Dear House Judiciary Committee: In Questioning William Barr, Employ the Ethics Complaint That 27 Distinguished DC Lawyers Filed Wednesday

FREDERICK BARON, DENNIS AFTERGUT, AUSTIN SARAT

Frederick Baron, former associate deputy attorney general and director of the Executive Office for National Security in the Department of Justice, Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, and Austin Sarat, Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence & Political Science at Amherst College, call upon the House Judiciary Committee to carefully read the ethics complaint by 27 distinguished DC lawyers against William Barr before questioning him today, July 28, 2020.

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United States v. Wayda

Docket: 19-7754

Opinion Date: July 27, 2020

Judge: Stephanie Dawn Thacker

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

The Government initiated a civil commitment proceeding under 18 U.S.C. 4248, seeking the commitment of appellee to the custody of the Attorney General as a "sexually dangerous person." The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of the section 4248 civil commitment certification as untimely. The court held that once the Maryland district court determined appellee was incompetent to stand trial, appellee could remain committed to the Attorney General for only an additional reasonable period of time until his charges were disposed of in accordance with law. Absent a creditable explanation of the reasonableness of appellee's commitment post-December 2018 -- two years after his initial commitment and six full months after the Unrestorability Determination -- the statutory language and the court's precedent in United States v. Searcy, 880 F.3d 116, 122 (4th Cir. 2018), and United States v. Timms, 664 F.3d 436, 451–52 (4th Cir. 2012), compel the court to hold that appellee could no longer be considered legitimately committed to the Attorney General's custody in June 2019.