Mitchell Hamline School of Law

Sex Offense Litigation and Policy Resource Center

SVP

People v. Superior Court of Santa Cruz County (Cal. Ct. App. 2023)

Posted: February 16, 2023
California Court of Appeals opinion concluding that the Sexually Violent Predator Act prohibiting placement of certain individuals near a "school" does not exempt home schools or require the school in question to have been operating for any particular period of time prior to the individual's planned community placement.

People v. Superior Court of Santa Cruz County (Cal. Ct. App. 2023)

People v. Magana (Cal. Ct. App. 2022)

Posted: April 12, 2022
California Court of Appeals opinion remanding matter to the trial court for further consideration and noting a likelihood of merit in claim that the trial court's failure to provide Appellant with a full advisement of his right to a jury trial in the context of a civil commitment proceeding pursuant to the Sexually Violent Predator Act violated his right to equal protection under federal and state law.

People v. Magana (Cal. Ct. App. 2022)

Fields v. State of Missouri (Mo. Ct. App. 2022)

Posted: April 12, 2022
Missouri Court of Appeals decision in an ineffective assistance of counsel case concluding that, unlike the risk of deportation assessed in Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356 (2010), civil commitment under Missouri's "Sexually Violent Predator" statute is a collateral consequence as opposed to a presumptively mandatory consequence and, therefore, plea counsel was not obligated to inform Appellant of the potential consequence of indefinite civil commitment prior to Appellant's guilty plea.

Fields v. State of Missouri (Mo. Ct. App. 2022)

Beyond Strict Scrutiny: Forbidden Purpose and the “Civil Commitment” Power

Posted: June 29, 2018
Sex offender civil commitment (SOCC) is a massive deprivation of liberty as severe as penal incarceration. Because it eschews most of the "great safeguards" constraining the criminal power, SOCC demands careful constitutional scrutiny. Although the Supreme Court has clearly applied heightened scrutiny in judging civil commitment schemes, it has never actually specified where on the scrutiny spectrum its analysis falls. This article argues that standard three-tier scrutiny analysis is not the most coherent way to understand the Supreme Court’s civil commitment jurisprudence. Rather than a harm-balancing judgment typical of three-tier scrutiny, the Court’s civil commitment cases are best understood as forbidden purpose cases, a construct that is familiar in many areas of the Court’s constitutional analysis...

Beyond Strict Scrutiny: Forbidden Purpose and the “Civil Commitment” Power

Topics

Jurisdiction

Constitutional Issues

Substantive Issues

Actual Innocence Administrative exhaustion Administrative Procedures Act AEDPA Antisocial Personality Disorder Apprendi / Alleyne As-Applied AWA Burden of Proof Churches Civil Commitment Collateral Estoppel Conditions of Confinement Conditions of Release Daubert Deregistration Evidentiary Standards Expungement Extraterritorial Registration Failure to Register Familial Relationships GPS Halloween Hearsay Heck bar Homelessness Housing HUD Immigration Ineffective Assistance International Travel Internet Identifiers Internet Restrictions Jury Instructions Juvenile Registration Mental disorder Non-Sexual Offense Notification Out-of-state Offense Paraphilia Diagnosis Pardon Parole Personality Disorder Plea Agreement Plethysmograph PLRA Polygraphs Preemption Presence Restrictions Procedural Default PROTECT Act Punishment Qualified Immunity Recidivism Reclassification Res Judicata Residential Banishment Retroactive Application (Non-EPF) Revocation of Supervision Risk School Property Second / Subsequent Offense Sentencing Sexual Predator designation Sign Posting Special Needs Supervised Release SVP Tiering / Classification Tolling Transitional Release Travel Travel Restrictions Treatment Programs Voting Rights