In 2015, Duane Berry was charged with a single count of conveying false information and hoaxes—a federal property crime carrying a maximum of five years in prison. After four years in custody and two rounds of competency evaluations, a judge found Berry incompetent to stand trial and dismissed the charge. That should have ended the matter. Instead, Berry remains unlawfully incarcerated nearly a decade after the charge was filed.
A panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the ability of the government to hold Berry in perpetuity, broadly construing a pretrial restoration statute. But that statute was enacted to help restore defendants suffering from mental illness to competency to stand trial.
The Cato Institute filed an amicus brief asking the full Fourth Circuit to grant Berry’s petition to rehear the case and reverse the panel decision. In our brief, we explain that after intense debate, the Framers devised a federal government of enumerated powers. Having lived under British subjugation—suspicious of a powerful, disconnected central government—they wanted the real power to reside closer to home, with the states.
Among the enumerated powers is the ability of Congress to proscribe federal crimes and punish violators. But this does not confer upon the federal government an additional power to exercise indefinite civil control over people no longer lawfully in its custody. Rather, the powers the Constitution does not expressly confer upon the federal government—including post-dismissal civil commitment—are reserved to the states and the people, respectively.
Allowing the panel’s decision to stand would authorize the federal government to exercise unrestrained civil commitment power against any mentally ill person charged with a federal crime, even after their federal charges are disposed of. This unprecedented holding directly contradicts the Constitution’s carefully established limits on federal power and respect for states’ rights.
