Sex-Offender Laws Focus Of Attention

One month after entering Pullman High School, 16-year-old Joshua Stillman raped two girls and possibly more.

Two months after his arrest, he was convicted and sent to a state juvenile institution until his 21st birthday.

Stillman turns 21 next month and legally becomes an adult, free to return to the Palouse.

Authorities don’t know if Stillman will return to Whitman County because sex-offender reporting laws only require him to report to law enforcement within 10 days of his arrival.

Sexual predators like Stillman are getting increasing attention in the Legislature this year with 27 bills being proposed to stiffen penalties against offenders and protect victims.

Bills range from sending two-time sex offenders away for life to charging juvenile sex suspects as adults.

Most bills are coming from the GOP-dominated House, but members of both parties are looking to get tough.

Lawmakers in both the House and Senate say there’s a good chance some of these bills will pass because they are aimed at the public’s gut concerns.

Rep. Larry Sheahan, R-Rosalia, chairman of the House Law and Justice Committee, is pushing for a package of laws to keep sex offenders like Stillman behind bars.

“People think that all the violent criminals and sex offenders are in big cities, it really hits home when you talk about one moving into my community,” Sheahan said.

Stillman’s mother, scheduled to pick him up when he is released, lives in a Whitman County neighborhood where Sheahan campaigned in 1994.

“These are just the kind of cases we are trying to deal with in our bills,” Sheahan said.

But Spokane attorney Carl Maxey said the bills before the Legislature resemble the laws of 15th century England.

“We are in the process of going through a period of legislative hysteria,” Maxey said. “These approaches have been tried where you put everybody in jail. It’s ridiculous.”

According to the Department of Corrections, the bills would add nearly 1,000 prisoners to the state’s overcrowded prison system by the year 2001.

Among the stack of bills introduced to deal more harshly with sex offenders is HB2219, which would have seen a younger Stillman charged as an adult.

“On his first conviction he would have been charged as an adult and given an adult sentence and all that entails,” Sheahan.

Whitman County Prosecutor Jim Kaufman said that if Stillman was charged as an adult his minimum sentence would have been at least eight years under state sentencing guidelines.

Another bill, HB2225, would increase that type of sentence, nearly tripling the jail time for any sexrelated first offense.

House and Senate bills, HB2507, HB2282 and SB5326, also aim to tighten reporting requirements so sex offenders would have to tell authorities where they are going one week before they leave prison.

Rep. Ida Ballisotes, R-Mercer Island, said although it is impossible to tell a sex offender where to live, tougher reporting requirements would arm communities.

“Scrutiny is the best defense we have,” Ballisotes said. “These people don’t like scrutiny.”

Whitman County Sheriff Steve Tomson said if Stillman returns home as expected he will put out a level three alert, the highest community warning.

“The likelihood of his re-offending is really high,” Tomson said.

Stillman operates by getting to know his victims and coerces them into yielding to his will, Tomson said.

While Stillman was convicted of two second-degree rapes involving younger girls, Whitman County authorities believe he was involved in more.

His high school principal, Lynn Baker, witnessed Stillman in action.

“He is smooth, not a person you would connect with sexual crimes at all,” Baker said. “The way he could work a young, unsuspecting female was really something to see.”

If Stillman returns to the county as expected, Baker will tell his teachers to watch out for him.

Ballisotes said it is common for offenders to be less than reformed when they leave state institutions.

“You could give this kid all the counseling in the world and he could still do it again,” Ballisotes said.

Until 1990, offenders like Stillman who were convicted as juveniles came out of the system with clean criminal records. The Legislature changed that.

“His record would have just washed away, but now it will follow him for the rest of his life,” Ballisotes said.

His prior convictions could make him eligible for the new ‘two strikes’ bills, HB2320 and SB6328, in committee in both the House and Senate.

Both bills would make life in prison without parole an option for second and subsequent convictions of violent sex crimes, Ballisotes said.

“He’s got his first strike,” Ballisotes said. “With him, he has to get his second before we can put him away, the problem is that would mean another victim.”

The Stillman case is especially troubling for Ballisotes, whose two daughters graduated from Washington State University in Pullman. Stillman faced two counts of criminal trespass for watching women undress in locker rooms at WSU athletic facilities, but those charges were dropped when he was convicted of the rapes.

Ballisotes lost one daughter who was murdered by a prisoner on work release. “This probably isn’t enough, but it is the best we can do,” she said.

Rep. Steve Fuhrman, R-Kettle Falls, said the Legislature is concentrating on sex-crime bills this session because of the violence seen all over the state this year.

“In the Legislature all we can do is push through bills to increase the penalties,” Fuhrman said.

Stillman’s expected release date from the Green Hill School, a juvenile detention center near Chehalis, is his birthday, Feb. 21.

The various bills are still in committee, and could be voted to the floor as early as today.

, DataTimes