Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the existence of Washington’s controversial Special Commitment Center (SCC), a mental health facility that indefinitely holds, with the intention of treating, some of the state’s most dangerous sex offenders. The High Court didn’t explicitly endorse the SCC, which critics claim violates civil liberties by incarcerating people after they’ve already served their time in prison. Instead, the Supreme Court deferred to previous court rulings when it declared the center constitutional.
So what does this mean? For SCC officials, the January 17 ruling is a legal triumph. Now the center can focus on offering mental health treatment for the serial rapists and pedophiles whom they are holding there–involuntarily.
“[The Court ruled that the center] is a treatment program, and that the best way for a resident to get out is to follow the treatment program,” says SCC director Mark Seling. “I hope that [the decision] removes the cloud of uncertainty about the program in the residents’ minds.”
For the SCC residents who have been waging an all-out war against the SCC in the courts, however, this apparent setback only changes residents’ legal strategy. The High Court may have refused to shut down the center, SCC residents say, but its 8-1 opinion opens the doors to the numerous personal complaints that SCC residents have voiced for more than a decade. And the opinion gives them a place to file those complaints, putting the legal battles back in the state and federal courts.
In other words, the Supreme Court opinion has only created the opportunity for more lawsuits. While some of their best arguments against the SCC have been shot down, there are still other ways for SCC residents to use litigation to fight for their freedom.
Residents are taking comfort in a handful of lines of the majority opinion, written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. O’Connor left two major questions about the SCC unanswered: the fairness of the SCC’s due process procedures, and the quality of mental health treatment that SCC residents receive. “This Court does not deny the seriousness of some of respondent’s allegations…” O’Connor wrote. “If the Center fails to fulfill its statutory duty [to provide mental health treatment], those confined may have a state law cause of action.”
Andre Brigham Young, the six-time convicted rapist whose case is at the center of the recent decision, is one of the most adamant SCC residents. “Our lawsuits have been the only thing to bring anything to the fore,” says Young, who says he still has five different lawsuits pending against the state of Washington. “People had better be advised that these guys [other SCC residents] are drafting up documents now that could double up on the amount of litigation in the courts.” That means more taxpayer resources spent on a facility that continues to get lambasted by civil libertarians as an affront to the Constitution and by the American Psychiatric Association as an affront to clinical science.
Legal experts agree with Young’s assessment. “This case reaffirms the right of inmates to seek remedies against the state in state and federal courts,” says John La Fond, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. La Fond, once a Seattle University law professor, has opposed the SCC since its establishment in 1990. In addition, Stewart Jay, a University of Washington law professor, noted that, while SCC residents can’t expect to be freed all at once, there are ample opportunities for SCC residents to file lawsuits in court.
And there’s plenty of evidence for SCC residents to attack the SCC in the lower courts. Anti-SCC lawsuits may meet with success in part because the SCC’s biggest problem remains: It persists as the national model for how not to create a civil commitment facility for sex offend-ers. The 11-year-old SCC has done everything it can, critics say, to make sure that the sex offenders never get out, an assertion that’s been confirmed by U.S. District Judge William Dwyer. After six and a half years, Dwyer still has the SCC under an injunction for failing to provide SCC residents with “constitutionally adequate mental health treatment.” The federal judge may yet levy a multimillion-dollar fine against the SCC to compel full compliance with his orders.
Dwyer’s conclusions about the SCC are feeding other lawsuits. For example, two SCC residents, Casper Ross and Mark Broer, are planning to attack the quality of the mental health treatment at the SCC, one of the very issues Justice O’Connor left open. While Young has refused treatment from the SCC, Ross and Broer have voluntarily undergone therapy at the center, and they contend that that treatment is woefully insufficient. To build their case, the pair will introduce to a federal court in Tacoma many facts that were established in Dwyer’s court.
Other residents claim to be planning other lawsuits. Whatever the outcomes, the most relevant effect of the Supreme Court ruling is clear: The 11-year-old SCC is as controversial today as it was when it was first established.