Maurietta v. Ciccone

• Decision Date: 14 November 1969
• Docket Number: No. 17142-1.,17142-1.
• Citation: 305 F. Supp. 775
• Parties: Kieran James MAURIETTA, Petitioner, v. Dr. P. J. CICCONE, Director, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Missouri

305 F. Supp. 775

Kieran James MAURIETTA, Petitioner, v. Dr. P. J. CICCONE, Director, Respondent.

No. 17142-1.

United States District Court W. D. Missouri, W. D.

November 14, 1969.

Duke W. Ponick, Jr., Morris, Foust, Moody & Jacobson, Kansas City, Mo., for petitioner.

Calvin K. Hamilton, U. S. Atty., Frederick O. Griffin, Asst. U. S. Atty., Kansas City, Mo., for respondent.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

JOHN W. OLIVER, District Judge.

I.

Petitioner, an unconvicted inmate of the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, seeks to establish in this habeas corpus proceeding his eligibility for release from that institution in accordance with the proviso contained in Section 4248, Title 18, United States Code.¹

Petitioner's current confinement in the Medical Center is based on an order of commitment to the custody of the Attorney General entered by the District of Arizona on January 20, 1969 pursuant to Sections 4244-4248, Title 18, United States Code. The order of that court contained the following specific Section 4247 finding of dangerousness:

If released, accused probably will endanger the safety of officers, the property, or other interests of the United States.

Petitioner does not contend that the procedures followed in connection with petitioner's January 14, 1969 commitment to the Medical Center were in any way constitutionally infirm. Petitioner states that "there is no question but that petitioner lawfully came into the custody of the United States; the issue is whether that custody should continue."

The following facts, all of which the Government concedes are either stipulated or adequately supported by the testimony of witnesses in the employ of the United States, are sufficient to place in focus the only question we need to reach in this case.

It is stipulated that petitioner's current commitment to the Medical Center is but the last of several. His first, over twenty years ago, involved a transfer to the Medical Center for psychiatric treatment on August 16, 1943, from the Federal Reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio, to which petitioner had been committed by the Northern District of Illinois as a juvenile delinquent. On January 15, 1963, some twenty years later, petitioner was convicted on a plea of guilty to a check charge in the Northern District of Illinois. A Section 4208(b) study was ordered by that court. After psychiatric examination at the Medical Center, petitioner's conviction was set aside under Section 4245 as a result of that study. After a four month confinement under Section 4246, the 1963 federal charge was dismissed and petitioner was released pursuant to Section 4248.

Two years later, and on October 6, 1965, petitioner was again committed to the Medical Center by the Northern District of Illinois under Section 4246. After habeas corpus litigation was commenced in this Court (Maurietta v. United States, No. 15784-1, unreported), the 1965 federal charge was dismissed, and on January 4, 1966, petitioner was transferred to the Mental Health Clinic of Cook County, Illinois, Hospital, pursuant to Section 4248.

The record does not reflect exactly how petitioner became a patient at the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute in Chicago and still later at the Chicago State Hospital. It is clear however, that he was a patient at the latter institution as late as February 10, 1967 (Tr. 205) and that shortly thereafter he somehow got from there to the District of Arizona where the check transaction involved in petitioner's current charge allegedly occurred.

The check allegedly involved in petitioner's current federal charge was dated February 24, 1967. The State of Arizona filed charges against petitioner shortly thereafter. For reasons not apparent from the record, the United States thereafter indicted petitioner on March 16, 1967. The United States, however, did not assume actual custody of the petitioner until the District of Arizona committed petitioner to the Medical Center under Section 4246 on October 3, 1968. Petitioner was returned to the District of Arizona for a Section 4244 hearing in January, 1969. At that hearing the District of Arizona made its Section 4247 finding of dangerousness and, on January 14, 1969, again committed petitioner to the Medical Center where he has since been confined.

The Government does not, as indeed it cannot under the undisputed evidence, contest that petitioner's mental condition has long been diagnosed as a chronic schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type, of long duration; that for years petitioner, because of the intensity of his delusional system, has never been and is not likely ever to be competent to stand trial; that petitioner's mental condition at the time of the alleged offense was such that he could not lawfully be held to be criminally responsible for his actions in connection with his alleged violation of Section 2314, Title 18, United States Code; and that petitioner, if now released, would not endanger the safety of the officers, the property, or other interests of the United States, within the meaning of Section 4248. Those findings are based on the undisputed psychiatric testimony presented by Dr. Glotfelty, Chief of the Psychiatric Services at the Medical Center, Dr. Ash, a psychiatrist on the Medical Center staff, and Dr. Ciccone, Director of the Medical Center, who testified he accepted that testimony.

II.

Petitioner's habeas corpus petition and the evidence adduced at the hearing presented numerous questions in addition to the question of whether he had established his eligibility for release by proof that he was no longer dangerous. Petitioner attacks the constitutionality of Sections 4244 to 4248 as those sections are applied to petitioner, contending that the Medical Center is physically and administratively a prison or penal institution, rather than a mental health hospital; that petitioner's federally protected constitutional rights as guaranteed all unconvicted persons have been consistently violated; that petitioner is regularly and daily unlawfully commingled with convicted prisoners; and that petitioner has not and cannot in the foreseeable future receive the medical care and treatment contemplated by the Congress when it added Sections 4244 to 4248 to Chapter 313 of the United States Code in 1949.

The Government concedes that:

Courts have unquestionably moved toward a position of evaluating the constitutionality or legitimacy of a mental commitment on the basis of the propriety of the commitment procedure, Baxstrom v. Herold, 383 U.S. 107 86 S.Ct. 760, 15 L.Ed.2d 620 (1966); United States ex rel. Schuster v. Herold, 410 F.2d 1071 (C.A. 2, 1969), and on the basis of the treatment afforded during the commitment, Rouse v. Cameron, 125 U.S.App.D.C. 366 373 F.2d 451 (D.C.Cir., 1967).

If determination of this case required that we apply the principles enunciated in the cases cited by the Government, we would also be required to consider the applicability of other cases and authorities in this rapidly developing area of law to which petitioner has directed our attention. Included are Pate v. Robinson, 383 U.S. 375, 86 S.Ct. 836, 15 L.Ed.2d 815 (1966); Miller v. Overholser, 1953, 92 U.S.App.D.C. 110, 206 F.2d 415; White v. Reid, D.C.D.C. 1954, 126 F.Supp. 867; In re Maddox, 351 Mich. 358, 88 N.W.2d 470 (1958); Director of Patuxent Institution v. Daniels, 243 Md. 16, 221 A.2d 397 (1966); Nason v. Superintendent of Bridgewater State Hosp., 1968, 353 Mass. 604, 233 N.E.2d 908; United States ex rel. Schuster v. Herold, 2 Cir., 1969, 410 F.2d 1071; and Matthews v. Hardy, D.C. 1969, No. 22,315, decided August 29, 1969, but not yet reported. See also Birnbaum, The Right to Treatment, 46 A.B.A.J. 499 (May, 1960); Foote, A Comment on Pre-Trial Commitment of Criminal Defendants, 108 U. of Pa. L.Rev. 832 (1960); Barkin, The Emergence of Correctional Law and the Awareness of the Rights of the Convicted, 45 Neb.L.Rev. 169 (1966); Notes, The Nascent Right to Treatment, 53 Va.L.Rev. 1134 (1967); Notes and Comments, Civil Restraint, Mental Illness, and the Right to Treatment, 77 Yale L.J. 87 (1967). Cf. Cohen, The Legal Challenge to Corrections, Consultant's paper prepared for the Joint Commission on Correctional Manpower and Training (March, 1969), and The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice: Task Force Report on Corrections.

Because it is possible, we decide this case without reaching the many grave constitutional questions which might be presented by an application of the principles articulated in the authorities noted in the last paragraph. This Court has frequently noted, see Pavlick v. Harris (W.D.Mo., 1963), 222 F.Supp. 79, 81, and Kurnava v. United States (W.D. Mo., 1966), 222 F.2d 822, 826, for examples, the need for a federal mental hospital facility suitable for the civil hospitalization of mentally disturbed federal criminal defendants. We foresee the day when a particular case may require that we reach and decide the type of constitutional questions obviously presented under a factual situation similar to that established in this case.

In this particular case, however, we need determine only (1) whether the petitioner has in fact and in law established his eligibility for release from the custody of the Attorney General in this habeas corpus proceeding and (2) what order is appropriate, in accordance with the command of Section 2243, Title 28, United States Code, to dispose of this matter as law and justice require. We find and conclude that petitioner is entitled to appropriate habeas corpus relief for the reasons we now state.

III.

Both parties agree that the point of beginning is Greenwood v. United States, 350 U.S. 366, 76 S.Ct. 410, 100 L.Ed. 412 (1956). It is of greatest importance, however, to recognize that Greenwood did not determine the question presented by this case. Greenwood decided only the "narrow constitutional issue raised by the order of commitment in the circumstances of ...