AG joins in legal plea: ‘Give victims a voice’
Attorney General Maura Healey is signing on to a legal plea calling for the Supreme Judicial Court to change the law that would let serial child rapist Wayne W. Chapman be released over the objections of victims, saying the current system has created “serious and unintended consequences.”
“We must ensure that when it comes to sexually dangerous people, we have a system in place that fairly balances public safety with due process, and allows victims to be heard,” Healey said in a statement.
“Our brief asks the court to give victims a voice in this process and provide a way for the opinions of qualified examiners to be reviewed by a court before a sexually dangerous person is released,” she added.
Chapman, 70, was convicted in 1977 of raping two boys in Lawrence and has been civilly committed since his sentence expired. But under state law, civilly committed offenders can be freed if two “qualified examiners” — independent psychologists — determine they are no longer dangerous, which led to Chapman being proposed for release last month.
More than 25 percent of civilly committed sex offenders who have requested freedom in the past three years have gained it through this process, a Herald review found.
Gov. Charlie Baker is proposing a new five-member review board that would examine sex offenders — which Healey supports — but that would not affect Chapman’s potential release.
Chapman is being held after being charged with indecent exposure after prison staff reported he was openly masturbating in his cell, and Wendy Murphy, an attorney for some of Chapman’s victims, is requesting the SJC review the 2009 case that created the “qualified examiner” system.
In an amicus brief filed yesterday, Healey supports the request, saying that decision “has the potential to create serious and unintended consequences” by placing the diagnosis of those two examiners above any statements from other analysts, judges and victims.
“(The previous ruling) thus can — and in Chapman’s case actually threatens to — deprive the judge and jury of any opportunity to adjudicate an offender as sexually dangerous, despite the existence of expert opinion to that effect,” Healey’s brief reads.
“We are very pleased to have the Attorney General’s support,” Murphy said in a statement. “Her brief expresses a strong commitment not only to public safety, but also to the value of victims’ voices in this important legal controversy.”