Coe might not testify at hearing
The attorney representing convicted Spokane rapist Kevin Coe is asking a judge to keep Coe off the witness stand in an upcoming legal hearing to determine whether the civil commitment trial against him should proceed.
Defense attorney Tim Trageser filed the motion Thursday with Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor seeking an order granting Coe the right to remain silent during the hearing set for 9 a.m. on Oct. 30. The state is trying to hold Coe indefinitely as a violent sex predator even though he has finished serving his prison term.
“The state’s threat to call Mr. Coe at the probable cause hearing is really a means to coerce him into stipulating to probable cause or otherwise not contest the hearing,” Trageser said in his motion. “It is anticipated that the questions will encompass a period of decades of Mr. Coe’s life and cover nearly 67,000 pages of discovery.
“The state will use the probable cause hearing as a ‘fishing expedition’ to ferret out every detail of Mr. Coe’s life, particularly his sexual history,” he added.
The probable cause hearing will determine whether the state has established a case to allow the possible civil commitment of Coe as a sexually violent predator, a process similar to involuntary commitment of the mentally ill. If O’Connor agrees with the state, she would later preside over a jury trial seeking to indefinitely keep Coe in the state’s Special Commitment Center for sex offenders in Pierce County.
Assistant Attorney General Todd Bowers said he had not seen Trageser’s motion. Bowers and Assistant Attorney General Malcolm Ross are handling the state’s effort to civilly commit Coe.
“I can’t recall ever having seen that motion in any of these cases in 11 years of doing this,” Bowers said. “I can tell you our decision on whether or not to (call Coe as a witness) won’t be dependent on (Trageser’s) motion.”
Bowers, who hasn’t yet decided whether he will call Coe to testify on Oct. 30, explained that under a criminal proceeding, Coe would have the legal right not to testify. But because this case is a civil proceeding, Coe “doesn’t have that blanket right.”
Trageser agreed to a point, but cited cases in King County where judges granted similar motions allowing defendants to avoid testifying at the probable cause hearings.
“If Mr. Coe is called as a witness, he frankly wouldn’t be prepared to testify. He is in no position to be called … and be grilled by the state,” Trageser said. “Obviously, there is no question he can be called to testify during the trial.”
Trageser and Coe continue to go through volumes of evidence that includes police reports of many of the 43 sexual attacks that Spokane police attributed to the South Hill rapist.
Coe was arrested in 1981 and charged with six of those rapes. He initially was convicted on four counts, but after two rounds of appeals just one rape conviction remained. For that case, Coe was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
He was scheduled to be released from prison Sept. 8, but he will remain in custody in the Pierce County facility until the civil commitment process is decided. Both Trageser and Bowers confirmed that process could take as long as two years.
If O’Connor allows the case to proceed, prosecutors would have to convince a jury that Coe has a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes him more likely than not to reoffend if he were to be released into the community, Bowers said.
If a jury agrees, Coe would remain indefinitely in the mental health facility on McNeil Island until his underlying mental problems improve to the point where he could safely be released back into the community, according to court records.
“We are going to speak with Mr. Coe at some point,” Bowers said, “whether that’s at the probable cause hearing or at a deposition hearing. But we don’t normally do that until after the probable cause hearing.”
O’Connor is expected to decide Trageser’s motion prior to the Oct. 30 hearing, Trageser said.
“If the court rules that Mr. Coe can be called as a state witness, expect a motion for a continuance so Mr. Coe will be adequately prepared to answer any of the state’s questioning,” Trageser said.