Murel v. 8212 5276

• Decision Date: 19 June 1972
• Docket Number: No. 70,70
• Parties: Albert Delanor MUREL et al., Petitioners, v. . —5276
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

407 U.S. 355

92 S.Ct. 2091

32 L.Ed.2d 791

Albert Delanor MUREL et al., Petitioners,

v BALTIMORE CITY CRIMINAL COURT et al.

No. 70—5276.

Argued March 28 and 29, 1972.

Decided June 19, 1972.

Karl G. Feissner, Andrew E. Greenwald, Hyattsville, Md., for petitioners.

Henry R. Lord, Baltimore, Md., for respondents.

PER CURIAM.

Petitioners were convicted of various state crimes and sentenced to fixed terms of imprisonment. They were then committed to the Patuxent Institution in lieu of sentence, for an indeterminate period, pursuant to the Maryland Defective Delinquency Law, Md.Ann.Code, Art. 31B. They sought federal habeas corpus, challenging on constitutional grounds the criteria and procedures that led to their commitment, and the conditions of their confinement. They contend, inter alia, that the statutory standard for commitment is impermissibly vague, that they are entitled to put the government to the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that at the compulsory psychiatric examination prescribed by the statute they were entitled to have the assistance of counsel and to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination, and that they are being denied a constitutional right to treatment. The District Court denied relief sub nom. Sas v. Maryland, 295 F.Supp. 389 (Md.1969), and the Court of Appeals affirmed sub nom. Tippett v. Maryland, 4 Cir., 436 F.2d 1153 (CA4 1971).¹ We granted certiorari, 404 U.S. 999, 92 S.Ct. 567, 30 L.Ed.2d 552 (1971), to consider whether, and to what extent, the constitutional guarantees invoked by petitioners apply to this kind of commitment process. After briefing and oral argument, it now appears that this case does not present these issues in a manner that warrants the exercise of the certiorari jurisdiction of this Court.

1. Of the four petitioners, one has been unconditionally released from confinement, and the other three are subject to criminal sentences that have not yet expired, and that would bar their release from custody even if their claims were to prevail.² This fact, while not necessarily dispositive of all the claims presented by these petitioners, casts those claims in a different light, not contemplated by our original grant of the writ.³ Cf. McNeil v. Director, Patuxent Institution, 407 U.S. 245, 92 S.Ct. 2083, 32 L.Ed.2d 719.

2. Under our decisions in Baxstrom v. Herold, 383 U.S. 107, 86 S.Ct. 760, 15 L.Ed.2d 620 (1966), Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U.S. 504, 92 S.Ct. 1048, 31 L.Ed.2d 394 (1972), and Jackson v. Indiana, 406 U.S. 715, 92 S.Ct. 1845, 32 L.Ed.2d 435 (1972), petitioners' challenge to the Maryland Defective Delinquency Law should be considered in relation to the criteria, procedures, and treatment that the State of Maryland makes available to other persons, not 'defective delinquents,' committed for compulsory psychiatric treatment. We are informed that the statutes governing civil commitment in Maryland are presently undergoing substantial revision, designed to provide greater substantive and procedural safeguards to committed persons. Accordingly, it seems a particularly inopportune time for this Court to consider a comprehensive challenge to the Defective Delinquency Law.

In these circumstances, the writ of certionari is therefore dismissed as improvidently granted.

It is so ordered.

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, dissenting.

Patuxent Institution is a special prison used by the State of Maryland for the incarceration of 'defective delinquents.' Individuals who have demonstrated 'persistent aggravated anti-social or criminal behavior,' who have 'a propensity toward criminal activity,' and who have 'either such intellectual deficiency or emotional unbalance' as to present 'an actual danger to society' may be confined at Patuxent. Md.Ann.Code, Art. 31B, § 5 (1971). The initial determination that one is a defective delinquent is made judicially and, for those confined to Patuxent after such a determination, there is the right to seek judicial redetermination of their status at three-year intervals. Id., § 6 et seq. One of the objectives of Patuxent supposedly is to provide treatment for the inmates so that they may be returned to society. Director of Patuxent Institution v. Daniels, 243 Md. 16, 31—32, 221 A.2d 397, 406 (1966). Should a defective delinquent not receive treatment, or should the treatment prove inadequate to return him to society, the inmate might well remain in Patuxent for the remainder of his life. See McNeil v. Director, Patuxent Institution, 407 U.S. 245, 92 S.Ct. 2083, 32 L.Ed.2d 719.

Petitioners brought this action in the District Court challenging various aspects of their confinement at Patuxent. The District Court denied relief, Sas v. Maryland, 295 F.Supp. 389 (Md.1969); the Court of Appeals affirmed, Tippett v. Maryland, 436 F.2d 1153 (CA4 1974); and we granted the petition for a writ of certiorari. 404 U.S. 999, 92 S.Ct. 567, 30 L.Ed.2d 552. Because I base my decision on narrow grounds, I do not reach the broader issues tendred by petitioners.

When a State moves to deprive an individual of his liberty, to incarcerate him indefinitely, or to place him behind bars for what may be the rest of his life, the Federal Constitution requires that it meet a more regorous burden of proof than that employed by Maryland to commit defective delinquents. The Defective Delinquency Law does not specify the burden of proof necessary to commit an individual to Patuxent, but the Maryland Court of Appeals has determined that the State need only prove its case by the 'fair preponderance of the evidence.' E.g., Crews v. Director of Patuxent Institution, 245 Md. 174, 225 A.2d 436 (1967); Termin v. Director of Patuxent Institution, 243 Md. 689, 221 A.2d 658 (1966); Dickerson v. Director of Patuxent Institution, 235 Md. 668, 202 A.2d 765 (1964); Purks v. State, 226 Md. 43, 171 A.2d 726 (1961); Blizzard v. State, 218 Md. 384, 147 A.2d 227 (1958); and the Sas v. Maryland, 334 F.2d 506 (CA4 1964); Walker v. Director of Patuxent Institution, 6 Md.App. 206, 250 A.2d 900 (1969). Petitioners have thus been taken from their families and deprived of their constitutionally protected liberty under the same standard of proof applicable to run-of-the-mill automobile negligence actions.¹ The Court of Appeals disapproved this standard but, because it felt it insignificant, nonetheless held it to be consistent with the requirements of the Due Process Clause:

'We might all be happier had (the burden of persuasion) been stated in terms of clear and convincing proof rather than in terms of a preponderance of the evidence. However meaningful the distinction may be to us as judges, however, it is greatly to be doubted that a jury's verdict would ever be influenced by the choice of one standard or the other. We all know that juries apply the preponderance standard quite flexibly, depending upon the nature of the case. In any event, in the present state of our knowledge, choice of the standard of proof should be left to the state. A legislative (sic) choice of the proponderance standard, the same standard governing civil commitments of mentally ill persons who have no history of criminality, ought not to be held in violation of due process requirements when we have no firm foundation for an evaluation of the practical effects of the choice.' Tippett v. Maryland, supra, 436 F.2d, at 1158—1159.

Judge Sobeloff dissented in part and would have held the State to a more stringent burden:

'The reasonable doubt standard is indispensable in both criminal and juvenile proceedings . . . for 'it impresses on the trier of fact the necessity of reaching a subjective state of certitude of the facts in issue.' . . .

'The objections to the preponderance standard apply with equal force in defective delinquency hearings—indeed they are even more compelling in the latter class of cases, since indefinite incarceration is at stake. Due process commands that the jury must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt as to all objective facts in dispute, including the truth of any alleged incidents relied upon by the psychiatrists in reaching their recommendation.' Id., at 1165 (citations omitted).

In considering the constitutionally mandated burdens of proof applicable to particular types of cases, our decisions have attached greater significance to the varying standards than did the Court of Appeals below. In Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 520—521, 78 S.Ct. 1332, 1339, 2 L.Ed.2d 1460 (1958), we said:

'To experienced lawyers it is commonplace that the outcome of a lawsuit—and hence the vindication of legal rights—depends more often on how the factfinder appraises the facts than on a disputed construction of a statute or interpretation of a line of precedents. Thus the procedures by which the facts of the case are determined assume an importance fully as great as the validity of the substantive rule of law to be applied. And the more important the rights at stake the more important must be the procedural safeguards surrounding those rights.'

And see In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 368, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 1074, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970) (Harlan, J., concurring).

The reason for our continued concern over the applicable burden of proof is that a lawsuit—like any other factfinding process—is necessarily susceptible of error in the making of factual determinations. The nature of the rights implicated in the lawsuit thus determines the allocation and degree of the burden of proof and consequently the party upon whom the risk of errors in the factfinding process will be placed. We applied this reasoning in Speiser, where First Amendment rights were implicated:

'In all kinds of litigation it is plain that where the burden of proof lies may be decisive of the outcome. There is always in litigation a margin of error, representing error in factfinding, which both parties must take into account. Where one party has at stake an interest of transcending value—as a criminal defendant his liberty—this margin of...