New Law for NJ Sex Offenders

Sex offenders who have completed their criminal sentences may be sent to psychiatric hospitals against their will, and prosecutors are not required to meet the toughest legal test to win a commitment, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Judges need only see "clear and convincing evidence" that an offender will commit another crime, Associate Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote for the unanimous court.

"The clear and convincing burden of proof required in any civil commitment matter applies to all trial court proceedings," she said.

To win a criminal conviction, prosecutors must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, a higher standard of proof.

Under New Jersey law, sex offenders deemed likely to commit similar crimes after their release from prison may be committed to a state psychiatric hospital.

The confinement process, passed by the Legislature in 1999, allows for annual case reviews for the inmates.

"Those periodic reviews will allow adequate opportunity to assess fresh information concerning the committee's dangerousness," LaVecchia wrote.

The court considered the case of a man identified as W.Z., a sex offender whose criminal past dates to 1982 when he was 16 and was convicted of the first of his three violent assaults.

As his criminal sentence neared its end in 1999, the state began the process of sending him to a state psychiatric facility.

At a hearing in 2000, state experts claimed the man does not have a sexual compulsion, but does suffer from disorders that make him unable to control himself. Those factors mean there is "a great likelihood" he would commit another sex crime, the state argued.

In his appeal, lawyers for W.Z. claimed the hearing system outlined in the law violated his constitutional rights.

The Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings that affirmed the state's right to detain offenders.

In a companion ruling, the court said judges who hear such commitment cases are allowed to consider statistical evidence of an offender's likelihood to commit a similar crime well as direct testimony.

Judges can evaluate the statistics as they would any other evidence, the court said.

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Author: 6 ABC-AP