Young v. Murphy

615 F.3d 59

John YOUNG, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.Robert MURPHY, Jr., Superintendent, Massachusetts Treatment Center, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 09-1685.

United States Court of Appeals,First Circuit.

Heard June 7, 2010.

Decided Aug. 10, 2010.

Michael A. Nam-Krane on brief for appellant.

Eva M. Badway, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Bureau, with whom Martha Coakley, Attorney General, were on brief, for appellee.

Before TORRUELLA and LIPEZ, Circuit Judges, and BARBADORO, ^* District Judge.

BARBADORO, District Judge.

John Young was civilly committed to the Massachusetts Treatment Center pursuant to Chapter 123A of the Massachusetts General Laws after a state court jury found that he was a “sexually dangerous person.” The jury's verdict was affirmed on appeal in state court and Young's habeas corpus petition was rejected by the district court. He argues in this appeal that the jury's verdict violates his Fourteenth Amendment right to substantive due process because it authorizes his commitment without proof that he suffers from a sufficiently serious mental impairment.

I.

Shortly before Young completed a state prison sentence for a 1997 indecent assault and battery, the Commonwealth filed a petition to commit him as a sexually dangerous person pursuant to Chapter 123A of the Massachusetts General Laws.

A. Chapter 123A

Massachusetts law allows for the civil commitment of a person convicted of a sexual offense if the person “suffers from a mental abnormality or personality disorder which makes the person likely to engage in sexual offenses if not confined to a secure facility.” Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123A, § 1. The statute explains that a “mental abnormality” is a “congenital or acquired condition of a person that affects the emotional or volitional capacity of the person in a manner that predisposes that person to the commission of criminal sexual acts to a degree that makes the person a menace to the health and safety of other persons.” Id. A “personality disorder” is defined as “a congenital or acquired physical or mental condition that results in a general lack of power to control sexual impulses.” Id.

Chapter 123A provides that the court must first conduct a hearing to determine whether there is probable cause to believe that an individual is a sexually dangerous person. Id. ch. 123A, § 12. If probable cause exists, the individual is committed to a treatment center “for the purpose of examination and diagnosis under the supervision of two qualified examiners,” who file written reports with the court that include diagnoses and opinions as to whether the individual is sexually dangerous. Id. ch. 123A, § 13. The individual is tried before a jury unless he affirmatively waives that right. Id. ch. 123A, § 14.

In Young's case, the court followed the steps mandated by the statute and the proceedings culminated in a jury trial.

B. The Trial

The parties stipulated that Young was eligible for civil commitment based upon his conviction for rape in 1981 and for indecent assault and battery in 1997, both of which qualify as sexual offenses under Chapter 123A. To meet its burden with respect to the other elements of its commitment petition, the Commonwealth called three psychologists, Drs. Robert Joss, Barbara Quiñones, and J. Leonard Peebles, each of whom opined that (1) Young suffers from antisocial personality disorder (“APD”), ¹ (2) his APD results in a general lack of power to control his sexual impulses, and (3) his APD makes him likely to engage in sexual offenses if he is not confined to a secure facility.

1. Difficulty Controlling Non-Sexual Impulses

All three experts testified concerning Young's impulsivity, not only in order to justify their diagnoses of APD, but also to explain how they had each reached the conclusion that Young was a sexually dangerous person. The experts supported their testimony by citing numerous examples drawn from reports and other records that documented Young's difficulty in controlling his impulses.

A series of reports detailed Young's history as a child and adolescent. According to these documents, Young's mother reported that he had always lacked an inner control mechanism. Young briefly attended a Head Start program, but his behavior could not be controlled there. From approximately the age of seven until the age of eleven, Young attended an alternative school in Lowell. Because of his educational needs and his aggressive outbursts, the Department of Public Welfare then placed Young at St. Ann's Home, a residential treatment facility in Methuen, Massachusetts, where he lived for approximately three years. At St. Ann's, Young pushed and shoved female staff members, frequently attacked younger children, assaulted a staff member with a pool cue, threatened an elderly man with a knife, and was involved in a breaking and entering. When Young visited his family, he physically assaulted his mother and sister; his mother even reported that she feared for her life during one attack. Eventually, the staff at St. Ann's concluded that they, like the staff at Head Start, could not contain Young's behavior. Young was next placed in a program at the Hayden Inn in Dorchester, Massachusetts. There, he frequently ran away, but he did not display aggressive behavior, as most of the other residents were larger than he was. Because officials eventually determined that even the Hayden Inn program could not meet his needs, Young was sent to the Danvers State Hospital in Danvers, Massachusetts for a ten-day observation and ultimately enrolled in the Centerpoint Residential Adolescent Program in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. At Centerpoint, Young continued his violent behavior and was involved in numerous criminal activities, including theft and assault.

Unsurprisingly, the three experts testified that Young's difficulties as a child and adolescent were significant because they demonstrated his long-standing inability to control his impulses. Joss specifically noted that Young “had a great deal of difficulty controlling his behavior[,] even while [he was at St. Ann's Home,] a residential facility.” Peebles emphasized the significance of the fact that multiple previous clinicians had concluded that Young had a severe impulse control problem.

Young fared no better while incarcerated than he had in the residential placements of his youth. Documents relied on by Joss revealed that Young received at least 240 disciplinary reports during the approximately seventeen years in which he was incarcerated in state prison between 1981 and February 2002. In one particularly vicious incident, Young got into a verbal argument with corrections officers, attempted to bite one officer's fingers, bit another officer on the forearm, causing deep puncture wounds, and told that officer, “Now you got AIDS, [be]cause I do.” Joss and Quiñones observed that this institutional history reflected a significant lack of impulse control; Joss emphasized that even when he was being watched constantly, Young could not control himself.

Young's behavior at the Massachusetts Treatment Center in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where he was housed and treated while he awaited his civil commitment trial, also supported the experts' opinion testimony. According to reports, in December 2002, Young disrupted his unit by yelling to staff members, “Why don't you pieces of shit come in here so I can fuck you all up?” On January 9, 2003, while awaiting a disciplinary hearing, Young yelled, “If you fucking people give me more time up here, just watch and see how I act,” and he told officers he would “rip out and destroy this fucking place.” That afternoon, he flooded his cell and told an officer, “This [has just] begun [;] I'm going to break your neck.” The next day, Young again flooded his cell and, when confronted by an officer, said, “This has just begun[;] I'm going to smear shit all over the walls.” Joss and Peebles emphasized that the fact that Young's disruptive behavior continued even at the Massachusetts Treatment Center, and in the presence of corrections officers, demonstrated that he had substantial difficulty in controlling his impulses.

2. Difficulty Controlling Sexual Impulses

All three experts also testified specifically about Young's difficulty in controlling his sexual impulses.

Police reports that the experts examined revealed that in 1981, at the age of nineteen, Young raped a woman he had met at a bar. After asking his victim for a ride home and directing her to a secluded area, he pushed her out of her car, tore off her blouse and bra, and demanded that she remove her pants while threatening her with a “magnum.” During intercourse, the woman struggled and screamed; Young responded by hitting her and biting her breast. In 1997, while Young was on probation for armed robbery, he approached a fifteen-year-old girl on the street, grabbed her shoulder to turn her around, and asked her if she wanted to party as he touched her breasts. All three experts concluded that Young's two prior sexual offenses were evidence of his difficulty in controlling his sexual impulses. Joss explained that the fact that Young committed the 1997 offense while on probation, and committed the 1981 and 1997 crimes against people unfamiliar to him, demonstrated impulsiveness. In addition, Joss and Quiñones agreed that the public location of Young's 1997 attack underscored his lack of impulse control.

Another set of reports from the early 1990s noted that Young had made obscene phone calls to the wife of a corrections officer and a J.C. Penney store while he was incarcerated. Joss and Quiñones both testified that the phone calls demonstrated Young's difficulty in controlling his sexual impulses.

Finally, a March 2002 incident report from the Massachusetts Treatment Center stated that Young was found to be in possession of internet-generated, sexually explicit poems with a pornographic picture on the bottom of each page, a magazine cut-out depicting...