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| N.J. OKs Holding of Sex Offenders |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 07/15/2002 |
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The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that sex offenders who have completed their criminal sentences may be sent to psychiatric hospitals against their will and prosecutors are not required to meet the toughest legal test to win further confinement. Judges need only see 'clear and convincing evidence' that an offender will commit another crime, Associate Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote for the unanimous court. 'The clear and convincing burden of proof required in any civil commitment matter applies,' she said. To win a criminal conviction, prosecutors must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, a higher standard. Under a New Jersey law passed in 1999, sex offenders deemed likely to commit similar crimes after their release from prison may be committed to a state psychiatric hospital. The law allows for annual case reviews for the inmates. 'Those periodic reviews will allow adequate opportunity to assess fresh information concerning the committee's dangerousness,' LaVecchia wrote. The court considered the case of a man identified only as W.Z., a sex offender whose criminal past dates to 1982 when he was 16 and was convicted of the first of three violent assaults. As his criminal sentence neared its end in 1999, the state arranged to send him to a state psychiatric facility. At a hearing in 2000, state experts claimed the man suffers from disorders that make him unable to control himself, meaning there is 'a great likelihood' he would commit another sex crime. In his appeal, lawyers for W.Z. claimed his constitutional rights to due process were violated. |
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