Sex Offenders Stumble in Suit Against Atascadero

[The Straight Story]

Sex Offenders Stumble in Suit Against Atascadero


(CN) - Sexual predators being treated at California's Atascadero State Hospital cannot sue the facility's employees over alleged constitutional violations, the 9th Circuit ruled, reversing itself on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Patients confined to the hospital under the state's Sexually Violent Predator Act have pursued a class action against Atascadero's administrators and various state officials since the late 1990s. They claim that hospital employees force them to take medication and other treatments, while subjecting them to illegal strip-searches and restraints, among other things.

After a Los Angeles federal judge refused to dismiss the patients' request for monetary damages on the basis of the defendants' alleged qualified immunity, the 9th Circuit partly affirmed in 2007. Though the three-judge panel agreed as to damages, it found that the officials enjoyed qualified immunity on the several of the detainees' claims, including First Amendment violations.

When the state and hospital officials reasserted their immunity defense against damages claims to the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices told the appellate panel in 2009 to take another look.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/13/43042.htm

[LetTimmySmoke]

1. I've always been of the opinion that the best cure for people who rape kids is...

...a blindfold, a wall, and 5 marksmen.

[Mopar151]

2. Tall bridge, short water, done deal.

I'm assuming this is a "Secure Psychiatric Unit". I wish we could be kinder about what we (as a society) do with these shitlizards, but the people who keep an eye on 'em deserve a little slack.
Workin' at Atascadero gotta be bad enough without being sued by the inmates.....

[napoleon_in_rags]

3. Honestly, the best thing here for politics to just stay the F out of this.

Let shrinks, constitutional lawyers and the like figure this out.

Politics can be freaking dumb. Whenever sex offenses come up, you immediately get this crowd of people showing up, making desperate proclamations about how THEY are so SHOCKED at the crimes that they would throw the constitution out the window, and institute dark age laws, because they are SO AGAINST anyone even THINKING about these crimes... Emotional stuff, defensive stuff, to present themselves as different from the offenders. Why that desperate need to do so? Its not rational...

The cool heads on the scene include judges and lawyers who are busy working out solutions that don't create precedents that put us back in the inquisition, but also keep vulnerable individuals safe. Like most scenes, its the cool and rational heads that have the answers, the hotheads lead us astray. Better to cultivate that sense of inner peace than to invest deeply in the game of convincing other people how "pure" you are.