Due Process - Civil Commitment (Aired 2/25/17)

It's imprisonment reserved for just one type of offender - with no set sentence and no guarantee of release. And, right now, here in New Jersey, there are nearly 500 men, who've already served their time ... but remain locked up ... because the State deems them too dangerous to release. It's called Civil Commitment and the state says it's a treatment program, but the residents call it a prison. And Rodney Roberts, for 10 years, was one of them. If you were with us last week, you saw Rodney's story: A guilty plea born of fear, a maxed out sentence of 7 years - and on the day of release, not a ride home, but a surprise transfer - to civil commitment. He would be held there, as an incorrigible violent sex offender, for a full decade - although it would later be proven that he had been innocent from the start. On Part II of our series on the tragedy of wrongful rape convictions, Rodney reveals the truth about civil commitment - and the 10 years he lost to it. Joining him in the Rutgers Law moot courtroom: Professor Jenny-Brooke Condon, director of Seton Hall Law School's Equal Justice Clinic, which sued the state on behalf of the hundreds locked up, indefinitely ... In civil commitment. It's a "Due a Process" that will open your eyes - and break your heart. The kind of TV you won't see elsewhere.