Spokane sex offender to be held indefinitely at McNeil Island

A man with a history of sex offenses was named a sexually violent predator by a Spokane County jury Monday and will be held indefinitely on a civil commitment at McNeil Island.

Shawn Dale Botner, now 41, was last arrested in 2006 after being connected to a note in a duffel bag found on the Centennial Trail that described a plan to rape and dismember a woman at an adult bookstore. He admitted the note was his but said it was part of his therapy and he had no intention of doing the things he wrote.

At the time, he was a registered sex offender, having been convicted in 1988 of fondling a family member, in 1991 of attacking a woman he followed into a restroom in Riverfront Park and in 1992 of choking a woman to unconsciousness in a restroom at Spokane Community College.

In July 2006, a Gonzaga University security guard found the duffel bag with women’s clothes, sex toys, a blackjack and a plan to go to an adult bookstore dressed as a woman, abduct a female clerk, rape and dismember her. Three weeks later he was stopped by Spokane police while riding a bicycle at 2 a.m., wearing no shirt and a woman’s bra, armed with a hammer and carrying a bag with a rope, a French maid outfit and a blond wig.

He was ordered confined as a sexually violent predator after a 2009 trial, but that jury verdict was overturned by the state Appeals Court in 2012 because the state didn’t show he had taken an “overt act” toward committing another sex crime. He remained in the Special Commitment Center for sexual predators at McNeil Island until the new trial this month.

In arguing for the commitment this time, the state said the overt acts included both compiling the duffel bag found on the trail and his actions three weeks later when stopped by police. He also had repeated probation violations after his release from the 1992 convictions, the attorney general’s office argued.

Under the state’s civil commitment law, a sexually violent predator can be confined for an indefinite period in the Special Commitment Program, which includes a secure facility on McNeil Island as well as some community-based programs. Their commitments are reviewed on an annual basis.