Twenty people await retrials in sexual predator cases

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Twenty people confined as sexual predators are still awaiting new civil commitment trials six months after the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that jurors had been given flawed instructions in the original trials.

The attorney general's office said Friday that the cases were being handled as expeditiously as possible.

The Supreme Court on May 14 ordered new trials for two men committed as sexual predators. But the effect was far-reaching.

Based on the ruling, Attorney General Jay Nixon's office determined that new trials were needed for 20 of the 25 people already committed as sexual predators. The state public defender's office said a case could be made that all 25 deserve new trials.

Either way, none has received retrials yet. Eddie Thomas, whose appeal prompted the May court decision, had been scheduled for a retrial last Monday, but that was delayed indefinitely, said Nixon spokesman Scott Holste.

The May ruling also affected about 40 initial sexual predator trials that had been put on hold while the state Supreme Court considered Thomas' appeal for more than a year. The state's highest court had been waiting on a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court in a similar challenge to Kansas' sexual predator law. That decision came in January.

Of the roughly 40 people whose sexual predators trials had been delayed, 17 have since been tried and all were committed to state custody, Holste said.

'A little overwhelmed'

Ellen Blau of St. Louis, the deputy trial division director for Missouri's public defender system, said Friday that public defenders had pressed unsuccessfully for more speedy trials in some cases, particularly for one older man with health problems.

But generally speaking, she said public defenders were not frustrated about the pace of the trials.

"Given the load of cases, plus now having to retry a lot of the old cases, probably both the public defender's office and the attorney general's office are a little overwhelmed right now," Blau said.

Blau said she was unsure if the U.S. Constitution's right to a speedy trial would apply in civil commitment cases, such as those for alleged sexual predators. Holste said there was no legally required time frame for the retrials.

"We are moving as expeditiously as we can, given the resources and availability of all the different players that are involved," Holste said.

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

Lawyers for Thomas and fellow sex offender Desi Edwards had appealed, claiming the instructions given to the juries in the two men's civil trials failed to meet federal requirements.

In the Kansas case, the U.S. Supreme Court said jury instructions must require a finding that the person's mental abnormality causes "serious difficulty in controlling behavior." Such language was absent from the jury instructions in the civil trials of Thomas, Edwards and others in Missouri.