Whether the State may compel relief under Jackson v. Indiana over a defendant's objection

QUESTIONS PRESENTED FOR REVIEW In 1970, New York State enacted its Criminal Procedure Law, and conferred to defendants who lacked the capacity to assist in their own defense the rights to the dismissal of their indictments, and discharge from criminal custody, upon being confined for a period equivalent to two thirds of the sentence for the highest charged crime in their indictments. Two years later, in Jackson v. Indiana, 406 US 715 (1972), this Court held that it violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the fourteenth amendment to indeterminately, psychiatrically confine incapacitated defendants, who had never been convicted and were unlikely to attain capacity in the foreseeable future (or were not making progress towards that goal). This Court further held that such defendants could only be confined under the same standards of commitment as other civil patients. Twenty eight years later, in People v Lewis, 95 NY 2d 539 (2000), reargument denied, 96 NY 2d 755 (2001), cert. denied, 534 US 833 (2001), the New York Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, held that a defendant who invokes Jackson v Indiana in order to be discharged from criminal custody loses the benefits of automatic dismissal of his indictment and automatic discharge from criminal custody provided under State law. The questions presented here are: 1. Whether the State may compel relief under Jackson, over a defendant’s objection, claiming in substance that the State law is unconstitutional, and thereby eviscerate the defendant’s rights to automatic discharge from criminal custody and the dismissal of his indictment under State law? 2. Whether the State has the standing or authority to exercise a defendant's constitutional rights over his objection, and thereby create a conflict between the defendant's Jackson rights, and his State-created rights to liberty in order to invalidate State law to advance its own policy preferences? i