State Taking Sex Offender Ruling To Appeals Court Officials Decide Against Taking Appeal Directly To U.S. Supreme Court
The state has decided not to go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court with its appeal of a federal court ruling that threw out Washington’s unique sex-predator law.
The state instead will follow protocol and ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn U.S. District Judge John Coughenour’s ruling that the 5-year-old civil-commitment law is unconstitutional, Assistant Attorney General Greg Canova said Thursday.
“We had considered going directly to the Supreme Court but decided there would be little chance the Supreme Court would accept direct review,” Canova said.
Coughenour issued the ruling last Friday in the case of Andre Brigham Young, one of 22 inmates at the Special Treatment Center in Monroe.
He delayed the effective date of the decision until Sept. 5, giving the state and Young’s attorneys time to argue whether Young should be held pending the appeal. Coughenour is expected to hear arguments on that issue early this month.
If Coughenour’s ruling is upheld by the appeals court, it could result in the release of all 22 men being held indefinitely at the Monroe facility after serving their prison sentences. An additional nine men are being held there pending commitment hearings.
The civil commitment law, the only one of its kind in the nation, is the most extreme element of a 1990 state law intended to get sex offenders off the streets. It permits a civil jury to indefinitely commit violent sex offenders deemed likely to re-offend, based on prior records and psychological profiles showing a mental abnormality or personality disorder.
Coughenour ruled the law unconstitutional on grounds that it violates inmates’ due-process rights and punishes them twice for a single crime.
He rejected the state’s underlying argument that the constitutional protections do not apply because the confinement is a civil rather than a criminal-law procedure.
The law promotes “the traditional aims of punishment, retribution and deterrence,” Coughenour said, and in effect is a criminal law being applied against people who have already served their time.
xxxx THE LAW The civil commitment law permits a civil jury to indefinitely commit violent sex offenders deemed likely to re-offend, based on prior records and psychological profiles.