions of prisoners considered “sexually dangerous.”
“The Federal Government, as custodian of its prisoners, has the constitutional power to act in order to protect nearby [and other] communities from the danger such prisoners may pose.”
In order to do it, however, the government must prove the following:
1. The individual has previously “engaged or attempted to engage in sexually violent conduct or child molestation.”
2. He/She currently “suffers from a serious mental illness, abnormality, or disorder,”
3. The prisoner “as a result of” that mental illness, abnormality, or disorder is “sexually dangerous to others,” in that “he would have serious difficulty in refraining from sexually violent conduct or child molestation if released.”
A hearing, during which the individual would remain incarcerated, would then determine whether or not he/she could be released.
“If the Government proves its claims by ‘clear and convincing evidence,’ the court will order the prisoner’s continued commitment,”
Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia dissented. Justice Thomas argues that Congress can only pass laws that deal with the federal powers listed in the Constitution (States Right) and stated that nothing in the Constitution “expressly delegates to the Congress the power to enact a civil commitment regime for sexually dangerous persons, nor does any other provision in the Constitution vest Congress or the other branches of the federal goverment with such a power.”
The Supreme Court ruling upholds the Adam Walsh Chile Protection and Safety Act signed in 2006 by George W Bush.
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