Sexual Predator Law Ruled Unconstitutional

A federal judge ruled Friday that Washington state’s sex-predator law is unconstitutional because it violates inmates’ due-process rights and punishes them twice for a single crime.

Based on the ruling in the case of Andre Brigham Young, public defenders quickly asked for the release of eight other inmates confined at the Special Commitment Center in Monroe. Young, like all inmates at the center, is confined for an indefinite period.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour’s ruling effectively overturns a 1993 decision by the Washington state Supreme Court upholding the law.

When passed in 1990, the law was the first of its kind in the nation.

The civil commitment law is the linchpin of a broad legislative measure intended to get sex offenders off the streets. It permits a civil jury to indefinitely commit violent sex offenders who have already served their sentences. The convict is deemed likely to re-offend based on prior record and whether a psychological profile shows a “mental abnormality” or “personality disorder.”

Coughenour gave the state and Young’s attorneys a Sept. 5 deadline for filing briefs on whether Young should be released pending a possible appeal by the state attorney general’s office.

“It’s the right decision considering the fact the statute has been a sham all along,” said attorney Russell V. Leonard with the King County public defender’s office.

“It’s been really an attempt to preventively detain our clients to punish them, under the guise of providing non-existent treatment,” Leonard said.

Young, 54, told Leonard he was delighted with the ruling.

“He wants to get this over with and get on with his life. He has no interest in reoffending or getting in trouble with the law,” Leonard said.

Attorney General Christine Gregoire said her office was disappointed.

“This statute was carefully drafted by the state Legislature in 1990 to ensure that individual rights, civil liberties and the Constitution were followed,” she said.

The law is necessary to protect people from dangerous and incorrigible sex criminals, she said.

Her office will decide within the next week whether to appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A spokesman for her office said the ruling applies only to Young and does not order the release of any other inmates.

“He is not going to be freed anytime soon, if at all,” said Dean Owen.

The center currently holds 31 men - 22 of them committed and nine awaiting commitment hearings.

Leonard said the ruling would apply to any of the 30 other inmates at the commitment center. He said his office, which handles Young’s case and eight others, has urged lawyers representing other inmates to use the ruling to free their clients.

Leonard’s office asked late Friday for emergency hearings in eight other cases pending in superior courts.

At the commitment center, the prisoners, who are referred to as patients, receive counseling and therapy in an effort to rid them of their behaviors.

Last year, treatment at the center was found to be so inadequate by U.S. District Judge William L. Dwyer that he appointed an expert to direct improvements.

Coughenour held that the law violated Young’s Fourteenth Amendment due process rights because it allows the indefinite commitment of people who suffer from “a mental abnormality or personality disorder” but are not mentally ill.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a person must be both mentally ill and dangerous to be detained by the government, aside from a prison sentence, he said.

“Predictions of dangerousness alone are an insufficient basis to continue indefinitely the incarceration of offenders who have completed their prison terms,” he wrote.

Coughenour also ruled the law was unconstitutional because it was enacted after Young committed the rape for which he was last imprisoned.

The “ex post facto” provision in the constitution applies to criminal laws, and prohibits the government from passing laws that apply retroactively or inflict a greater punishment for an existing crime.

Although the statute labels the commitment as civil, Coughenour said the law is criminal because it incarcerates people indefinitely, applies only to convicts and promotes punishment’s goals of retribution and deterrence.

“Despite the state’s claims that the statute is intended only to provide treatment, the state evinces a keen interest in punishment,” Coughenour wrote.

As a final basis for overturning the law, Coughenour said it punished sex offenders twice for the same crime, which is prohibited by the constitution.

A King County panel declared Young a predator in March 1991, after his release from prison for previous sex crimes. He had committed no new crimes, but his record included six felony rapes of adult women, some of whom he assaulted with a knife after breaking into their homes, court documents showed.