ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – New York’s highest court ruled Tuesday that the state – acting under an order from Gov. Pataki – wrongly confined convicted sex offenders in psychiatric facilities after their prison sentences ended.

In a 7-0 decision, the Court of Appeals reversed a midlevel court decision allowing 12 men to be held without hearings as psychiatric patients and ordered their cases back to a lower court. The men are still confined.

“This vindicates our position,” said Stephen Harkavy, a lawyer and deputy director of Mental Hygiene Legal Service, a court agency that represents people in state mental health facilities. “There is a process to determine if someone should be held. What happened was they were not given that process. They were simply evaluated in prison and sent over without any entitlement to a hearing.”

Mr. Pataki ordered the convicts held because he was frustrated by the state Legislature’s failure to enact a law preventing them from returning to communities where they could repeat their crimes. Since October 2005, about 120 men have been confined under Mr. Pataki’s order, Mr. Harkavy said. Any one of them who wants to be released will now be entitled to a hearing, he said.

Mr. Pataki’s office did not return calls for comment.

In November 2005, a state Supreme Court justice found the inmates – whose crimes included sodomizing and raping children – were held illegally when they were involuntarily sent to mental hospitals through a process known as “civil commitment.” Physicians from the state Office of Mental Health found they were mentally ill and posed threats of committing more crimes if they didn’t receive inpatient psychiatric treatment.

The judge said the inmates, called John Does 1-12 in the suit filed by Mental Hygiene Legal Service, were denied due process because the state violated rules for transferring prison inmates to psychiatric facilities.

But the Appellate Division said that because the sex offenders had been released from prison, the lower court judge was wrong when she relied on provisions of the state’s Correction Law, which governs psychiatric confinement of prison inmates. The court said she should have used the Mental Health Law, which deals with the hospitalization of civilians.

The Court of Appeals disagreed and ordered immediate hearings for the men to determine if they pose a danger to the public.

“We understand how, in an attempt to protect the community from violent sexual predators, the state proceeded under the Mental Hygiene Law,” Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick wrote in her opinion. “We do not propose that these petitioners be released, nor do we propose to trump the interests of public safety. Rather, we recognize that a need for continued hospitalization may well exist.”

Attorney General Spitzer, the governor-elect, said in a statement that the decision “clearly demonstrates” the need for a law allowing civil confinement. His office had argued the case for the Mr. Pataki administration.