In my last blog I wrote about John Rydberg, a sex-offender from Minnesota, who had a long string of offenses, including a 1975 assault in which he broke into a rural Wisconsin home and raped a young couple as their son slept upstairs. Four years later, during his second escape from treatment, he raped a Minnesota woman at knifepoint in front of her children. Rydberg admitted to counselors that he committed more than 90 sex offenses, mostly involving voyeurism or exposing himself. The 69-year-old Rydberg is at the center of a contentious debate between those who advocate for releasing predatory sex offenders after they have served their sentence, and those who favor indeterminate prison sentences.
Now, legislators in the Minnesota House of Representatives have written a bill that would keep the most predatory sex offenders in prison instead of diverting them to expensive and controversial state civil commitment programs in overcrowded treatment centers, which could lead to supervised release. Under the bill, convicted offenders would face open-ended “indeterminate” prison sentences if members of a jury found them to be predatory––meaning they lack control over sexual impulses and pose a danger to others. Such offenders would have to serve at least twice the recommended sentence and could be released only if the corrections commissioner determined they were no longer a threat to society. If the bill becomes law, it would mark a return to the type of sentencing Minnesota had 17 years ago.
UPDATE:
William Melchert-Dinkel, a former nurse from Faribault, Minnesota, was convicted yesterday of two felonies when a judge ruled he had used the Internet to advise and encourage the suicides of Mark Drybrough of Coventry, England, and Nadia Kajouji of Ottawa, Canada. Drybrough hanged himself in 2005, and Kajouji jumped into a frozen river in 2008. Melchart-Dinkel, posing as a suicide nurse, tried to persuade the victims to hang themselves while he watched via webcam. While Melchart-Dinkel was charged with only two counts, he chatted online with ten suicidal people, five of whom killed themselves.
His defense attorney argued that Melchert-Dinkel’s writings didn’t materially assist the suicides and constituted protected free speech. The judge rejected that argument noting that inciting people to commit suicide is considered “Lethal Advocacy,” which isn’t protected by the First Amendment because it goes against the government’s compelling interest in protecting the lives of vulnerable citizens. If Melchert-Dinkel had merely written a political or religious opinion, the judge wrote, he would have been protected.
The defense plans to appeal the ruling.