Sex panic: Still no sign of abatement

The sex panic in the USA shows no signs of abating, despite more and more wrenching stories of excess. Readers will have seen the Seattle Times column I posted yesterday about the man who was dropped off to live under a bridge, an increasingly common phenomenon across the country. (See my previous blog posts here.)

This week, a woman beseechingly wrote to me from Louisiana about her son Eric, now languishing in prison for chatting with a teen girl online. (They never met, and he claims he didn't know her age.) Prison is no picnic, of course, but the real nightmare begins when he is released. According to his mother, he signed up for a 10-year registration, the law changed in January to 25 years, and now Louisiana is looking at retroactive lifetime registration for online offenses like this one. His story is here.

That tale is not uncommon. But more and more, the young men's mothers are going public. Yes, they acknowledge, their boys made mistakes by getting involved with girls who were under the legal age of consent. But they are adamant that their sons are good boys, not predatory pedophiles or rapists.

As an example, here is the story of another mother who went to the media on behalf of her 19-year-old son, who had consensual sex with a girl just shy of her 16th birthday. (Click on the logo below to go to the page that has a video interview with the mother.)


What's becoming increasingly clear from these stories is that the so-called "collateral consequences" are far worse than even the draconian criminal sanctions. Once arrested on a sex charge, no matter how minor or consensual, these young men are ensnared for life in an ever-growing net of so-called "collateral consequences" that make it difficult if not impossible to live a normal life. These include lifetime registration, shaming through online public databases, and – the ultimate consequence in 19 states so far – the possibility of lifetime hospitalization as a sexually violent predator.

Perhaps most chilling is the fact that courts have consistently ruled that people do not have a Constitutional right to be told about these potential consequences before they decide to enter a guilty plea. Indeed, some of the collateral consequences are retroactive; they did not even exist when the person pled guilty in exchange for what looked like a minor penalty.

Jenny Roberts, a law professor at Syracuse University, discusses the injustice of this in a forthcoming law review article, "The Myth of Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions: Involuntary Commitment of Sexually Violent Predators" (available for download here).

Nowhere are the results more tragic than when the defendant is factually innocent. This is most likely when a defendant is poor, Black, and/or mentally ill. And also when the guilty plea happened back in the day, before sex offenses became such a lifelong, inescapable yoke.

Friday's Boston Globe features one such case. Guy Randolph is an African American man who struggles with schizophrenia and alcoholism. More than 17 years ago, he was arrested for a sexual assault on a 6-year-old girl. He had been in jail for four months when his attorney encouraged him to cop a plea in exchange for immediate freedom.

But that immediate freedom came at a later price:

"For the past seven years, a photo of Guy Randolph has been posted at Boston police stations, labeling him the most dangerous type of sex offender. Neighbors who knew of his criminal record and the 10 years he spent in prison insulted him when they saw him on the streets. Police ordered him away from schools and playgrounds if he walked too close…. The stigma of the label was almost unbearable. Johns would tell her son how proud she was of him and that the people who called him names were 'ignorant.' But he became withdrawn and despondent, nothing like the outgoing, gregarious boy she had raised."

Yesterday, thanks to the dedicated work of attorney Sejal Patel, his conviction was reversed. Once more, it was the mother who had stood by Randolph and insisted on his innocence. After 17 years of struggle, she was finally celebrating - taking Randolph out for his favorite meal of Chinese food.

Fed court OK's unorthodox diagnoses for sex offenders

Last September, I posted about two legal challenges to the use of controversial psychiatric diagnoses to justify the civil commitment of sex offenders.

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin has since issued final opinions on both challenges, allowing the use of the diagnoses of "Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified-Nonconsent" and "Personality Disorder Not Otherwise Specified with Antisocial Features." Neither diagnosis is included in the psychiatric bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), nor are they commonly invoked in mainstream psychology or psychiatry. In the DSM, "NOS" is a residual category used when someone does not meet all criteria for a listed disorder; many clinicians refer to it as a "garbage diagnosis." (For a facetious take on the NOS label, see this essay.)

The twin rulings, against sex offenders Bruce Brown and Michael McGee, echo similar rulings in other states that make it easier for the government to get sex offenders involuntarily hospitalized after they finish serving their prison terms. To be Constitutional, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, such civil commitment based on a likelihood of future sex offending must be linked to a "mental disorder" or "mental abnormality." This is where psychologists and psychiatrists come in, and the industry has become a lucrative cash cow for some evaluators.

"Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified-Nonconsent"

The tone of Judge Lynn Adelman's decision in the case of Brown v. Watters was a turnaround from his earlier ruling in the same case, in which he had sent the case back to the state court for additional proceedings. At that time, last July, he expressed doubts about use of the diagnosis of Paraphilia NOS-Nonconsent to justify civil commitment, saying it might be too broad to pass Constitutional muster: "[I]t may be that every criminal convicted of a sexual crime could be diagnosed with the disorder."

As the judge noted, a paraphilia is defined in the DSM as a chronic pattern of intense, sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors generally involving nonhuman objects, suffering or humiliation, or children or other nonconsenting persons.

Rape is not included as one of the paraphilias in the DSM, and use of the residual category of "Not Otherwise Specified" for this legal purpose is controversial.

As of this writing, Brown's case is on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

"Personality Disorder Not Otherwise Specified with Antisocial Features"

In a related case brought by sex offender Michael McGee, the same court also upheld the use of the diagnosis "Personality Disorder Not Otherwise Specified with Antisocial Features" as a basis for civil commitment.

The parallel opinions interpret the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case of Kansas v. Crane as allowing such unorthodox diagnoses in the service of "practicality." The Crane case, said the opinion in McGee v. Bartow, "made clear that courts should be driven more by practical considerations than the technical distinctions underlying much of psychiatry." The government "has wide latitude in defining a term like 'mental illness' or 'mental abnormality,' " echoed the ruling in Brown v. Watters, and need not limit itself to diagnoses that are "generally recognized in the medical community."

In other words, so long as experts testify that a sex offender has a disorder that causes him to have serious difficulty controlling his sexually violent behavior, the offender's Constitutional right to due process is satisfied.

Evaluator disputes characterization

Meanwhile, Dennis Doren, a prominent sex offender evaluator who testified in the Brown case, has issued a written statement in response to the Brown v. Watters opinion and my blog post last September reporting on the ruling.

In his statement, "Setting the Record Straight," Doren said the court was mistaken in claiming that he testified that he had created the diagnosis of Paraphilia NOS-Nonconsent. Rather, he wrote, he simply changed the extant phraseology from Paraphilia NOS-Rape (a more legal term) to Paraphilia NOS-Nonconsent (a more medical term), while creating a list of diagnostic indicators which he published in a manual for sex offender evaluators.

It is certainly true that Doren did not invent the concept of a preferential desire to rape, which has been recognized for a long time and has been called everything from bioastophilia to rapism. But most observers agree that Doren's manual did popularize and legitimize use of the "NOS" diagnosis in the sex offender civil commitment industry.

Doren said he made his recommendations not only to "bridge the gap or defiiciency of the DSM-IV" but also out of concern that evaluators were overdiagnosing Paraphilia NOS based simply on behavior, without regard to the requirement that the offender demonstrate a preference for forcible sex.

This type of overdiagnosis in the pursuit of civil commitment is a valid concern. Research suggests that only a small percentage of rapists are motivated by a preferential sexual attraction to rape. And offenders who are mislabeled face the daunting prospect of lifelong hospitalization without the due-process protections afforded by the criminal justice system.

These controversial diagnostic issues in civil commitment proceedings may finally be about to get some much-needed scrutiny and debate. The editor of the DSM-IV-TR, Michael First, has two articles in press taking issue with the way the DSM paraphilia diagnosis has been interpreted in civil commitment proceedings. His forthcoming editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry is entitled "Issues for DSM-V; Unintended Consequences of Small Changes: The Case of Paraphilias." A lengthier analysis in the Journal of American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law is entitled "Use of DSM Paraphilia Diagnoses in Sexually Violent Predator Commitment Cases." Meanwhile, Doren's essay, "Setting the Record Straight," has also been accepted for publication, in Sex Offender Law Report.

Hat tip to Susan Sachsenmaier for alerting me to the Wisconsin case developments

A bridge as a last resort

Guest essay by Danny Westneat

Seattle Times staff columnist

SNOHOMISH — The patch under the bridge is closed in by brambles. Rodent tracks crisscross in the dirt. It may be dry, but still it's not fit for human habitation.

Unless you're a sex offender, that is. The underside of the 88th Street bridge, near this river town's greenhouses and horse farms, is where state government last week assigned a released rapist to sleep.

David J. Torrence, who assaulted a 16-year-old girl in 1995, had completed his latest prison term (for failing to register as a sex offender.) He had no place to go. So officials gave him a sleeping bag and a rain poncho, then told him to stay under this bridge, 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., until further notice.

"We're not proud of it," says Mary Rehberg, parole officer for the state Department of Corrections. "We did it because this is what it has come to. Under a bridge is the best of the options we had left."

That we're now storing sex offenders under bridges is hardly the worst thing to happen in the long struggle over sex crimes. Not compared with what happened to the victims.

But it is a sign of a looming breakdown. There's got to be a better way.

Nobody wants sex offenders around. It can be infuriating to see taxes spent on their treatment or care. But putting them under bridges, like trolls? Set aside whether that's inhuman. It's about the worst outcome possible, for public safety.

Torrence was released from state prison at Monroe on April 20. He is a Level 3 — high risk for reoffending. He is not deemed so dangerous, or his crimes so serious, that he qualifies to be locked up longer.

Rehberg tried for months to find him a place to live.

He's barred by local ordinance from living in the town of Monroe (it bans all Level 2 and 3 offenders.) So she tried his relatives in another state. That state, like Monroe, rejected having him come there.

She called motels, shelters, landlords known to rent to sex offenders. All said no.

Almost any apartment building was likely to be off-limits because there would be families living there.

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That's increasingly the way it goes. Sex offenders are the new lepers. She fitted him with a GPS bracelet and drove him to the 88th Street bridge.

"At least we could check on him," she said. "We could keep trying to find him a place. I'm sorry to say it, but it was the best we had to offer."

On the fourth night, he cut off his monitor and fled. So far he hasn't been found.

Some version of this sorry story is about to happen again. Rehberg is trying, but failing, to find housing for three more sex offenders, all due out soon.

The state has got to build some monitored halfway houses for sex offenders. Like you, I don't especially want one on my block. It also strikes me as unfair to pay for housing for criminals while many taxpaying folks are hurting.

But forget about fair. This system is shot. Our government just put a Level 3 sex offender under a bridge.

I asked Rehberg: Did you get much criticism for this?

"Not as much as we get when we actually find them a place to live," she said.

Reprinted with the written permission of the author. Danny Westneat can be reached via email. The column originally appeared here.

Platypus defense falls flat

The highly anticipated verdict in the Hans Reiser case came in just moments ago: Despite the absence of his wife's body, the Oakland, California computer programmer is guilty of first-degree murder.

You will recall from my previous blog post that Reiser mounted a highly unusual defense, saying he was a platypus but not a murderer.

Unfortunately, the comparison to the odd, quasi-reptilian mammal may have backfired when it turned out that the platypus is not as cute and cuddly as the defense attorney tried to portray it. Indeed, it is one of the few venomous mammals: A spur on the male's hind foot delivers a powerful venom capable of killing other animals its size.

As is not uncommon in high-profile murder cases, the two sides also posited competing psychiatric diagnoses for the oddball computer programmer.

The defense asserted that Reiser suffers from Asperger's Disorder, a developmental disorder in the autism spectrum in which an individual has normal to high intelligence but major problems in social interaction. The prosecution countered that Reiser has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, a diagnosis more in line with cold-bloodedly killing your wife when she decides to divorce you.

Some pundits doubted that the prosecution could win a first-degree murder verdict. After all, the body of Reiser's wife was never found, and the case was purely circumstantial.

But in his rebuttal argument to the jury last week, prosecutor Paul Hora handled those case weaknesses masterfully. He placed two large easels in front of the jury. On one was a jigsaw puzzle with all of the many pieces of circumstantial evidence against Reiser. On the other was a picture of Reiser's Russian immigrant wife, Nina Reiser. One by one, prosecutor Paul Hora transferred the puzzle pieces onto the picture of the victim. As he removed pieces from the original puzzle, an underlying image of defendant Hans Reiser emerged. At the end, only two jigsaw pieces were missing: "location of body" and "method of murder."

Ultimately, those missing pieces did not seem to bother the jury. After a five-month trial, it deliberated less than three full days before discarding potential compromise verdicts such as second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter and rendering the most severe verdict allowable.

The verdict is notable because the prosecution did not present any evidence of premeditation or deliberation, required elements in first-degree murder. The jury apparently inferred the necessary mental state based on Reiser's arrogant, off-putting performance during 10 days on the witness stand.

"I'm sure he negatively impressed the jurors." defense attorney William Du Bois told journalists outside the courtroom. The verdict, he acknowledged, was not a complete surprise.

My previous essay on the platypus defense is here. Newspaper reporter Henry K. Lee’s contemporaneous news blog on the trial is here. A new book, Erased, describes dozens of similar wife-killing cases in recent U.S. jurisprudence, some of which were similar to the Reiser case in that juries returned first-degree murder convictions despite missing bodies. (See my review of that book here.)

Amazon book reviews

I haven't forgotten about you loyal readers and subscribers. I've just been so busy lately that I haven't found any time to blog. My list of news to report is growing! In the meantime, some of you might be interested in checking out my book reviews over at Amazon.com. (I'm a frequent reviewer, and indeed just made the top 10,000. Whoopee!) To check out my reviews, you can either start at my Amazon profile page or go directly to one of the listed books. I've put an asterisk next-to a few that I strongly recommend. In the interest of shameless self-promotion, I should let you know that highly ranked reviewers get better positioning on the Amazon book pages, so if you like a review be sure to click on the "Yes" button beneath it.

• Police Interrogation and American Justice (*)

• Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (*)

• The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (*)

• Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives

• Psychological Evaluations for the Courts, Third Edition: A Handbook for Mental Health Professionals and Lawyers

• Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (*)

• Rape and the Culture of the Courtroom

• Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer (*)

• Minds on Trial: Great Cases in Law and Psychology (*)

• Scientific Jury Selection (Law and Public Policy: Psychology and the Social Sciences) (*)

• Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings (*)

• The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

• Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination

• Models of Madness: Psychological, Social and Biological Approaches to Schizophrenia

• Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture (*)

• IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea

• The Art and Science of Child Custody Evaluations

• Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

• Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths Behind America's Favorite Addiction

• Rewind, Replay, Repeat: A Memoir of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (*)

The platypus defense

Preparing his closing arguments in an Oakland wife-killing trial, a defense attorney did some unusual zoological research. To understand oddity, he reasoned, the jury should hear about the duck-billed platypus.

The platypus, as most readers will know, is a semi-aquatic Australian creature. When Europeans first discovered it, some considered it an elaborate fraud due to its bizarre, cobbled-together appearance - a duck's bill, a beaver's tail, an otter's feet, and - as we will see - some characteristics of a reptile.

William DuBois likened his client to a genetic mistake while looking at him disdainfully, according to the trial blog of newspaper reporter Henry K. Lee:

"Did you know that the platypus is the only mammal that lays eggs?"* DuBois asked the jury, smiling. "I was trying to think recently how a platypus could even evolve. It must have been a genetic mistake. That's why it reminded me of --" DuBois trailed off but turned his head and gave a disdainful look at his client. Some laughter in the courtroom.

Whether or not the jury convicts Hans Reiser of killing his missing wife, the defense attorney's closing argument is likely to go down in the annals of novel defenses.

Explaining the computer programmer's strange and off-putting behavior both after his wife's mysterious disappearance and during the five-month trial, attorney DuBois showed the jury a stuffed platypus, and later a slide image of a real-life platypus.

Reiser, the attorney said, is the "duck-billed platypus of criminal defendants, the duck-billed platypus amongst some of his peers, the duck-billed platypus amongst normal people."

"He is odd in every way. Odd in the way he carries himself. Odd in the way he acts. Odd in the way he speaks."

Reiser's platypus nature explains not only his strange behavior but also his victimization by law enforcement, the attorney contended.

After all, as everyone knows, "It's easy to screw a platypus."

DuBois characterized the platypus as helpless, telling the jury, "I don't know how they stay away from predators. They must taste terrible."

DuBois will resume his closing argument on Monday, after which prosecutor Paul Hora will have a second shot at the jury. If he's smart, Hora may do his own research on the platypus.

As it turns out, the quasi-reptilian creature is not as cute and cuddly as the stuffed animal might make him appear. Indeed, it is one of the few venomous mammals: A spur on the male's hind foot delivers a powerful venom capable of killing other animals its size.

Listen for yourself to the platypus growl:



*The platypus is actually not the only egg-laying mammal. There's one other, in the same Monotreme family. It's called an echidna.

My subsequent essay, on the jury verdict, is here. Henry K. Lee’s blog on the trial is here. Wikipedia has more on the platypus.