A state appeals court agreed on Tuesday with a child molester’s claim that an assessment by a panel of experts should have been allowed as evidence before he was locked up indefinitely as a sexually violent predator.
The multidisciplinary panel of mental health and criminal justice professionals had unanimously agreed that Lester Bradley did not meet Missouri’s definition of a sexually violent predator. But during his civil commitment trial, the state attorney general’s office blocked the report, arguing that the information was inadmissible per state statute. A probate judge agreed.
A Jackson County jury later determined Bradley was a sexually violent predator who should be committed for treatment in a secure facility.
“Because the court erred in determining that the assessment was inadmissible ... we reverse the probate court’s judgment and remand for further proceedings,” Western District appeals court judge Karen King Mitchell wrote in her 3-0 opinion.
Until his case gets a new look, Bradley, 56, will probably continue to stay at the Sex Offender Rehabilitation and Treatment Services, or SORTS, program in Farmington, where he’s lived since February 2013. He’s one of 200 sex offenders who have already completed prison sentences. Now committed as mental health patients, they are held indefinitely in secure facilities in Farmington and Fulton until their risk to reoffend falls to an acceptable level.
Bradley, who was the subject of an extensive report in the Post-Dispatch about Missouri’s civil commitment process, has refused to participate in treatment at SORTS. The program has been growing since it began in 1999 because nobody has completed treatment.
Three patients are on strict terms of conditional release, but they still stay at the facility and leave for only short periods. SORTS has come under fire in a class action lawsuit working its way through federal court that claims the facility is a prison disguised as a hospital.
Meanwhile, many officials and lawmakers say the program is necessary to protect residents from the state’s most dangerous sex offenders.
Bradley has served time for various offenses. In 1997, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for abusing his 12-year-old stepdaughter for two months. He pleaded guilty to statutory sodomy and child molestation.
After violating the terms of his parole for being alone with a 10-year-old girl, he was flagged at the end of his prison sentence for potentially fitting the criteria of a sexually violent predator. The jury eventually affirmed that decision, which is common.
Though Bradley appealed his case on several counts, appeals judges agreed with only one claim: that the probate court “abused its discretion” for excluding the multidisciplinary panel’s assessment of his files as evidence.
The multidisciplinary panel, which essentially said Bradley didn’t need to be committed, was partly made up of experts from the Missouri Department of Mental Health, which oversees the SORTS program.
In a footnote in the opinion, the appeals court writes: “Frankly, it is unclear to us what the actual purpose of the (multidisciplinary assessment) is, given that it does not appear to be a prerequisite to the State’s decision to seek civil commitment.”
The footnote goes on to reference Florida’s civil commitment law, which gives its multidisciplinary panel of experts teeth in the commitment process.
A spokesman for Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster didn’t return a call for comment.
Public defender Susan Elliott, who handles civil commitment cases, said she and her colleagues were trying to determine if Tuesday’s opinion would have implications on other trials.
“It seems like it could, but there are a lot of ins and outs to it and we are not sure,” said Elliott, who represented Bradley in his sexually violent predator case.
Reached by telephone at SORTS, Bradley said he was happy with the opinion. If necessary, he said, he’d testify in a new trial. ..Source.. by Jessee Bogan
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