Involuntary civil commitment deprives some of the most vulnerable among us of their most valued right, the right to liberty. In recognition of the importance of liberty interests of the mentally ill, New Jersey statutes contain strict due process requirements before the state can restrict that liberty. Thus, our statutes, N.J.S.A. §§30:4-27.1 et seq., allow only a 24-hour holding period for a psychiatric assessment once a patient is brought to a psychiatric facility, and another 72-hour involuntary hold if the examining psychiatrist certifies in writing the need for involuntary commitment including findings that the patient is mentally ill, is a danger to himself/herself or others, and that there is no less-restrictive alternative. During that 72 hours, the facility must initiate judicial proceedings for involuntary commitment.

Unfortunately, adherence to these requirements has sometimes been lax, as our Appellate Division recently found. In Matter of Commitment of C.M., decided on April 15, 2019, a three-judge panel, in a published opinion written by Presiding Judge Clarkson Fisher Jr., held that a lower court judge should have ruled on objections to commitment of three psychiatric patients based on failures to follow the required statutory procedures even though the cases were technically moot because the patients had been released from confinement by the time their objections were heard. The three cases, similar in their procedural irregularities, were decided by the same lower court judge and were consolidated for purposes of the appeal. The state filed no brief, advising that it took “no position,” which the court interpreted as “its recognition that the temporary commitment orders should not have been entered.”

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