Life Term Sought For Molesters Lawmakers Seek Alternative As Commitment Law Challenged

The Legislature is gearing up to more quickly put chronic sex offenders behind bars for life - a move driven partly by fear that a landmark law permitting civil commitment of offenders will be struck down.

Both chambers are pushing measures this election year that would send certain sex offenders to prison for life after their second conviction. But agreement ends there.

The Democratic Senate backs a “two-strikes” bill that applies exclusively to those who prey sexually on children. The Republican House supports a measure that would apply to those who sexually assault children and adults.

Both houses and parties “do have strong consensus that something must be done” to more quickly put away sex offenders, Senate Law and Justice Chairman Adam Smith, D-Seatac, said Monday during a hearing on a measure he is co-sponsoring.

The debate will be around the content and breadth of the legislation, he said.

The drive to speed removal of sex offenders from society has been around for a few years. But it was given new life last year when a federal court judge declared Washington’s civil commitment law unconstitutional because it amounts to punishing sex offenders who already have served their time.

The ruling is being appealed and the law remains in effect. The appeals are expected to take several years.

The commitment law allows a jury to find a habitual sex offender likely to reoffend and to commit him to a special unit at the state prison at Monroe, where he can be held until declared cured of his abnormality. The unit now contains more than 25 “patients.”

Smith, and House Corrections Chairwoman Ida Ballasiotes, both said last year they would pursue legislation that would at least mitigate the damage done should the civil commitment procedure be found illegal.

The two-strikes approach is their answer.

Ballasiotes said Monday she did not understand why the Senate would limit the approach to those who prey only on children.

“It needs to apply to everybody who commits these horrible crimes,” said the Mercer Island Republican, whose daughter, Diane, was killed by a habitual sex offender in 1988.

But Sen. Darlene Fairley, D-Lake Forest Park, a co-sponsor of the Senate legislation, said “regular rapists,” those who prey on adults, tend to stop offending once they reach the age of 50 or so.

“True pedophiles,” on the other hand, “are still doing it” well into old age, she said.

Sex offenders, whether they prey on children or adults, already are subject to the state’s “three strikes” law, but backers of tougher penalties say it isn’t enough.

Backers of the “two strikes” approach, whatever the version, contend it will not be unduly expensive since many of those imprisoned by it eventually would end up in prison anyway.

Senate staffers said Monday the Senate bill would result in 600 more prison inmates by 2016. The rule of thumb is each inmate costs the state $26,000 a year, so the cost would be $15.6 million a year in 20 years.