Coe: Inside the courtroom
Eugster: Jurors not doctors, God
A jury has no business deciding whether Kevin Coe should be committed to a mental facility, says Spokane attorney Steve Eugster.
"How many people on that jury have the training, authority by law to make a medical diagnosis? That's what they're doing," Eugster said of the jury's finding that Coe suffers from a mental abnormality.
"That's like me going to a plumber to get a diagnosis whether I have a heart condition."
As for the jury's decision that Coe is likely to reoffend if released, Eugster said that flies in the face of free will.
"They can't decide that. They're not God," he said.
Eugster, a critic of the civil commitment process, discusses his concerns further at his Web site here.
There is 1 comment on this post.
I know! Let's release him from the hospital and have him come live with Eugster...or his wife...or his daughter...or his grand daughter! There ya go! And not if, but when he offends again, you too can be held personally responsible!
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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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