Preventing Partisan Commitment: Applying Brady Protection to the Civil Commitment of Sex Offenders
Introduction
On March 8, 2002, Joseph Aaron Edwards appeared before the United States District Court for the District of Arizona. He was found guilty of committing “Sexual Abuse by Use of Force Against a Minor,” and for this crime Edwards faced a prison sentence of eighty-four months with five years of supervised release. Edwards served his punitive sentence as handed down by the federal court; however, less than a week before his release was scheduled, the Chairperson of the Bureau of Prison Certification Review Panel filed a certificate to civilly commit Edwards indefinitely under the federal sex offender commitment statute. Had the government not stipulated to dismiss Edwards’s case three years after his certification, he may have faced the same fate as thousands of other individuals in the United States who have already served time for sexual offenses: an indeterminate period of commitment, ending only after authorities determine that the individual is no longer a threat to society....