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This is the third in an excellent four-part Seattle Times series on sexual predators and the law.
Swayed by a psychologist, jury frees 'monster' who attacks again
Swayed by a psychologist, jury frees 'monster' who attacks again
How he got to that bedroom:Hours after falling asleep on a hot Seattle August night in 2004, Bernadette McDonald thought she was having a nightmare.
Feeling suffocated, she gasped for air. But a tall, strange man standing over her had already pressed a bleach-soaked sock against her mouth.
McDonald, 29, struggled but the intruder overpowered her. He tied McDonald down and raped her.
What further wages of a faulty decision?Just 10 months earlier in a King County courtroom, a defense expert told jurors that the same man, Curtis Thompson, a repeat rapist facing civil commitment, most likely wouldn't attack another woman. The jury had to decide if Thompson, 44, set to be released from prison, was so dangerous that he needed to be confined to the state's lockup facility on McNeil Island for sex predators.
Persuaded by the words of forensic psychologist Theodore Donaldson, the jurors decided Thompson did not meet the criteria for civil commitment, which would have allowed the state to detain him indefinitely. Instead the jury set him free.
Donaldson would be horrifically wrong with his predictions.
the rest of the lengthy article, plus links to the four parts of the ST predator series, at link aboveAnd McDonald wouldn't be the only victim: During his 2004 rampage, Thompson killed a 45-year-old woman and attacked two other women.
The Thompson case is an example of what can go wrong with civil-commitment cases, a process that hinges on the words of dueling forensic psychologists who are paid to sway the jury.
"It's the kind of case that haunts a prosecutor — that I think haunts anybody," said David Hackett, King County prosecutor in charge of civil commitments.
McDonald, speaking publicly for the first time about the 2004 rape, recently told The Times:
"He should have been civilly committed," she said. "I truly think he's evil and a monster."
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