Coe committed... cor!

It's sad, really, watching our rights slowly slip away. Mind you, I'm no fan of Mr. Coe, but it does no good to not speak out in defense of our rights just because the latest victim is scum.

For those of you not in the know, Mr. Coe is a convicted rapist who has served his 25 year sentence for the crime. He is believed to be the first known serial rapist in Spokane, the so-called South Hill Rapist... I say believed because, for all their attempts back in the day, only one charge stuck all the way through the appeals process. Legally, he is a convicted rapist, but not a verified serial rapist.

Why do I make such a distinction? Well, Washington state has a statute that allows for a "civil commitment" hearing to determine whether a "sexually violent predator" can be committed to a mental institution for up to the remainder of their lives. If, for example, Mr. Coe had been convicted of multiple rapes, that could be used as evidence of his propensity to offend, his likelihood to re-offend in the future, that sort of thing... but he was convicted of one rape. Lacking that record, the prosecutor (at a "civil" hearing!) paraded forth several victims of rape from that timeframe, had them tell their stories on the stand, and basically put forth that the details sound an awful lot like the details of the one rape he was convicted of. How they convinced a judge that this was a permissible standard of evidence in a trial of any kind, I don't know... especially twenty-five years after the fact, it smacks of hearsay.

Of course, the way it's supposed to work is that all the crimes get handled in criminal court, where the burden of proof is substantially higher than "sure sounds like him", and consecutive sentencing ensures the bastard doesn't get out of jail, ever. I don't know if the statute of limitations expired on those crimes, or whether there was insufficient evidence to go after Mr. Coe the "right" way... but that's tough, either way. The prosecutor's office either dropped the ball on this one, or didn't have the ball to drop. Now, because of their "creativity", we get to hold on to this guy, at extraordinary expense, when his stated intention was to leave the state for good anyways, because of fear of retribution... all because, under the right circumstances, he might, maybe, try to rape somebody again, even though he'd have to register as a sex offender pretty much wherever he went, and would have the watchful eye of the local police upon him.

OK, so, for those keeping score at home, that's "standards of evidence" you can add to things like "free speech" and "reasonable search and seizure" as rights you once had. At least we haven't gotten to quartering troops in private homes yet... I'd have to ask the poor guy I got about the oath he took upon entering the military, specifically the bits about defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and we'd both likely get into trouble.