Civil Commitment Laws Against Sex Offender Struck Down by U.S. District Court Judge W. Earl Britt

If one ever wonders why we continuously read about child predator and sexual assault stories like Jessica Lunsford or in the above post where a six your old girl, Hannah Mack, we need to look no further than how our courts refuse to protect the most innocent among us. Why do we let these people walk among us when we know they are dangers to society?

Federal prison officials have moved to prevent the release of five men at a facility in North Carolina, arguing that the men fit the category of “sexually dangerous.”

U.S. District Court Judge W. Earl Britt ruled that the US government cannot keep sex offenders in custody beyond the end of their prison sentences striking down a law (Civil Commitment) aimed at holding some in mental hospitals. It is appalling that the rights of the sexual predator are protected more than the rights of the innocent. Maybe judges need to be held accountable when these low lifes re-offend.

Civil commitment is unconstitutional because the federal government cannot hold a person indefinitely out of fear that the individual will commit a crime in the future, Britt said in his ruling. To do so, he wrote, the government would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person is “sexually dangerous” to commit them indefinitely.

Even then, Britt wrote in the order filed Sept. 7, “there is serious question as to whether the federal government could ever prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an individual is both suffering from a mental illness or abnormality such as pedophilia and unlikely to refrain from sexually violent conduct in the future as a result of that illness.”