Coe: Inside the courtroom
Coe will appeal
Kevin Coe will appeal the jury's verdict that he is a sexually violent predator, his attorney says.
"We'll just file a notice of appeal and go from there," Tim Trageser said.
Coe himself had no comment as he was led back to jail by armed deputies. He'll be transported back to the Special Commitment Center at McNeil Island in the next day or two.
"For most people, that means a lifetime sentence," Trageser said.
And the appeals process could drag on for too long to be much help to Coe, who turns 62 in February, he said.
Trageser declined to discuss the issues he would raise on appeal. "That would be criticizing the court's pretrial decisions, and I don't want to do that," he said.
Once an appeal is filed, Trageser said, "We will outline the problems we saw with this case."
Trageser said he was surprised by how quickly jurors reached their verdict, but that they assured him they based their decision on Coe's current mental condition.
The biggest challenge in this case, as in all sexually violent predator cases, is having the jury hear evidence that wouldn't normally be admitted in a trial, he said.
State experts testified about dozens of crimes in which Coe was suspected, but never charged, in explaining why they concluded he was mentally predisposed to rape.
Jurors are instructed that they can't consider that as actual evidence he committed the crimes, but that's difficult to do, Trageser said.
"When you're dealing with a person who (allegedly) has a mental abnormality, almost every aspect of their personal live appears to be relevant," he said.
And, he added, "Once you've heard something, it's hard to ignore it."
Trageser said he remains concerned about the fairness of the civil commitment process.
"Asking a jury to decide what somebody might do in the future is just guessing," he said.
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Kevin Coe, labeled the "South Hill rapist" in a community frightened by dozens of attacks on women in the Spokane area in the late 1970s and early 1980s, has been in prison since 1981. He was slated for release in September 2006 when the Washington state attorney general's office moved to have Coe spend the rest of his life in prison through the civil commitment program. In this trial, the state seeks to convince jurors that Coe represents too much of a threat to ever be released.
Karen Dorn Steele has been a Spokesman-Review reporter since 1982,
covering the courts, environment, enterprise and investigative beat. She
lived in Spokane in 1980 when a series of unsolved rapes terrorized the
city. 
Rick Bonino has worked at The Spokesman-Review in various positions
since 1977. He covered both of Kevin Coe's previous trials, in 1981 and
1985, and also Ruth Coe's trial in 1982. 
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