Civil Commitment: Pre-Emptive Strike against Future Acts by Convicted Sex Offenders
By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
In 1999 John Charles Volungus plead guilty in the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky to three federal criminal sex offenses: possession of child pornography; receipt of child pornography through interstate commerce by means of a computer; and use of a facility of interstate commerce (computer) to persuade a person under the age of eighteen to engage in a sexual act. 1/ He was sentenced to 53 months in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) to be followed by a term of supervised release. He was released from actual custody only to have his supervised release revoked. He was returned to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons for another23 months. This latter term of imprisonment expired on February 15, 2007. 2/ Although housed at a number of different facilities while in the custody of the BOP, Volungus was confined at the Federal Medical Center Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts (a prison hospital) when he completely satisfied his prison sentence. 3/
Shortly before Volungus’ February 2007 release date, the United States Government filed a petition to have him “civilly committed” as a “ sexually dangerous person” already in federal custody. The government’s action was based on a provision of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (Walsh Act), which was signed into law in 2006 by former President George W. Bush. This little known provision allows the government to request the civil commitment of any inmate committed to federal penal custody for a sex offense upon completion of the inmate’s federal sentence. 4/ The provision is known in the federal court system as a “Section 4248 proceeding.”
Section 4248 defines a “sexually dangerous person” as anyone “who has engaged or attempted to engage in sexually violent conduct or child molestation and who is sexually dangerous to others.” 4248 says the individual becomes “sexually dangerous” when he/she “suffers from a serious mental illness, abnormality, or disorder as a result of which he would have serious difficulty in refraining from sexually violent conduct or child molestation if released.” 5/
Section 4248 is implemented by the government in the following manner: “A responsible federal official (the Attorney General, the director of the BOP, or the designee of either) may initiate [civil] commitment proceedings by petitioning the federal district court in the judicial district in which a targeted person is confined. The petition must certify to the court that the target, whom we shall call respondent, ‘is a sexually dangerous person.’ The filing of the petition stays the respondent’s release from federal custody, notwithstanding the expiration of his sentence, ‘pending completion of procedures’ described in the Walsh Act.
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