Editorial re: Joseph Duncan

From: Lewis County (Chehalis, Wash.) Chronicle:

Bad enough that a judge and court in Minnesota didn’t make more of an effort to determine the background of convicted high-risk sex offender Joseph Edward Duncan III, 42, before allowing him to go free on bail.

It seems inexcusable the judge wasn’t aware that Duncan, charged at the time with molesting a 6-year-old boy, had been convicted in 1980 of sexually assaulting at gunpoint a 14-year-old boy. Following his release by the judge this spring, Duncan has been accused of kidnapping two Idaho children; is believed to have killed three other people, including the children’s mother and brother; and very possibly also killed one of the two children.

But at least as bad in this case is that Duncan was set free after completing his jail sentence for his 1980 conviction. Pierce County Superior Court documents discuss a long history of alleged sexual deviancy that began in Duncan’s childhood.

Even though court records show that Duncan talked about raping multiple children from the time he was 12, and a psychological review in 2000 when he was released found that he was a ‘‘Level 3’’ high risk offender, there was no pattern to indicate that civil proceedings should be requested in order to authorize involuntary commitment, the review concluded.
‘‘The only evidence we had was his initial conviction. You have to be able to prove they are going to reoffend in a sexually violent, predatory way,” Victoria Roberts, chairwoman of the state Corrections Department’s End of Sentence Review Committee, said.

But it seems the burden ought to be strong evidence they will not reoffend in such a way.

Given Duncan’s history and that officials at Western State Hospital said in 1982 after he was given 22 months of sex offender treatment he showed “an unwillingness to modify his sexually deviant behaviors” and concluded he was “a danger to the well-being of others,” he might well not have met that threshold for release.

Hat Tip: Josef/Josef’s Public Journal