Opinion
No. 2D00-1424.
Opinion filed November 3, 2000.
Petition for Writ of Prohibition to the Circuit Court for Polk County; Cecelia M. Moore, Judge.
James Marion Moorman, Public Defender, and Deborah K. Bruckheimer, Assistant Public Defender, Bartow, for Petitioner.
Robert Butterworth, Attorney General Tallahassee, and Margaret Brenan, Assistant Attorney General, Miami, for Respondent.
Travis Tanguay petitions this court for a writ of prohibition preventing the trial court from hearing the civil commitment petition that is pending against him pursuant to the Involuntary Commitment of Sexually Violent Predators Act (hereinafter "the Act"). See §§ 916.31 — 916.49, Fla. Stat. (Supp. 1998). We conclude that the trial court has jurisdiction to entertain the commitment petition and reject Tanguay's argument to the contrary without discussion.
The Act has since been amended and renumbered and now appears at sections 394.910 — 394.931, Florida Statutes (1999).
Tanguay next contends that even if the trial court has jurisdiction to entertain the petition, it must nonetheless be dismissed because the State violated Tanguay's right to due process. Specifically, Tanguay argues that the State illegally detained him for sixteen days beyond the expiration of his sentence in order to evaluate him and file a commitment petition against him. The Act in effect at the time of Tanguay's detention made no provision for holding a person beyond the expiration of his or her sentence. It appears from the record before this court that the State simply failed to release Tanguay upon the lawful expiration of his sentence and continued to hold him with no legal authority to do so.
The Act now provides that a person may be held beyond the expiration of his or her sentence for seventy-two hours in order to be evaluated and an additional forty-eight hours to enable the State to file a commitment petition. See § 394.9135, Fla. Stat. (1999).
We agree with Tanguay that the State denied him due process, see, e.g., Valdez v. Moore, 745 So.2d 1009 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999), as well as violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unlawful seizure, see, e.g., Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103 (1975), by detaining him for sixteen days without a commitment petition having been filed, without a judicial finding of probable cause, and without affording him any notice or opportunity to be heard. Tanguay has not, however, alleged any prejudice from the State's unlawful detention other than the deprivation of his liberty. He has not, for example, alleged that he has been prejudiced in defending the commitment proceeding in any way. We therefore decline at this time to find that the State's violation of Tanguay's constitutional rights requires the dismissal of the commitment petition.
We conclude, however, that the only adequate remedy to address the State's failure to comply with the requirements of the Act or to afford Tanguay even minimal constitutional protections is to order Tanguay's release from custody pending his commitment hearing. See, e.g., Johnson v. Department of Children Family Servs. 747 So.2d 402 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999) (holding that courts have inherent authority to order the release of a detainee when the State fails to scrupulously comply with the requirements of the Act or the applicable constitutional provisions); Kinder v. State, 25 Fla. L. Weekly D1637 (Fla. 2d DCA July 7, 2000) (holding that the only adequate remedy to redress the State's violation of a detainee's statutory right to be afforded a commitment hearing within thirty days was to order his release pending hearing). We therefore treat Tanguay's petition as a petition for writ of mandamus, grant it to the extent that it seeks his release from confinement, and direct the trial court to order his release. See Kinder, 25 Fla. L. Weekly at D1637. We deny the petition in all other respects.
CAMPBELL, A.C.J., and THREADGILL and GREEN, JJ., Concur.
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION AND, IF FILED, DETERMINED.