Sex Predator Laws Flawed, Necessary

Andre Brigham Young is the kind of monster that shouldn’t be allowed to prey on society again.

Beginning in the early 1960s, Young, 54, committed six violent rapes over 23 years. Sometimes he broke into the homes of his adult female victims. Sometimes he brandished knives as he violated them.

If freed, he’s sure to reoffend.

Unfortunately, Young’s prison time for his last crime is over. The only thing blocking his return to freedom is a constitutionally questionable Washington law that permits judges to confine sexually violent offenders to a mental hospital - even after their prison terms end.

Young is one of some three dozen inmates held at the state’s Special Commitment Center in Monroe, hoping the U.S. Supreme Court will ban sex-predator laws.

The safety of many will hang in the balance this fall when the Supreme Court reviews the Kansas Sexually Violent Predator Act. The attorneys general of Kansas and 33 other states asked the court to review - and uphold - the law.

The outcome is far from certain.

At this point, three state supreme courts, including Washington’s, have upheld sex-predator laws, while the Kansas Supreme Court (on a 4-3 vote) and a federal judge have ruled them unconstitutional.

Obviously, predator laws have problems.

In ruling against Washington’s law, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said last August that it violates inmates’ due-process rights and punishes them twice for a single crime. He also opined that the law is unconstitutional because it was enacted after Young committed his last rape. Three dissenting Washington Supreme Court justices wrote that the law sets up “an Orwellian ‘dangerousness court.”’ The arguments seem logical until you look at the savage crimes that prompted the predator laws.

Washington’s first-in-the-nation law in 1990 was spurred by the Seattle slaying of a woman by a convicted rapist on work release and the sexual mutilation of a Tacoma boy.

Kansas enacted its 1994 law to keep child molester Leroy Hendricks confined after he’d served a 10-year prison term. Hendricks, then 60, molested children on numerous occasions over several decades. At his commitment trial, Hendricks testified he remained a pedophile and said only his death would guarantee he never again would molest a child.

The U.S. Supreme Court should be held accountable if it frees these devils.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board