Civil Commitment, is it legal?

Recently the MN Department of Corrections agreed to pay damages to Sjodin's family instead of facing a lawsuit.  The terms of the agreement provide little detail about why the family intended to sue the state.  Critics have argued that Rodriguez should not have been released, but committed indefinitely as sexually psychopathic (ie Civil Commitment).  The MN Department of Corrections released Rodriguez, who was a Level 3 sex offender, after he completed his entire prison term of 23 years for a previous stabbing and attempted kidnapping of a woman.

I have two concerns.  One is that there are still people that think someone like this can be helped.  He has proven and chosen to be beyond help.  The only way we can truly protect the rest of society from him is to execute him.

My second concern is that Dru's family was able to get money ($300,000), in the form of a settlement, from the MN Department of Corrections for letting a man out of prison after completing his full sentence. The man served his time for his previous crimes. The original sentence should have at least been life without parole then Dru would be alive today.  But it wasn't.  Now it has become the state's fault for not locking him up via civil commitment. The whole civil commitment question is still a question.  Is it legal?  Is it the correct thing to do morally?  Can we really lock someone up for crimes we think they may commit in the future?  I'm not sure I agree with civil commitment and I am sure I do not agree with the settlement in this case.  Also, in 1975, O'Connor v. Donaldson, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to commit for treatment a person who is not imminently a danger to himself or others and is capable to a minimal degree of surviving on his own.

Can the State of Minnesota say for sure that a person is or is not a danger to himself or others, especially if the person has been a well behaved prisoner for 23 years?  I'm not sure.  Even at his trial there were several professional, but contradicting, medical opinions about his metal condition.  Which medical opinion should the State have believed?  Which one is correct?  What happens when the State says your a danger, even though your are not, just so they can lock you up and not have to deal with you anymore?  That was the whole premises of the 1975, O'Connor v. Donaldson, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.  A man was locked up via 'Involuntarily Commitment' in a mental hospital even though he was not a danger to himself or society.  The fact that this case happen means the abuse did happen and can happen again if we head down the Civil Commitment road which is just the same 'Involuntarily Commitment' road with a new name.

The solution in my opinion is to hand out life in prison sentences for serious sex offenders instead of giving them shorter sentences and risk violating their civil rights by claiming they are a danger to society when they finish their time in prison.