Convicted sex offender won rare judicial reprieve

2-27-2012 Kansas:

When convicted sex offender Christopher J. Saemisch, 54, went to trial earlier this month in Douglas County contesting his classification as a sexually violent predator, he was facing long odds.

Saemisch was the 38th Kansas sex offender since 2008 to go to trial under the state’s Sexually Violent Predator Act.

Until last week, only two offenders had been successful in contesting their indefinite commitment to Larned State Hospital, according to a Journal-World investigation.

“It’s very rare that there’s a win,” said local defense attorney Carl Folsom, who unsuccessfully defended Lawrence sex offender Dale Patterson in November. “It’s an uphill battle.”

But Saemisch, convicted of aggravated indecent liberties with a 5-year-old child in 1999, won his case Wednesday when Douglas County Judge Michael Malone ordered his release from custody.

Child molester from Ballwin wins freedom on fourth try

2-21-2014 Missouri:

An enormous sigh of relief lifted from Macon Baker in court here Friday evening when a jury determined that he is not a sexually violent predator. Three previous attempts to commit him against his will to state mental health authorities ended in hung juries.

“Thank you,” Baker, 49, who used to live in the Ballwin area, said, looking toward the jury. Face flushed with emotion, he offered more thanks and hugs to his attorneys, Matt Fry and Eric Selig, also in shock.

Baker has been in custody since he finished a 10-year prison sentence near the end of 2006 for molesting a 7-year-old girl. At the time, a panel of prosecutors and mental health officials thought he should be held indefinitely at Sex Offender Rehabilitation and Treatment Services, or SORTS, a controversial program run by the Missouri Department of Mental Health.

But the first three juries couldn’t come to the needed unanimous decision that Baker has a “mental abnormality” that makes him “more likely than not” to commit future acts of sexual violence if not held in a secure facility.

USA v Byron Neil Antone: Appellate court rejects "past as prelude" myth

2-14-2014 North Carolina, Arizona:

Federal judge had brushed off evidence of Native man's rehabilitation

In a strongly worded ruling, a federal appellate panel has ordered that a Native American man be freed from civil confinement due to evidence of his rehabilitation while in prison. Both a judge and an expert witness had downplayed this evidence, condemning the man as a future risk based on long-ago transgressions, the Fourth Circuit panel concluded.

Byron Neil Antone, a 41-year-old member of the Tohono O’odham Nation of Arizona, was intoxicated when he committed a series of sexual assaults during his early adulthood. Over the course of 14 years in prison, he remained sober, worked hard, and took other steps to rehabilitate himself.

In finding that he met criteria for civil commitment as a Sexually Dangerous Person (SDP), a federal judge had glossed over the evidence of Antone's rehabilitation, including positive testimony from two prison counselors. Likewise, a government evaluator testified that she placed little weight on Antone’s good prison conduct in determining whether he lacked “volitional control” over his sexual impulses.

Priest who assaulted boys to be released on supervision

6-25-2013 Illinois:

A former Catholic priest who sexually assaulted two boys in the 1980s will be released from a state mental health hospital after a judge approved of a conditional release plan.

He was committed to a secure treatment facility in 2012 after he was classified as a sexually violent person. He was recently re-evaluated and Winnebago County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Bissett approved a conditional release plan on Tuesday that would allow him to be released from the secure facility.

Details of the supervised released plan were sealed by the court under an agreement by the attorneys to keep the plan confidential, but it calls for him to be released on or before Aug. 2.

The former associate pastor at Our Lady of the Ridge parish in Chicago Ridge, Ill., was convicted of sexually assaulting two altar boys while on a church outing to Father Carr’s Place 2B in Oshkosh in 1986. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison on two second-degree sexual assault convictions in 1994.

Prosecutors filed the petition to classify him as a sexually violent person in October 2007, less than one month before his scheduled release from Stanley Correctional Institution. ..Source.. by Local News

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Judge Overrules State on Housing Sex Offender

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8-24-15 New York:

A judge is ordering that the man at the center of a ground-breaking case over the civil confinement of sex offenders be released to Clinton County over the objections of state officials, who prefer he live in Oswego County.

Acting Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Daniel Conviser said he is empowered by Article 10 of the Mental Hygiene Law, which governs civil management of sex offenders, to approve the living arrangements and treatment regimen of offenders he has ordered to be returned to the public.

Conviser ruled in State of New York v. Floyd Y., 30061-2008, the most "appropriate" placement for Floyd Y. is at a hotel in Plattsburgh, which also houses several other Article 10 releasees. Conviser said it is close to where Floyd Y. can receive treatment for his sexual abnormality and is not Oswego County, where his victims live.

Conviser said the state's arguments that Floyd Y. would be "undomiciled" in Clinton County were baseless, as, the man could be housed in a $45-a-night hotel until he finds housing. Conviser estimated that it has cost the state $1.75 million to house Floyd Y. in mental health facilities since his Article 9 confinement began 10 years ago.

"This court is … convinced that the state of New York has the resources to weather the storm" if it must pay for a hotel in Plattsburgh, Conviser wrote.

Floyd Y. was the subject of State v. Floyd Y., 22 NY3d 95 (2013), in which the Court of Appeals relaxed hearsay rules in Article 9 proceedings (NYLJ, Nov. 20, 2013). He has been confined since his 2001 conviction for molesting two of his stepchildren. ..Source.. by Joel Stashenko, New York Law Journal

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Man held 20 years as sexually dangerous to be released

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7-2-15 Illinois:

BLOOMINGTON — After 20 years in a state program for sex offenders, a Twin City man will be released soon to restart a life halted as a teenager when he admitted he had molested a child.

Judge Rebecca Foley ruled Thursday that John Guthrie can be released without conditions from Big Muddy Correctional Center where he has been housed in the state's treatment facility for sex offenders.

Guthrie, now 35, shook hands with defense lawyer Carey Luckman, but had no other reaction after the brief hearing in which Foley rejected the state's request for extensive conditions for his release.

Following a short meeting with Guthrie, Luckman described his client's feelings.

"He smiled when I walked in. He said he understands Mr. Ghrist was just doing his job, speaking for the people. He wanted Mr. Ghrist and others to know that he has a plan and he's going to make it," said Luckman.

Luckman declined to say where Guthrie will reside, but said he has support from loved ones.

Guthrie's return to society is the result of an unusual circumstance: a change in the guide used to define mental health disorders makes him ineligible to be held by the state.

A state psychiatrist testified in May that the new version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders makes a distinction between having an interest and having a disorder related to a sexual interest in children.

Guthrie was sent to the state sex offender unit when he was 17 after he admitted to molesting a girl for whom he was baby-sitting. He later said there were other victims.

A psychiatrist deemed him a pedophile, a diagnosis that led a judge to place Guthrie in a Department of Corrections facility until doctors found him to be cured.

The sex offender treatment order halted Guthrie's prosecution on aggravated criminal sexual assault charges. The minimum term on that charge would have been six years in prison, but the term for someone deemed a sexually dangerous person is indefinite.

Guthrie was allowed to leave custody for a short time when he was 19, but returned when authorities said he violated terms of his release by being in a store that sold pornography. He has filed numerous petitions over the years seeking release, but failed to convince two different juries that he was rehabilitated.

Medical opinions have varied as to Guthrie's mental health diagnosis.

Springfield psychiatrist Dr. Terry Killian opined in 2011 that doctors got it wrong when they labeled Guthrie a pedophile as a teenager. Foley barred the jury from hearing Killian's opinion, a ruling that was later reversed by the 4th District Appellate Court.

Court proceedings were moving forward toward a new trial when the state doctor submitted her opinion that Guthrie could be released. ..Source.. by Edith Brady-Lunny

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