State Senate backs tougher sentences for sex offenders

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OLYMPIA - The state would move away from its legally troubled, forced psychological treatment of dangerous sex offenders and return to tougher prison terms with rapists and molesters getting more life sentences under a plan approved last night by the Senate.

What one lawmaker said would be the most dramatic change in sentencing laws in two decades is a recognition that treatment and long-term civil commitment of sex offenders hasn't worked. That's been made clear by federal-court rulings that threaten the 11-year-old program.

"We all want treatment to work, and we maintain that hope, but the promise has not been fulfilled," said Lonnie Johns-Brown, a lobbyist for the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, which supports the measure.

New felony sex crimes, longer sentences and the ability to send offenders back to prison "will basically turn off the tap of these violent sex offenders that we have to deal with," state Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, sponsor of the legislation, said on the Senate floor.

The measure, Senate Bill 6151, passed on a bipartisan vote of 35-11. It now goes to the House for committee hearings and a possible vote before the Legislature adjourns April 22.

Agreement on the new sentencing laws in the Senate was far broader than the vote shows.

Pierce County lawmakers and most others who voted against the bill objected to a provision that would have the state build a 35-bed, secure halfway house on McNeil Island for sex offenders.

"We are being dumped on, and we will not take it," said Sen. Rosa Franklin, D-Tacoma.

The halfway house is one result of federal-court involvement in the state's treatment of sexual predators.

More than 130 offenders have been sent to the state's Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island after they completed prison terms but were determined by a court in a civil proceeding as a risk if set free.

A court order says offenders must be able to get treatment at a less restrictive facility once they complete prison terms and are released from the high-security center.

The system has survived a U.S. Supreme Court challenge. But the state is under pressure from U.S. District Judge William Dwyer to show that residents are receiving legitimate treatment with the possibility of release.

The state will have to pay fines of close to $3 million, which have been accruing for almost a year if it can't show it is providing treatment.

The Senate's plan to rewrite sex-crime sentences would not affect current residents of the Special Commitment Center. But those convicted in the future would face the tougher penalties.

The bill would require a judge to impose a maximum term - up to life for the most violent felonies - and a minimum term. When the minimum sentence was completed, the offender would be released unless a parole board found he was "likelier than not to commit a predatory sex offense."

If the board found a likelihood of offending again, the offender would be returned to prison for two more years while a second review was done.

If an offender was released after the minimum sentence and then committed a second offense, he could be returned to prison for the maximum sentence.

"The idea is, if they look too ugly, we don't have to let them out," Hargrove said. "If these guys screw up, we've got them for life."

These penalties would be in addition to those in the "two strikes, you're out" law that sends violent repeat sex offenders to prison for life. The new proposal covers a long list of sex crimes not governed by "two strikes."

The new sentencing laws were first proposed five years ago by Sen. Jeanine Long, R-Mill Creek. She said it never passed because opponents said it would cost too much, that the courts should act first and that other anti-crime measures needed time to work.

"But in the meantime, we all know what's happening in our communities," Long said yesterday. "We know these people have a high probability that they will re-offend."

Criminal-defense lawyers oppose the bill.

"It goes too far too fast," said Sherry Appleton, a lobbyist for the Washington Defenders Association and the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "We have a duty to re-establish these people in communities or we'll have them in jail forever and it will cost us an arm and a leg."

She said that violent sex offenders commit "heinous, horrible crimes" but that the state has created too many sex crimes.

Appleton said she marvels at 50th-wedding-anniversary notices in the newspaper where it is obvious that years ago it was a 20-year-old man marrying a 15-year-old girl.

"Today that man would be in jail for statutory rape," she said. "You have to have some perspective."

David Postman can be reached at 360-943-9882 or at dpostman@seattletimes.com.