Judge rebuffs Coe’s request

A judge has rejected Kevin Coe’s request to move his Sept. 15 civil commitment trial out of Spokane County or bring in jurors from another county.

But Spokane County Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor’s Friday ruling is provisional: If an unbiased jury can’t be found in the county because of Coe’s notoriety as the accused “South Hill rapist” and pretrial publicity, she still could order a change of venue.

“This motion stays on the table until a jury is selected,” O’Connor said.

Lawyers for Coe argued that extensive publicity – including a “Dateline NBC” program that aired June 1 and a deluge of other media coverage – has tainted the potential jury pool.

“There hasn’t been a case in Spokane’s history that’s had more publicity,” said Spokane County Public Defender John Rodgers.

Rodgers cited extensive coverage of Coe’s two criminal trials in the 1980s; the trial of his mother, Ruth Coe, convicted of trying to arrange the murder of the judge who presided over her son’s first trial; and the state’s 2006 petition to commit Coe as a sexually violent predator after he’d served 25 years for the one rape conviction that withstood a series of appeals.

The Coe case “has percolated into Spokane’s culture … it has been discussed around countless dinner tables. It just hasn’t gone away,” Rodgers added.

Arguing for the state, Assistant Attorney General Malcolm Ross said Coe’s lawyers hadn’t established that an unbiased jury couldn’t be found in Spokane County.

“Very extensive, factual reporting doesn’t constitute cause for a change of venue,” Ross said.

Most of the witnesses who’ll be called in Coe’s civil commitment trial live in or near Spokane County and it would be far more convenient to try the case here, Ross added.

A judge must consider several legal factors in a change-of-venue motion, including how the case has been reported, O’Connor said.

She said she’s concluded that most of the recent publicity is “factual and associated with what has occurred in court.” She noted one exception: a June 1 column by Spokesman-Review columnist Doug Clark. Clark called Coe a “dirt bag” and argued for his civil commitment.

Clark’s column is “inflammatory,” O’Connor said, but it doesn’t represent a majority of the reporting on Coe.

“If the court sees pervasive, inflammatory reporting, it’s appropriate to move the case. We are not in that posture,” she said.

However, O’Connor said she agreed with Rodgers’ “insightful” argument that the long saga of Kevin Coe has permeated Spokane’s culture. Despite that, she said she’s confident a fair jury can be seated.

“We aren’t a small county, and we have a potentially large jury pool,” O’Connor said.