Coe defense aims to thwart psychologist claim
State expert concluded he had mental abnormality
Testimony in Kevin Coe’s civil commitment trial ended Tuesday with a defense lawyer angrily questioning the state’s expert psychologist about her objectivity in concluding that Coe has a mental abnormality that makes him likely to re-offend.
“Is it true that all you did was consider everything negative regarding Mr. Coe in making your diagnosis and ignoring everything exculpatory or good?” attorney Tim Trageser asked Dr. Amy Phenix.
“I considered 74,000 pages of records to come to the conclusions I came to,” Phenix replied. She concluded Coe likely committed 33 rapes and sexual assaults from 1966 to 1981 of women ranging in age from 14 to 51 – although Coe was convicted of only one 1980 rape.
As the exchange got more heated, Superior Court Kathleen O’Connor warned Trageser: “Do not argue with the witness.”
Phenix had been recalled to rebut several points made Monday by defense psychologist Dr. Theodore Donaldson, who poked holes in the state’s assertion that Coe would be a danger if released and said a 61-year-old’s chance of re-offending was essentially zero.
Trageser had sought to prevent Phenix’s rebuttal testimony, but O’Connor overruled him Tuesday morning.
In response to a juror’s question, Phenix said Coe refused a court order last year to have his penis wired to measure his sexual arousal because “he thought it was an invasion of his privacy.”
Coe’s attorneys also sought to raise doubts about their client’s links to the September 1979 rape of Spokane broadcaster Shelly Monahan, one of the rapes that Phenix concluded was likely committed by Coe.
A second expert for the state, Dr. Robert Keppel, also testified during the trial that Coe’s “signature” was present in Monahan’s rape.
A DNA sample taken from a vaginal swab couldn’t have come from Coe, retired state crime lab analyst William Morig told jurors. But a second DNA stain on Monahan’s jeans could have, Morig added.
Although The Spokesman-Review usually doesn’t name sexual assault victims, Monahan has not shied away from being publicly identified.
Monahan could not identify her attacker, and her rape was never prosecuted. It is one of nearly three dozen rapes and sexual assaults the state has tried to link to Coe during the trial in an effort to commit him civilly as a violent sex offender.
Coe’s lawyers also brought an old family friend, Carolyn Black, from Seattle to testify about how Coe, the older brother, treated the women in his family circle.
Black said she and Coe’s sister Kathy became close friends in the 1960s, and she spent a lot of time with the Coe family.
Kevin Coe was “intelligent, funny, witty, likable … he was always pleasant,” she told the jury.
Under cross-examination by Bowers, Black said she wasn’t aware Coe was questioned in 1966 about an assault on a 16-year-old girl and had been arrested in 1971 for burglary and indecent liberties after fondling a woman in her apartment.
Black said she occasionally talked to Coe by telephone when he was in the Washington State Penitentiary and after he was transferred to a secure facility for sex offenders in 2006 as he awaited his civil commitment trial.
After his transfer to McNeil Island, Black said she noticed a “striking difference:” Coe had lost his characteristic optimism.
“He was just not the same person at all,” Black said.
Closing arguments in the monthlong trial will be heard today before the case goes to the jury.