Gregoire Vows To Battle Ruling

Washington state Attorney General Christine Gregoire on Monday vowed to fight to the Supreme Court to defend the constitutionality of the state’s sexual predator law and to prevent any of the 31 men now being held under that law from being released.

Gregoire said she is deeply concerned about public safety and about the safety of the 31 men if they are released.

But she cautioned that proposals by legislators and King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng to rewrite the law are “premature,” because she said she believes the law can be upheld.

The sexual predator law, passed in 1990, allows the state to indefinitely detain for treatment purposes some individuals convicted of sex crimes, even after they have served the full length of their prison terms.

The law was upheld by the state Supreme Court in 1993, but was declared unconstitutional by a federal district court judge on Friday.

Maleng on Monday proposed a package of new criminal laws for the state Legislature to enact while the state appeals Judge John Coughenour’s ruling.

Topping his list is a proposal to put violent sex offenders in prison for life on their second conviction. He also proposed laws to sharply stiffen penalties for first-time violent sex offenders.

“I am angry that a federal judge has tried to remove this protection from the people of Washington,” said Maleng, a Republican who has announced his candidacy for governor. “The type of crimes that we’re talking about are absolutely the most outrageous and heinous of crimes and no one can even begin to measure the hurt and loss that has been suffered by victims in these types of cases.”

It was the Seattle slaying of a woman by a convicted rapist on work release and the sexual mutilation of a Tacoma boy by a man with a record of attacking children that led to the state’s sexual predator law, which has served as a model for similar laws in other states.

Gregoire said she will decide soon whether to appeal to a U.S. Appeals Court in San Francisco or take the case directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I’m not ready to throw in the towel by any stretch,” Gregoire said Monday. “The state of Washington is leading the country in this regard, and we ought to stay the course.”

Gregoire insisted that the state law carefully - and constitutionally - balances the desire to protect the public with the need to protect the civil rights of criminals who have served their sentences.

“For a long time, we have struggled with what is the best treatment for these individuals, and we have worked hard to ensure that the best available treatment out there is being provided to these individuals,” she said. “But don’t we have a fundamental obligation to protect society, while at the same time protecting these individuals’ civil liberties?”

The Washington law has been a model for other states as they attempt to fashion a way of dealing with repeat sex offenders, and senior assistant attorney general Greg Canova said he had already heard from California officials concerned about how Friday’s ruling would affect a law they are now drafting.

Canova, the head of Gregoire’s criminal division, said that public defenders are already seeking to have each of the men now being held released, but that his office and the King County Prosecutor will resist those attempts.

Canova, who helped draft the legislation, said the state had been careful to protect civil liberties.

“There was a huge community outcry, and it would have been easy to fashion a draconian system that did sweep away their civil rights,” he said. “But we went the other way (in deciding whether to detain sex predators for treatment) - gave them a full jury trial, a unanimous verdict, proof beyond a reasonable doubt - we were bending over backwards to give them the maximum amount of civil liberties protection.”

Canova also argued that the state has offered the best treatment possible given limited financial resources and detainees who have resisted treatment.

“This has been a legitimate effort by the state to implement a treatment program for a very, very difficult group of people,” he said. “No one has a pill that these people can take that will make them stop being a pedophile or an adult victim rapist.”

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Michael Paulson and Arthur C. Gorlick Seattle Post-Intelligencer