WASHINGTON, June 10 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that forcing a prisoner to reveal past crimes during a sex offender rehabilitation program does not violate the Constitution's ban against coerced self-incrimination.
The case involves a Kansas inmate serving time for rape and related crimes.
A few years before Robert Lile was scheduled to be released, state prison officials recommended that he enter a prison treatment program so that he would not rape again.
"While there appears to be some difference of opinion among experts in the field," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in Monday's prevailing opinion, "Kansas officials and (U.S. prison) officials ... have made the determination that it is of considerable importance for the (prisoner) to admit having committed the crime for which he is being treated and other past offenses."
Kansas offers state prisoners incentives to participate in the program.
As part of the program, prisoners are required to complete and sign an "admission of responsibility" form in which they accept responsibility for the crimes for which they are sentenced, and complete a sexual history form that lists all prior sexual activities, including illegal ones.
Kansas does not consider the information privileged -- in effect it could be used to prosecute the prisoners for past crimes. But the state has never done so.
Lile filed suit saying the consequences of not taking the program were so severe that it constituted compelled self-incrimination.
A federal judge ruled for Lile without a trial, and a federal appeals court upheld the judge.
Monday, the Supreme Court reversed the appeals court.
"The consequences in question here -- a transfer to another prison where television sets are not placed in each inmate's cell, where exercise facilities are not readily available and where work and wage opportunities are more limited -- are not ones that compel a prisoner to speak about his past crimes despite a desire to remain silent," Kennedy said.
Lile also argued, though Kennedy did not mention it, that he could be transferred to a far more dangerous maximum security prison.
Justice John Paul Stevens dissented, joined by his three fellow liberals, Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor joined the conservative block to make up the 5-4 judgment, though she wrote her own concurrent opinion. And O'Connor said the found "troubling" the failure of Kennedy's opinion to say what the right against self-incriminaton actually means.
(No. 00-1187, Warden McKune et al. vs. Lile)
