Supreme Court sets limits for confining sex offenders

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court made it harder Tuesday for states to keep sexual offenders locked up after their prison terms -- requiring proof that an offender has a mental illness that causes serious difficulty with self control.

Rapists, child molesters and other sex criminals must be treated the same as other people singled out for involuntary commitment under the court's 7-2 decision.

The ruling was a defeat for states that use commitments to extend violent sex criminals' time locked away from the public because of concerns about repeat offenders. The court did not ban the commitments.

"On one hand, sick people can be kept off the streets. On the other hand, the average citizen doesn't need to worry about getting locked up for unpopular ideas," said Richard Samp, chief attorney for the Washington Legal Foundation.

More than 1,200 sex offenders are confined in nearly 20 states with laws resembling the 1994 Kansas statute at issue in this case, the court was told. It was unclear how the ruling may affect them.

John C. Donham, the attorney for Kansas sex offender Michael Crane, said that state and others with similar programs will have to change the way they handle such cases.

"They created a new subclass of people and felt that because of the nature of their crimes, that in and of itself was enough to justify hustling them off to a mental hospital without proving a serious mental illness," Donham said.

The states with laws like the Kansas statute are Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, the Supreme Court was told.