What Should Society Do With Sexual Predators?

Dec 17, 1996

John Leo

TO put the sexual-predator laws into perspective, consider some of the predators:

-- Earl Shriner stabbed, raped and strangled a 7-year-old boy, then cut off his penis and left him for dead. This crime, which led to the first sexual-predator law, in Washington state, capped Shriner's 24-year career of sexual attacks on children and teens, including rape, beatings and stabbings, various assaults and the probable murder of a 15-year-old girl (he led police to the girl's body). Before his 1987 release from prison, which freed him to attack the 7-year-old boy in 1990, authorities knew he was extremely dangerous and knew he had hatched elaborate plans in prison to maim and kill children.

-- Westley Dodd, hanged in Washington at the age of 31 for the rape, torture and murder of a 4-year-old boy, had a 15-year career as a sexual predator, punctuated by a few months of jail time and repeated misjudgments by psychiatrists and judges who took note of his upbeat, apparently frank attitude and thought him treatable. "I liked molesting children, and did what I had to do to avoid jail so I could continue molesting," he said. He eventually killed three children. In one of his court briefs, he said, "If I do escape, I promise you I will kill and rape again, and I will enjoy every minute of it."

-- Donald Chapman of Wyckoff, N.J., served 12 years for the rape and grisly torture of a young woman, who somehow survived. After a public uproar at the prospect that Chapman would go free, he was committed to a state mental institution. Some analysts think he would have to be set free if the Supreme Court knocks down Kansas' sexual predator law during the current term. Chapman has promised to rape again and calls himself a failure for letting his previous victims live.

What should society do with predators like this?

David Boerner, author of Washington state's sexual-predator law, points out that our current criminal-justice system is working exactly as designed. It is designed on the "debt to society" model - each career offender pays his debt with a few years in jail. It basically operates like a game. Once very violent people go free, authorities can't act until another woman or child is attacked and the cycle begins again with a short prison term. No one takes responsibility for looking at the long-term picture - the arc of an increasingly dangerous career.

Columnist Charles Krauthammer (yesterday in The Times) argues that because of the civil-liberties issues involved in sexual-predator laws, courts should throw the book at sexual criminals early, locking them up for good after the first or second offense. But this will never happen. Because of crushing caseloads and the unwillingness of many victims to testify, particularly child victims, serious cases are routinely plea-bargained down.

Besides, it isn't easy to identify a dangerous career predator after one offense or even two. With penalties so harsh, more and more first felonies would likely be plea-bargained down to misdemeanors. And public compassion for an offender jailed for life after a first offense would likely break this plan very quickly.

It makes much more sense for the states - and the Supreme Court - to affirm narrowly drawn predator laws. Yes, there are serious questions of double jeopardy and preventive detention in extending incarceration on grounds of dangerousness. But look at the Shriner case. The state has a obligation to defend the public from dangerous criminals. Is it really helpless to act if a violent inmate with a long record says he plans to mutilate and kill children when released? To say that authorities can't do anything but wait for a child to be murdered is a confession of moral bankruptcy. It's an admission that our criminal-justice system is too rigid to meet its real responsibilities.

"Which interest are you more concerned about protecting?" asks Alexander Brooks, professor emeritus of law at Rutgers Law School in Newark, N.J. "Keeping dangerous offenders on the street . . . or protecting women and children by committing the most dangerous offenders with the hope of treating them?"

Treatment, though, should not be used as a fig leaf to cover what is happening here. The test of whether the Earl Shriners should be kept in jail is not whether they can be cured by therapy (very unlikely, on the evidence) but on a judgment of overwhelming dangerousness. What should it take to be judged overwhelmingly dangerous? Well, a clear and credible Shriner-like statement of intent to mutilate or kill again would automatically qualify. (A no-brainer.) So would an unusually long track record for serious violence.

Dangerousness is indicated by behavior, not psychiatric guesswork. Larry McQuay, with 240 attacks on children in Texas, would make the cut. So would Reginald Muldrew, linked to more than 200 attacks in California, set free after 16 years in prison, and now in trouble again in Indiana.

The bar should be set very high, but low enough to stop our most violent career predators. If we are serious about crime, we have to do more than just release our sexual monsters every few years and let new victims pay the price for the next brief round of confinement.

John Leo's column appears Tuesday on editorial pages of The Times.