Gale Encyclopedia of American Law Volume 3 P5 fully illuminates today's leading cases, major statutes, legal terms and concepts, notable persons involved with the law, important documents and more. Legal issues are fully discussed in easy-to-understand language, including such high-profile topics as the Americans with Disabilities Act, capital punishment, domestic violence, gay and lesbian rights, physician-assisted suicide and thousands more. | 28 COMMITMENT a personality disorder are likely to engage in predatory acts of sexual violence. Kansas invoked the act in committing an inmate who had a long history of sexually molesting children and who was scheduled for release from prison shortly after the act became law. In a 5-4 decision written by Associate Justice clarence Thomas the Court rejected arguments that someone can be confined to a mental institution only if the person has been diagnosed with a mental illness. The court also rejected arguments that the Kansas law violated the double jeopardy provision of the fifth amendment to the . Constitution even though under the law persons who are first imprisoned for a sex crime may be institutionalized again when their criminal sentence has been served based on some of the same evidence that had been used to convict them. The Kansas law created a civil commitment procedure that would result in confinement in a mental hospital the Court said and the protection against double jeopardy is only triggered by subsequent criminal punishments and prosecutions. The . Supreme Court s decision was hailed by Kansas and the 38 other states that had urged the justices to uphold the law. However defense lawyers civil libertarians and mental health professionals warned that the decision might allow states to lock up convicts who are not truly dangerous to society. In effect said several mental health experts the ruling misuses mental hospitals for punishment purposes singling out one category of violent criminal for unlimited incarceration without the safeguards afforded to criminal defendants in the bill of rights. Dissenting justices echoed these sentiments in Hendricks writing that while they agreed in principle with the idea that states may confine sexual predators who are deemed to be mentally abnormal in this case it appeared that Kansas had not tried to treat the mental problems of the convict whose case was before the court. As a result they wrote his .
