Push underway to boost role of juries in dangerous sex offender trials

February 7, 2008 04:20 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By Erin Ailworth, Globe staff

Seeking to increase the public’s role in keeping dangerous sex offenders off the streets, officials today filed legislation that would give prosecutors the right to demand that a jury decide whether an offender is a sexually dangerous person.

Under state law, a person deemed sexually dangerous is civilly committed to the Massachusetts Treatment Center in Bridgewater for “one day to life.’’ The issue gained bitter prominence last week when a Level 3 sex offender was charged with raping a six-year-old boy in New Bedford’s downtown public library.

Bristol prosecutors had tried in 2006 to have Corey Saunders declared sexually dangerous, but Superior Court Judge Richard T. Moses disagreed, and Saunders was released from prison.

Lawmakers, Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. and Mary Lauby, the executive director of Jane Doe Inc. appeared at the State House today to support the measure. Lauby said the New Bedford incident stunned her.

“My son and I driving along on the highway, when we heard that a six-year-old was raped in a library in New Bedford, we both gasped audibly," Lauby said. This legislation, she added, "is a step in a direction that can make a difference…The more transparent we are, the more opportunities we have for communities to be involved, the more likely that a sexual offender will be held accountable."

Leone said that since 1999, 25 of the 47 trials to determine if a convicted sex offender is sexually dangerous in Middlesex County have gone before a judge. In those cases, 60 percent of offenders were ruled sexually dangerous, compared to 68 percent of the offenders in the 22 cases heard by a jury.

“Communities and the government don't get a say into whether a convicted sex offender goes back into a community," Leone said.

Leone, who was joined by several state officials, including Sen. Steven Baddour OF Methuen and Rep. Charles A. Murphy of Burlington, called the issue a "glitch in the process" that he hoped to repair.

Saunders has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail.