Still Guilty Until Big Brother Thinks Otherwise

From the NY Times:

In a broad endorsement of federal power, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Congress has the authority under the Constitution to allow the continued confinement of some sex offenders after they have completed their criminal sentences.

The law allows the federal government to continue to detain prisoners who had engaged in sexually violent conduct, suffered from mental illness and would have difficulty controlling themselves. If the government is able to prove all of this to a judge by “clear and convincing” evidence — a heightened standard, but short of “beyond a reasonable doubt” — it may hold such prisoners until they are no longer dangerous or until a state government assumes responsibility for them.

This is simply chilling. I cannot imagine that in the United States if someone is guilty of a crime and a judge and jury have sentenced them to serve a sentence that if they serve out their prescribed punishment that the government can just continue to imprison them without so much as another trial or due process.

The government can now imprison people indefinitely with no recourse.

And worse yet, the government is the one who gets to determine if the prisoner has "suffered from mental illness"or "would have difficulty controlling themselves."

How long until dissent is "metal illness?"

I don't seem to recall anywhere in the Constitution (or anywhere else) that says that a standard for citizenry is that one must have an easy tie of controlling ones self. I'm sure that a sex offender might have a difficult time controlling themselves once they are free again. So would a drug dealer or a gangster or a white collar criminal or a petty thief. We hear about it all the time - people who get out of jail and struggle to walk the righteous path. There are always temptations, but we must at least give them the opportunity to do what's right. But now the government has the right, and the power apparently, to look into the future to determine that a criminal will return to their criminal behavior and preemptively lock them away. It's very Minority Report - thought crimes in the future can now be punished.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for himself and four other justices, said the “necessary and proper” clause applies so long as the statute in question “is rationally related to the implementation of a constitutionally enumerated power.” The civil confinement law, he went on, satisfied that standard given, among other things, “the government’s custodial interest in safeguarding the public from dangers posed by those in federal custody.”

Wrong. Once a debt to society is paid by the rules established in the court system, then those in federal custody should be released, regardless of the danger the may continue to pose to the public. Changing the rules of the game at the end of the game isn't fair or right, especially if one of the players has absolutely no say in the outcome.

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, dissented in the case, United States v. Comstock.

“The fact that the federal government has the authority to imprison a person for the purpose of punishing him for a federal crime — sex-related or otherwise — does not provide the Government with the additional power to exercise indefinite civil control over that person,” Justice Thomas wrote.

It is a sad day for liberty in the United States.