Sex offender sentencing gets OK
The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Washington’s indeterminate sentencing law for sex offenders isn’t subject to sentencing restrictions the U.S. Supreme Court imposed in 2004.
Thursday’s ruling resolves a split between the two Western Washington divisions of the state Court of Appeals.
The state sex-offender law sets a maximum penalty of life in prison and calls for judges to impose a minimum sentence from a standard range.
If judges find aggravating factors, they may impose a minimum term greater than the standard range, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
Unlike sentencing for non-sex crimes, the aggravating factors need not be determined by a jury or a defendant’s admission, according to seven of nine Washington Supreme Court justices. Chief Justice Gerry Alexander and Justice Richard Sanders dissented.
Expanding on an earlier decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2004 that defendants have a constitutional right to have a jury decide any facts used to determine their sentences.
The decision applied to Washington and at least 16 other states with laws that spelled out standard ranges of punishment. It sprang from a Grant County, Wash., case in which a judge gave Ralph H. Blakely Jr. an above-standard sentence for kidnapping his estranged wife and driving her to Montana in a wooden box in the bed of his pickup.
The majority in this week’s state Supreme Court ruling noted that their federal counterparts said in the Blakely case that judges may determine facts for sentencing in states with indeterminate sentencing systems. Indeterminate systems require judges to impose a minimum term but spell out a maximum that only a parole board may shorten.
King County serial rapist John Mark Clarke argued in the case decided Thursday that Washington’s indeterminate sentencing law for sex offenders, which took effect in 2001, isn’t what the U.S. Supreme Court had in mind.
Clarke’s attorneys contended Washington’s sex-offender law is different because it calls for an inmate to be released unless a parole board finds the inmate is likely to commit new sex crimes – instead of the other way around.
It doesn’t matter, the state Supreme Court majority said: “Even if the presumption has shifted in favor of release, there is no guaranty that release will occur.”
Justices Alexander and Sanders disagreed, saying an above-standard minimum term is still extra punishment – and still subject to the Blakely restrictions.
Washington’s indeterminate sex-offender sentencing law applies to first- and second-degree rape, first- and second-degree child rape, first-degree child molestation and forcible indecent liberties – or attempts to commit those crimes. It also applies to various crimes of violence that are sexually motivated.