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93 F. Supp. 647

Malone v. Overholzer

District of Columbia District Court

Decided October 26, 1950

District of Columbia District Court · decided 1950-10-26

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“« * a * u10 language of § 1 of the act is intended to include those persons who, by an habitual course of misconduct in sexual matters, have evidenced an utter lack of power to control their sexual impulses and who, as a result, are likely to attack or otherwise inflict injury, loss, pain or other evil on the objects of their uncontrolled and uncontrollable desire.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Miller v. Overholser

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1950-10-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently December 1998

2 federal appellate · 1 district · 4 state decisions

4019501960197019801990decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

HOLTZOFF, District Judge.

¶1 This is a writ of habeas corpus to review the commitment of the petitioner to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital .for the Insane under a statute known as the Miller Act, Act of June 9, 1948, D.C.Code 1940, Section 3503(1) of Title 22. The petitioner attacks the constitutionality of the Act.

¶2 Title II of the Act which is involved in this case defines the term “sexual psychopath” as “ a person, not insane, who by a course of repeated misconduct in sexual matters has evidenced such lack of power to control his sexual impulses as to be dangerous to other persons because he is likely to attack or otherwise inflict injury, loss, pain, or other evil on the objects of his desire.”

¶3 The Act provides for the commitment of a person found to be a sexual psychopath to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. This commitment may be made only after a judicial hearing, which is conducted without a jury unless a jury is demanded either by the prosecuting attorney or by the petitioner.

¶4 It should be observed that this Act is not a criminal statute. It extends the law relating to the commitment of persons who are mentally incompetent so as to *648 include as possible subjects of commitment to a mental hospital, persons who are sexual psychopaths as defined in the Act.

¶5 It appears to the Court that the Congress, as the legislative body of the District of Columbia, was acting entirely within its authority in enacting this statute. It should be observed that all the rights of the petitioner are expressly preserved by this statute. He is entitled to have a hearing before the. court and may be committed only upon a finding by the Court or upon the verdict of a jury. He is entitled to counsel to represent him in this proceeding. Under the statute and under the general principles of law, he may at any time after commitment test by a habeas corpus proceeding the question whether he has recovered.

¶6 The Court is unable to find any constitutional infirmity in the Act and holds the statute constitutional.

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