Predator Law Faces Ultimate Legal Challenge Supreme Court Expected To Rule This Month On Confinement Law
Sometime this month, the U.S. Supreme Court may well decide to free the 50 men and one woman Washington state ranks among its most violent and predatory sex offenders.
The nation’s highest court is considering arguments from civil libertarians who say it’s unconstitutional for Washington and five other states to indefinitely confine dangerous sex offenders - after they have served their sentences - because of what they might do.
A legal and public-relations nightmare could follow a Supreme Court decision striking down Washington’s 1990 “civil commitment” law.
“The thought of all those people being set loose on the streets makes me sick to my stomach,” state Rep. Ida Ballasiotes, R-Mercer Island, said in a recent interview.
As a citizen activist seven years ago, she helped write the nation’s first civil-commitment law after her daughter, Diane, was slain in 1988 by a convicted sex offender on work release.
“We have no idea what the Supreme Court might do, so we are getting ready on several levels,” Ballasiotes said.
The court is considering a challenge to the constitutionality of a Kansas law, but its ruling will apply to nearly identical laws here and in Arizona, California, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and attorneys from all six states have joined forces to defend the laws. The court is expected to release its ruling on one of the three Mondays remaining in June, before its summer recess.
Ballasiotes and other Washington supporters hope the justices uphold the law’s basic principle and rule that it’s OK to confine and treat people whose criminal past suggests a “mental abnormality” and “future dangerousness.”
“If the law can be revised to make it conform to the court opinion, then the Legislature will do it,” possibly in a special session this year, Ballasiotes said.
Gov. Gary Locke agreed a special session was possible, depending on how the court rules.
“We’re prepared to do whatever we have to do to protect the public,” he said. “If all we need is a minor fix, and it can wait, then we might be able to wait for the next session in 1998.”
“I will do everything in my power to keep these predators away from families and communities,” Locke added.
But if the high court flatly rules that the law violates a constitutional ban against imprisonment without charge, there may not be much Locke can do about the 51 people held under Washington’s law. State officials are laying groundwork to ensure that communities are not hit with a sudden flood of releases, and that victims and communities are given advance notice of who is being released and where they are headed.
Forty-five of the sex offenders, all committed by Superior Court judges after civil proceedings, are held in a special unit at the Washington State Reformatory at Monroe. Three are in county jails awaiting transfer to the unit. Two others - multiple rapists Dennis Petersen and Joseph Aqui - are under community supervision after release from Monroe.
“No one will be released without a specific order from the court in the county that committed the offender,” said Kathleen Mix, chief deputy to state Attorney General Christine Gregoire.
Once an order is received, the inmates will be “re-checked for outstanding warrants, detainers, and community placement requirements or outstanding monetary obligations,” Mix said in a memorandum outlining proper procedures for handling them.
If the inmates must be released, they will be required to tell prison officials where they are going and they will be informed that - under another aspect of the 1990 law - they must register in their destination counties as sex offenders.
The notification requirement - highly publicized after New Jersey approved a version called “Megan’s Law” following a 1994 rape-slaying - also is being challenged in state and federal courts.
“All registered victims and witnesses will be notified. Notification of releases will be distributed to law enforcement officials in the destination jurisdiction which is responsible by law for meeting community notification requirements,” Mix’s memo says.
“Release dates and area destinations will be made available to the news media as the information becomes available,” it added.
Civil libertarians who challenged the civil-commitment law believe the Supreme Court will have no choice but to agree with their contention that the law denies citizens a basic right - to be released after serving their sentences absent any new criminal charge.
“The principle here has nothing to do with sex predators,” said Gerard Sheehan, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. “The issue is that the government wishes to continue punishing someone after they have served their time for the crime.
“They do it under the guise of saying these people are being treated for a mental condition.
“Our point is that the government has to choose either a criminal or a civil remedy at the beginning. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t decide they are worthy of punishment, and then after that, decide they have a mental condition and you can hold them forever,” Sheehan said.
“That is simply unconstitutional.”
During oral arguments in December, the justices seemed torn by the issue.
“What is the state supposed to do, just wait until he (a sex offender) goes out and does it again?” asked Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.
Perhaps that is the better course, said Justice Antonin Scalia, adding that it is “less manipulable.”
“Totalitarian regimes don’t put people in jail for crimes, they commit them for treatment,” he noted.
Ballasiotes says concern about the 51 inmates obscures what she calls a positive development in the state’s effort to better protect people from sex predators.
Since the 1990 law was passed, the state has imposed tougher sentencing laws that make the civil commitment approach less critical, she said. She cited the three-strikes law that mandates life terms for those who have committed three qualifying felonies, and the similar two-strikes law for serious sex offenders.
xxxx AREA OFFENDERS These Spokane and Whitman county offenders are in custody under the 1990 state law that allows indefinite confinement of people with a history of serious and violent sex offenses:
Committed to the Special Commitment Center at Monroe: Franklin T. Sperrazzo, 27, Spokane County. Record: attempted rape, assault, statutory rape, indecent liberties.
Inmates under evaluation at the center: Mark F. Broer, 38, Whitman County. Record: attempted rape, sexual assault, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct, first-degree rape. Herman Paschke, 49, Spokane County. Record: first-degree rape, abduction/carnal knowledge, parole violation.
Awaiting transfer from jail to center for evaluation: Robin Albrecht, 49, Spokane County. Record: sexual liberties, child molestation.