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| Appeal court urges review of sexual predator law |
| By Miami Herald |
| Published: 01/12/2004 |
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An appeals court rejected a significant challenge to Florida's sexual predator law last Wednesday, but made a special request that the Florida Supreme Court review the decision. The case involves Robert Tabor, a repeat violent criminal. Even his lawyer says ``he's not the person you want for a next-door neighbor.'' But the manner prosecutors used to lock Tabor up indefinitely raised an important question about how the state uses the Jimmy Ryce Act, meant to protect people from sexual predators. The act gives prosecutors broad authority to classify inmates as sexual offenders and lock them up for a treatment program that has no expiration date. The 5-year-old law is so sweeping that prosecutors have been using it to indefinitely detain people who have served out their sentences for non-sexual crimes. These people, like Tabor, 46, have committed a rape or molestation decades ago, been released, and then re-arrested for some other crime not sexual in nature. Tabor's lawyers argued that the law shouldn't apply to people in that instance. But the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach ruled that the law says otherwise. As long as Tabor has committed a sexually violent offense, anytime in his life, he can be detained, as long as he's in custody for some reason when authorities evaluate him. The Tabor case represents one of the many difficult issues in the nation's evolving debate about what to do with sexual predators, who have shown a propensity to reoffend. Florida keeps more than 400 people in a former prison in Arcadia that serves as a treatment center for sexually violent predators. Many have been locked up since 1999, when the state first opened such a facility. The state has yet to come up with a clear method of graduating them from treatment and into society. As a result, few have been released. About 13 other states have similar laws and courts have so far agreed they meet constitutional requirements. Florida's Department of Children & Families, which oversees the state's program, estimates that about 10 percent of the men held at Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia have been detained following prison sentences for non-sexual crimes. Like Tabor, they had long ago served sentences for sex crimes. |
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