DATE: Thursday, June 26, 1997               TAG: 9706260004

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B12  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

SUPREME COURT A BAD DECISION

In a 5-4 vote this week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that states may keep sexual predators incarcerated after they have served their prison sentences. Such criminals belong behind bars, where they can't repeat their hateful acts, but legal remedies already exist without resorting to questionable laws.

The case, Kansas vs. Hendricks, concerned a 60-year-old pedophile, Leroy Hendricks, who was convicted of child molestation in 1984. When he was due to be released from prison, Kansas officials invoked the state's new sexual predator law, which permitted them to declare Hendricks mentally abnormal and a threat to society. Despite having served his sentence, he has remained in custody.

Even Hendricks admits he should not be permitted to roam the streets. He is a sexual predator. But this is bad law. The state already had the tool to keep him permanently behind bars: a long prison sentence.

With a 40-year history of crimes against children, Hendricks faced the possibility of 45 to 180 years in prison when he was charged. Instead of trying him, however, prosecutors offered a plea bargain. The deal called for a prison sentence of just five to 20 years. Then, in a legal sleight-of-hand, Kansas' new sexual predator law (enacted while Hendricks was serving his time) was applied retroactively to him.

Six states already have sexual predator statutes and many others will likely pass similar laws now that the U.S. Supreme Court has given the concept its imprimatur. Virginia does not yet have a sexual predator law.

Such crimes rightly evoke strong emotions, but laws that permit the continued incarceration of people after their prison sentences are complete are disturbing. That way the gulag lies. Americans have never condoned punishing people for crimes they may commit in the future.

Instead of passing sexual predator laws, state legislatures ought to increase criminal sentences and abolish parole for sex crimes so that such criminals aren't released early.

If that fails, states can fall back on civil commitment laws. These already allow the government to commit mentally ill people to state institutions even before they commit crimes.

Sexual predator statutes, by contrast, lower the bar for mental incompetence and allow incarceration of people who are classified ``abnormal'' or who suffer personality disorders.

They give states the power to transform virtually any prison sentence into a life sentence for a sex offender. That's back-door justice out of step with American traditions.

The conservative majority has decided - erroneously, we think - that these statutes do not amount to double jeopardy for defendants because the indefinite incarceration of these convicts is not ``punishment.''

But that logic is flawed, and the decision leaves those who value civil liberties wondering whose rights the court will next decide to limit.

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