Prehospitalization Confinement Time Limits

Facts of the Case

Mr. Donnelly was charged with three counts of stalking, cyberstalking, and interstate violation of a protective order. The district court ordered him detained without bail at the federal detention center in Sheridan, Oregon, under 18 U.S.C § 3142 (2008) as both a danger to the community and a flight risk. He was held at this detention center starting in August 2021. On November 18, 2021, Mr. Donnelly was found not competent to stand trial and, under Insanity Defense Reform Act (IDRA), was committed to the custody of the attorney general for treatment in a suitable facility for a reasonable period of time, not to exceed four months. The attorney general has delegated this responsibility to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), which at the time was experiencing a significant delay in placing defendants for treatment because of limited bed availability. While in the custody of the attorney general, Mr. Donnelly was detained for four months awaiting hospitalization. He was then informed that he would likely have to wait another four months (until July 2022) before a bed would become available.

In March 2022, Mr. Donnelly filed a motion of dismissal of the indictment, arguing that the four-month-plus delay in placing him in a suitable facility violated his rights under 18 U.S.C § 4241(d) and the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. The basis for his statutory argument was that the four-month time limit imposed by 18 U.S.C. § 4241(d) starts at the time the district court orders a defendant committed to the custody of the attorney general for placement in a suitable hospital facility. The district court denied Mr. Donnelly's motion on the grounds that the four-month time limit begins only upon the defendant's hospitalization, not commitment to the attorney general's custody. The court also rejected Mr. Donnelly's due process argument because he had not shown the kind of “grossly shocking and outrageous” government misconduct necessary to warrant dismissal of the indictment (Donnelly, p 1104, citing United States v. Kearns, 5 F.3d 1251 (9th Cir. 1993). Mr. Donnelly filed an interlocutory appeal that challenged the denial of his motion to dismiss the indictment.

Ruling and Reasoning

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated and remanded the district court's decision based on the following reasoning: under IDRA, after a defendant is found to be incompetent, the district court commits the defendant to the custody of the attorney general. The attorney general then hospitalizes the defendant for treatment in a suitable facility for a reasonable period of time, not to exceed four months. The statute is clear that the four-month time limit applies only to the period of hospitalization. But, the statute does not establish whether a delay between commitment and hospitalization is allowed.

The court indicated that it is not necessary to decide if the statute allows some amount of prehospitalization confinement because the delay in this particular case falls outside any constitutional reading of the statute. Reyling on Jackson v. Indiana, 406 U.S. 715 (1972), “the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause prohibits a State from confining a defendant for an indefinite period simply because he or she is not competent to stand trial” (p 720), as it violates the defendant's due process rights. As a result, the Constitution does not permit any portion of a defendant's commitment under 18 U.S.C. § 4241(d) to last indefinitely. Jackson requires the length of any commitment to “bear some reasonable relation” to its purpose (Jackson, p 738). The court, therefore, reasoned that the duration of the prehospitalization commitment period must be limited to the time reasonably required to identify a suitable facility for the defendant and arrange for transportation to that facility. Given that Mr. Donnelly had already been held in custody for nearly six months (longer than the maximum time permitted for the hospitalization itself, at the time of the district court ruling), the court concluded that Mr. Donnelly's confinement exceeded the outer limit of § 4241(d).

The court determined that dismissal of the indictment (as Mr. Donnelly had requested) was not an appropriate remedy for this violation because Congress did not recommend dismissal of the indictment if the time limits imposed by § 4241(d) were violated. To determine an appropriate resolution, the court weighed the interests of the parties and examined relevant statutes. The court referred to Oregon Advocacy Center v. Mink, 322 F.3d 1101 (9th Cir. 2003), in which the court affirmed the district court's decision to initiate a statewide mandate requiring hospitalization within seven days for defendants found not competent to stand trial and requiring restoration determination at a state hospital. Based on Mink, Mr. Donnelly's liberty interest, and Congress' directive to restore incompetent defendants where possible, the Ninth Circuit vacated the district court's order and remanded with instructions to order the attorney general to hospitalize Mr. Donnelly in a suitable facility within seven days.

Concurrence

Circuit Judge Watford agreed with the majority that Mr. Donnelly's prolonged wait for a hospital bed violated § 4241(d) and that an order to direct his hospitalization was the appropriate remedy, but disagreed regarding the interpretation of the four-month time limit imposed by Congress in § 4241(d). Judge Watford indicated that the four months was an outer limit on the entire period a defendant could be committed to the custody of the attorney general for treatment and evaluation, including any prehospitalization delays. He came to this conclusion as nothing in the text of § 4241(d) suggested the creation of two separate time periods: first, a period of prehospitalization confinement without time constraints, followed by a period of hospitalization subject to a strict four-month time limit. Finally, he concluded that the extensive prehospitalization delays being seen at the time were due to a lack of beds at the facilities of the BOP and suggested this was a bureaucratic failure to meet the demand and that compliance should not be excused because the BOP could contract with another entity to hospitalize defendants committed to the attorney general's custody.