Missouri Supreme Court hears challenges to sexual predator law

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The Missouri Supreme Court is weighing whether to order new hearings for sex offenders being held past their prison terms under the state's sexual predator law.

Arguments before the state's highest court Wednesday focused on the cases of two St. Louis sex offenders.

But a ruling potentially could affect all 26 people who have been committed to extended state custody under the 1998 law, said State Solicitor James Layton.

Missouri law allows detention of convicted sex offenders beyond their prison sentences if a jury -- in a separate trial -- determines they have a mental abnormality that makes them "more likely than not" to commit sexually violent acts upon release.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a January ruling based on a similar Kansas law, said there must be proof that the person's mental illness causes "serious difficulty in controlling behavior."

Specific phrase cited

But that specific phrase was not used in jury instructions during the sexual predator trials of Eddie Thomas or Desi Edwards, nor in the other two dozen Missouri cases.

"My concern is that the jury may not have been adequately instructed because the language was vague," Judge Laura Denvir Stith said during Wednesday's arguments before Missouri's highest court.

But Chief Justice Stephen Limbaugh Jr. suggested that the standard of "serious difficulty controlling behavior" is basically the same as existing law requiring a finding that an offender has a mental problem predisposing him or her to be a menace to society.

Seeking explanations

Public defenders for Thomas and Edwards said more explanation was needed for jurors. They argued their clients should be set free, or at least granted new trials on whether they should be confined as sexual predators.

Edwards pleaded guilty to raping an 8-year-old girl in November 1989 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was released on parole in December 1996, but that was revoked and he was returned to prison for using alcohol and failing to pay fees.

As Edwards' second release date approached, the attorney general's office sought to keep him in state custody as a sexual predator.

A jury concurred during an October 2000 trial and he was committed to the Department of Mental Health for treatment.

Thomas was sentenced to 23 years in prison in 1982 for three counts of rape and two counts of sodomy involving his young daughter and stepdaughter. He previously had pleaded guilty to child molestation for a 1974 attack on a 13-year-old stranger.

He was scheduled to be released on parole in July 1999, but the state sought to extend his confinement and treatment under the sexual predator law.

A jury agreed and he was committed to the Department of Mental Health in April 2000.

The Missouri Supreme Court also heard arguments in Thomas' case in March 2001 but never ruled, because the court was awaiting the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Kansas case.

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On the Net:

Missouri Judiciary: http://www.osca.state.mo.us