Rapist released from mental hospital

ST. LOUIS -- A St. Louis judge has ordered that a convicted rapist be freed from a mental hospital for adjudged sexually violent predators, apparently making him just the second person released from the 5-year-old site.

Eddie Thomas, 50, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 1982 to 23 years in prison for raping and sodomizing two women. He was scheduled for parole in 2000 but was ordered confined under a then-new sexual-predator law.

Under that measure, offenders can be put in the custody of mental health officials after finishing their prison terms if a jury or judge finds that, more likely than not, they will commit more sex crimes if freed.

As of March, Thomas was among 70 offenders being housed at the Sexual Offender Treatment Center, a secured site next to the Farmington Correctional Cente.

While confined, Thomas underwent treatment, said his attorney, Richard Fredman.

Wednesday's order by St. Louis Circuit Judge Joan Moriarty becomes final within 30 days. Once released, Thomas would be under state supervision for at least a year and be required to register as a sex offender.

In May 2002, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered a rewriting of jury instructions in sexual-predator commitment trials, meaning Attorney General Jay Nixon's office had to retry 22 cases, including Thomas's.

Richard Scott, the state's expert in Thomas's first civil commitment trial, said Thomas no longer met the definition of a sexually violent predator. After that assessment went unchallenged, Moriarty ordered Thomas released.

Nixon's office declined to comment.

The only woman ever confined under Missouri's sexual predator law was Angela Coffel, who in March was ordered released by the Missouri Court of Appeals, which cited a lack of research on female sex offenders.

Coffel, 26, who is HIV positive, had completed her five-year prison sentence for performing oral sex on two boys eight years ago. When she was a detainee in the sexual predator program, the state estimated it spent $200,000 in about a year on her confinement because she had to be kept separate from other mental patients.

Missouri is among at least 15 states, plus the District of Columbia, that have civil commitment laws for sexually violent predators.