BILL WOULD KEEP SEX OFFENDERS OFF THE STREET
Baker urges Legislature to approve measure
Gov. Charlie Baker is urging the Legislature to move on his bill to toughen the civil commitment process for holding convicted sexual predators after serving their time, after serial child rapist Wayne Chapman was acquitted of lewdness charges Friday and had to be freed.
“Governor Baker re-filed legislation earlier this year to keep serial child predators behind bars, and urges the Legislature to pass this bill in order to strengthen Massachusetts law and keep dangerous criminals out of our communities going forward,” Baker spokeswoman Anisha Chakrabarti said.
Baker’s bill has been sitting in the Joint Committee on the Judiciary since he filed it in May. The committee currently has no scheduled upcoming hearings.
The legislation would require a court trial if someone who had been previously deemed a sexually dangerous person is found by psychological experts to be safe for release. Under the existing law, if two independent experts find a civilly committed sexually dangerous person to be safe, that person must be freed without any further judicial proceeding.
The Supreme Judicial Court upheld that process in May, barring the state from indefinitely holding 71-year-old Chapman, a notorious predator who’s admitted to raping up to 100 boys. Chapman was still behind bars for subsequent lewdness charges, but is now free after a jury found him not guilty of the new charges in Middlesex Superior Court Friday.
The wheelchair-bound Chapman had been held on civil commitment since 2004, when his prison sentence expired but two psychiatrists deemed that he was too dangerous to release. The SJC found because the two independent experts who reviewed Chapman last year determined that he’s no longer a danger, the state cannot continue to hold him under the current law. If either or both of the experts had found that Chapman was dangerous — as happened in past years — he would have been held.
Baker filed the bill last session, but the Legislature didn’t pass it. The offices of House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Karen Spilka did not respond to requests for comment.
The bill also would require anyone convicted of forcible child rape who has previous sexual offenses to face life without parole, and would create a new criminal charge for cases involving multiple child rapes that would also require life in prison.
Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat, threw her support behind the Republican governor’s bill, which the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association and Massachusetts Major City Chiefs of Police also also support, according to a release from the governor’s office.