United States of America v. John Charles Volungus

Boston, Massachusetts criminal defense lawyer represented the Defendant charged with being a real-life pedophile.



Sent to federal prison in 1999 for child-sex crimes (enticement and possessing child pornography) Volungus did his

time but broke conditions of his supervised release in 2005 and so landed back behind bars. In 2006 (before his second jail stint ended) the government moved to civilly confine him, arguing that he remained sexually dangerous and couldn't be safely released into the community. In 2012 (lots happened in between, but nothing worth noting) the district judge sided with the government and ordered him civilly committed to the custody of the federal bureau of prisons.



The Adam Walsh Act is one of the more complex statutes in the U.S. Code. Placed in Chapter 313 of Title 18 — dealing

with "Offenders with Mental Disease or Defect" — the Act is a "modest" add-on "to a set of federal prison-related mental-health" laws "that have existed for many decades." See United States v. Comstock, 560 U.S. 126, 137 (2010). Most basically the Act lets the feds seek court-ordered involuntary civil commitment of mentally ill "sexually dangerous person[s]" already in federal custody, even if they're finishing sentences after criminal convictions. See 18 U.S.C. § 4248; see also Comstock, 560 U.S. at 129.1 And once committed they're confined to a treatment facility until the facility's director or a court finds them no longer sexually dangerous or not sexually dangerous if released under a

prescribed "medical, psychiatric, or psychological" treatment regimen. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 4247(h), 4248(e).



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In 2022, Volungus was given a conditional release but objected to the conditions and appealed.



Affirmed on appeal.