The Miami Herald | 11/11/2003 | State’s sex predator law goes too far, some argue
The issue is the so-called Jimmy Ryce Act, §§ 394.910-394.931, Fla. Stat.
The statute provides for indefinite confinement of sexual offenders who are currently incarcerated, to continue until they are pronounced ‘cured’ which in the very large majority of cases so far means ‘never’. The statute doesn’t actually say that they must be incarcerated for the sex crime — and the plaintiff in this case committed a rape 20 years ago, was released in 1991, but has been re-arrested since for various crimes of violence.
The Florida Supreme Court has said the Ryce Act is basically constitutional but it has yet to rule on whether the statute can be applied to inmates who committed a sexual offense in the past, but are currently incarcerated for a non-sexual offense.
The 5-year-old law is so sweeping that prosecutors have been using it indefinitely detain people who have served out their sentences for non-sexual crimes. These people, like Tabor, 46, have committed a rape or molestation decades ago, been released, and then re-arrested for some other crime not sexual in nature.At Monday’s hearing in front of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach, judges pointed out that the current interpretation of the law would allow prosecutors to label someone a sexual predator after he was imprisoned for a DUI offense, even if his sex crime dates from the 1980s.
”Is there anything rational about that?” Judge Larry Klein asked during the hearing. How different is that than rounding up decades-old sex-crime convicts who are just ”out and about?” he continued.
…
Florida keeps 429 people in a former prison in Arcadia that serves as a treatment center for sexually violent predators.
Many have been locked up since 1999, since the state first opened such a facility.
The state has yet to come up with a clear method of graduating them from treatment and into society. As a result, few have been released.
About 13 other states have similar laws and courts have so far agreed they meet constitutional requirements. Florida’s Department of Children & Families, which oversees the state’s program, estimates that about 10 percent of the men held at Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia have been detained following prison sentences for non-sexual crimes. Like Tabor, they had long ago served sentences for sex crimes.
If appeals judges decide in Tabor’s favor, it would directly affect those cases and many future sexual predator cases.
Of course, the plaintiff in this case is not exactly sympathetic:
Tabor served all his prison time for a rape 20 years ago in a Fort Lauderdale hotel. He was released from prison in 1991 and hasn’t been accused of another sexual offense since. He was later arrested for beating up a dog, then, later a cop, among other crimes.
Nevertheless, should he subjected to this:
A psychologists said he had an anti-social personality, but not a sexually deviant personality. Nonetheless, a jury unanimously agreed he was a sexual predator who might commit a future crime if released. The standard for locking someone up as a sexual predator is lower than the ”reasonable doubt” standard used in criminal cases.
At Tabor’s civil commitment trial, jurors also learned about a 1976 case in which Tabor beat a man in Miami with a steel rod shortly before someone else killed the man. They also heard information about a 1979 sorority rape charge against Tabor that was never prosecuted.
Although this verdict has a ring of rough justice to it — Tabor doesn’t sound like my ideal sort of neighbor! — the trouble is, the statute is about claims of being a ‘sexual predator’ not about predictions of future dangerousness generally. Those predictions are hard to make in a scientific fashion, and the Supreme Court hasn’t said, and isn’t that likely to say, that the fear of mere ordinary dangerousness without a finding of insanity is enough to lock people up after their jail terms have expired. And indeed, that rule would be pretty dangerous.
DRAFT International Law Exam Write-a-Question ground rules
1. Your task is to write a question that could form part of the final exam in International Law.
2. Participation in this question-writing program is not optional. The quality of your participation will be factored into your class participation grade.
3. Questions should be no shorter than two sentences and no longer than one page, single-spaced, with ordinary type face and margins. They can be theoretical questions, hypothetical questions, purely legal/interpretive questions, or any other standard law school exam question.
4. In addition, you should append an outline of your suggested answer. In so doing you should note whether you think there is only one possible answer, or whether there are multiple possible (or arguable) answers. You should also note the most relevant cases, treaties, or other readings, i.e. those that one would ordinarily expect a student to discuss/cite in her/his answer.
5. Generally speaking, I tend to prefer questions for which more than one answer is plausible but this is not a requirement.
6. Questions are due by Tuesday Nov. 25, which is our last regularly scheduled class. E-mail submissions to [email] are preferred, but paper turned in in class is acceptable. I will acknowledge receipt of emails, and you should resubmit anything that isn’t acknowledged within 24 hours.
7. I will read all the question and separate them into two groups: those that I think couldn’t be on the exam, and those that (perhaps with light editing) could be part of the exam (the “possible pile”).
8. If there are two or fewer questions in the “possible pile”, I will so inform the class. I may or may not use one of the questions on the exam.
9. If there are three or more questions in the “possible pile”, I will publish them on the class web page by Dec. 1. At least one of these questions, and possibly more, will appear on the exam, either as an optional or required question.
Wow. A day I’m so buy I can’t post, and traffic goes through the roof suddenly bringing me to over 10,000 unique visitors in less than two months! (The ‘unique visitor’ is counted on a daily basis, so anyone who visited fifteen times over seven days would be counted seven times.) I moved well over a gigabyte of data in the last 30 days, and that’s with few graphics. Good thing my hosting contract allows me about ten times what I used.
Why is today so busy? Tuesdays are my heaviest teaching and class prep day, plus we had a truly delightful two hour committee meeting in the middle of the day. And did I mention the kids are home from school today because it’s Veteran’s Day? But the law school is open…