Sexual predator decision upheld

The Washington Court of Appeals refused Thursday to budge from its earlier decision that there was no mistake in 1999 when Herbert Ross “Butch” Paschke became the first Spokane County resident to be declared a sexually violent predator.

That designation by a jury, equivalent to a finding of criminal insanity, sent the then 52-year-old Paschke to the state’s Special Commitment Center at McNeil Island, near Olympia, for treatment or confinement that could last the rest of his life.

The Spokane branch of the Court of Appeals rejected Paschke’s appeal in May 2004. But the state Supreme Court directed the Court of Appeals to reconsider whether Superior Court Judge Tari Eitzen improperly refused to require prosecutors to prove Paschke had committed a “recent overt act.”

Such a finding is not required if an allegedly mentally defective sex offender has been in prison on a conviction for a sexually violent crime — or in prison for a “recent overt act” that didn’t necessarily involve a conviction.

Paschke has a long history of sex offenses, starting with the rape of his 77-year-old grandmother when he was 15. He was convicted in 1972 of abducting and molesting two children, including a 12-year-old girl, and of raping a woman in 1979 shortly after he was paroled.

Soon after his next parole, in 1987, Paschke allegedly sexually abused his wife. Then, in 1989, he threatened in obscene calls to rape another woman. Paschke admitted the obscene calls, which he called a “relapse,” and was ordered to finish his prison term.

The issue for the Court of Appeals was whether Paschke’s 1987 parole restarted the clock for him, requiring prosecutors to prove a “recent overt act” to commit him as a sexually violent predator.

A three-judge appellate panel agreed with Eitzen in 2004 and again Thursday that Paschke’s admission of the obscene phone calls and of his need for counseling constituted “an admission of continued dangerousness equivalent to a recent overt act.”