Court no longer oversees center

SEATTLE – Washington state’s Special Commitment Center for sexual predators no longer needs court oversight, a federal judge said Monday.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez dissolved a 1994 injunction requiring the state to ensure the constitutional rights of sex offenders committed to the facility on McNeil Island after serving their prison terms.

“The court agrees that defendants have worked long and hard to meet the constitutional requirements identified by this court, and there is no longer any basis for the Court’s continued oversight,” Martinez wrote.

Sex offender Richard G. Turay sued the state in 1991, claiming that his civil rights were being violated in the Special Commitment Center. A jury found that Turay and the other sex offenders weren’t getting the mental health treatment they needed to earn eventual release. Without the possibility of release, assignment to the commitment center amounted to unlawful imprisonment.

The late U.S. District Judge William Dwyer imposed the injunction following the trial. Among other things, it required the center to develop individual treatment plans for residents to measure their progress; to create a plan for hiring and training competent therapists; and to improve trust between residents and staff.

The state faced the threat of $11 million in fines for failing to meet the injunction’s terms, but in 2004, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik said that officials had made “great strides” in improving treatment and that the state would not have to pay.

Lasnik left the injunction in place as the court continued to oversee the state’s efforts to open a secure halfway house to move sex offenders back into society. The state’s final hurdle was the opening of such a facility south of downtown Seattle in 2005.

Martinez’s order closed Turay’s case. Any future complaints about conditions at the center will have to be raised in new lawsuits, he said.

John Phillips, an attorney for commitment center residents, said the injunction forced the state to dramatically improve the center’s conditions.

“We would have liked to have kept this case alive, but at some point you have to have some modesty about how long you can keep an injunction alive,” he said. “It doesn’t mean all of the issues have been solved, but this case in no longer a vehicle for dealing with them.”