Villanova v. Abrams

• Decision Date: 13 August 1992
• Docket Number: No. 89-3146,89-3146
• Citation: 972 F.2d 792
• Parties: Carlos M. VILLANOVA, Sr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Richard S. ABRAMS, Kris Lall, John Doe, Eduardo Machado, Nicosia Perez, and Philip Welches, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 792

972 F.2d 792

Carlos M. VILLANOVA, Sr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Richard S. ABRAMS, Kris Lall, John Doe, Eduardo Machado, Nicosia Perez, and Philip Welches, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 89-3146.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Feb. 28, 1992.

Decided Aug. 13, 1992.

Jeffrey H. Hornstein (argued), Holleb & Coff, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellant.

Harold E. McKee, III, Asst. State's Atty., David R. Butzen (argued), Office of the State's Atty. of Cook County, Linda J. Hay, Peter V. Bustamante, Asst. Attys. Gen. and Rita M. Novak (argued), Office of the Atty. Gen., Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellees.

Before POSNER, FLAUM, and KANNE, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

Twice in 1987 Carlos Villanova was civilly committed against his will to Chicago Read Mental Health Center, a state facility. Claiming that the commitment was an unreasonable seizure of his person and therefore violated his rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment and that the failure to release him within 24 hours, as required by state law, violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process of law, he brought this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the psychiatrists employed by Chicago Read and by another public body, the Psychiatric Institute of Cook County, who he claims were responsible for his commitments. There is a little more to the suit but this is enough for our purposes. The judge dismissed it on the pleadings.

Illinois' mental health code authorizes involuntary commitment of "a person who is mentally ill and who because of his illness is reasonably expected to inflict serious physical harm upon himself or another in the near future" or is unable to care for himself. Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 91 1/2, p 1-119. The plaintiff does not argue that this standard violates the Constitution. Nor that the statutory procedures for applying the standard violate the Constitution: before a person can be committed, there must be a petition stating that commitment is proper under the statutory standard and a certificate, signed by a mental-health professional who has examined the person sought to be committed, also stating that the commitment is proper under the standard. These documents allow commitment for only 24 hours. For the commitment to be extended beyond that, a different mental health professional must sign a second certificate. Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 91 1/2, pp 3-601 through 3-604, 3-610.

The record is scanty, as one expects when a case is decided on the pleadings. At the time of the first commitment Villanova was in jail, apparently awaiting trial for theft, when he requested a psychiatric examination to determine his fitness to stand trial. The judge ordered him sent to the Psychiatric Institute for an examination. A petition to commit Villanova was drawn up a few days after the order. It is apparent from the language of the petition that the author was a psychiatrist or other mental health professional, doubtless employed by the Psychiatric Institute, but beyond this the author's identity is unknown. The petition states that Villanova "presents today with tangential irrelevant responses to inquiries. He is superficially oriented, quite grandiose, and has delusions of thought projection. Insight is lacking and judgment is poor. He is currently unable to care for himself and is a danger to self and others. He is in need of inpatient hospitalization." A psychiatrist at the Institute --one of the defendants--examined Villanova and issued a certificate which states that Villanova is "acutely psychotic; was in jail for robbery. Now charged with theft. He is a danger to self/others and needs locked ward hospitalization." So he was committed to Chicago Read. Twenty-four hours passed and no second certificate was issued as the statute required, so Villanova should have been released but he alleges he was not. There is no indication of when he was released; all we know is that the second commitment took place ten weeks after the first and by that time Villanova was not only out of Read but also out on bond, though still awaiting trial for theft. His lawyer requested another psychiatric examination to determine his client's fitness to stand trial. Again the judge ordered Villanova to be examined at the Psychiatric Institute. A week after that order, a petition for commitment was drawn up, presumably by a psychiatrist or other mental health professional at the Institute, again unidentified, which stated that during his examination at the Institute "patient was correctly oriented, somewhat agitated, distractible [sic ], and displayed inappropriate blunted to flat affect. He responde[d] to questions in an [sic ] relevant manner, though seemed to be displaying a great deal of underlying confusion and grandiosity and manipulativeness. He is extremely guarded and evasive and appears to have a great deal of underlying hostility and may pose a danger to himself and others." A psychiatrist at the Institute--another defendant--prepared on the same day a certificate which reads in its entirety: "33 y/o wh male arrested on a retail theft. Grandiose and litigious. States he is a Diabetic on insulin." On the strength of these documents Villanova was again committed to Read and again, he alleges, was not released after 24 hours even though no second certificate was ever issued. The role of the other defendants, none of whom signed a petition or a certificate, in Villanova's confinement is unclear but need not be clarified in order for us to dispose of the case.

The plaintiff's lawyer asks us to analogize a petition for commitment to an application for an arrest warrant, a certificate of commitment to the warrant itself, and the defendants who filled out and signed the certificates in this case to the arresting officers. Where all this analogizing gets Villanova we have no idea; and the analogy is in any event impossibly strained because in a civil commitment there is nobody who corresponds to the magistrate who issues a warrant.

We analyze the case in more straightforward terms. A civil commitment is a seizure, and may be made only upon probable cause, that is, only if there are reasonable grounds for believing that the person seized is subject to seizure under the governing legal standard, not here challenged. Chathas v. Smith, 884 F.2d 980, 987 (7th Cir.1989); Gooden v. Howard County, 954 F.2d 960, 968 (4th Cir.1992) (en banc); Baltz v. Shelley, 661 F.Supp. 169, 178 n. 36 (N.D.Ill.1987). There is no requirement of a warrant issued by a judicial officer. For that matter, even an arrest warrant is required only when a person is to be arrested in his home. Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 583-90, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 1378-82, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980); McKinney v. George, 726 F.2d 1183, 1188 (7th Cir.1984).

There was probable cause. Villanova himself or his counsel believed he was sufficiently mentally disturbed not to be fit to stand trial. The Psychiatric Institute confirmed that he had symptoms of mental illness, and opined that he was dangerous to himself or others. Since he was not only awaiting trial on a criminal charge but had a record of violent crime--robbery is a crime of violence, and we do not understand Villanova to be denying the truth of the statement in the first certificate that he had been imprisoned for robbery--an inference of dangerousness from his display of symptoms of mental illness was a reasonable one that mental health professionals whose competence and credentials are not challenged were entitled to draw. Villanova's lawyer makes fun of the terms that the documents use to characterize mental illness, such as grandiosity and litigiousness, but it is a superficial form of derision. The mental health business has its own jargon just as lawyers do, and no unlovelier than lawyers' jargon. It is enough that competent professionals, having observed and examined Villanova, and cognizant of his criminal propensities, formed a judgment that he was a sufficient menace by reason of mental illness to be committed for a brief period of further observation. Cf. People v. Sansone, 18 Ill.App.3d 315, 323, 309 N.E.2d 733, 739 (1974). They were not required to write a dissertation on mental illness that would explicate the chain of inference that connected their observations of his symptoms with the conclusion that he was dangerous.

"For a brief period...." The shorter the detention, the less compelling is the evidence of the necessity for it that the authorities need to produce. This is the theory of the "Terry stop" and of much else in Fourth Amendment law. Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 663, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1401, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979); United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 557-60, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 3082-84, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976); United States v. Chaidez, 919 F.2d 1193, 1197-98 (7th Cir.1990). In mathematical terms, the test of a reasonable commitment can be expressed by the inequality C

An algebraic formulation of legal rules, which has been used not only to define negligence but also to summarize the standard for granting or denying preliminary injunctions, American Hospital Supply Corp. v. Hospital Products Ltd., 780 F.2d 589, 593-94 (7th Cir.1985), has value in expressing rules compactly, in clarifying complex relationships, in identifying parallels between diverse legal doctrines, and in directing attention to relevant variables that might otherwise be overlooked. It is not, however, a panacea for the travails of judicial decision-making. In practice, the application of standards that can be expressed in algebraic terms still requires the exercise of judgment, implying elements of inescapable subjectivity and intuition in the decisional calculus. Abbott Laboratories v. Mead Johnson & Co., 971 F.2d 6, 12 (7th Cir.1992).

Now it is obvious (returning to our formula, duly qualified by the remarks in the preceding paragraph) that the higher is P, the probability that the person sought to be...