Case was appealed and all convictions and reasons were upheld. see Russell v Texas. Unbelievable Abuse!
2012 Texas:
How Tarrant County prosecutors tried a sexual predator in front of a jury and won prison time for “technical” violations of his civil commitment
By William A. Vassar, Assistant Criminal District Attorney in Tarrant County
As I sat anxiously waiting to hear the punishment verdict on the trial of Edward Russell, a sexually violent predator we prosecuted for violating the terms of his civil commitment, I wondered if 12 strangers saw the deception and deviance in this man.
It turns out, they certainly did. On October 12, 2011, the jury foreman read the punishment verdict, finding Russell guilty and assessing a 20-year sentence. A wave of relief came over me.
Russell was not the type of defendant I was used to handling. He was unusual: a 44-year-old, three-time convicted felon who, by his own admission, had molested more than 20 children (depending on the day you asked him). Their innocence was forever stolen, and for the vast majority of those kids, justice was never done.
After Russell had served prison time for sexual assault of a child, he was civilly committed as a sexually violent predator (SVP), a post-prison form of intensive supervision and treatment reserved for only the most extreme criminals. (Read more about such civil commitments at
www.tdcaa.com/node/6860.) The intention behind such commitment is to prevent SVPs from hurting more victims and to treat their deviant behavior.
But what if a defendant doesn’t follow the requirements of his civil commitment? With Russell’s case, we tested whether a jury would agree that “technical” violations of a civil commitment order—Russell’s doing things that are legal for the average citizen—deserved an additional prison sentence.
An unforgettable defendant
I had just finished a four-year term in our Crimes Against Children Unit where I handled cases involving physical and sexual abuse of children. Many child abusers are ingrained in my memory. Don Martin, for example, molested his 7-year-old granddaughter and took explicit photos of her; Kimball Hailey murdered his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son. There were countless others I will never forget. However, I never thought I would see someone as deviant, sick, and manipulative as Edward Russell.
The road to his civil commitment began in June 1990 when he was sentenced to one year and a day in prison for the sodomy of a boy under 12 in Alabama. (He later admitted during a psychiatric evaluation that he had molested two brothers, ages 10 and 12, the younger one about 10 times but the older boy “maybe twice because he wasn’t really open to it.”)
In 1993 he moved to Canton in East Texas where he rented a room from an unsuspecting family with two young sons. He didn’t tell the family he was a convicted sex offender—and he struck again. He was accused of molesting the younger boy while his mother was at work, but he denied the allegations. However, he pled guilty to the charge and received 10 years’ probation in 2000, saying, “I agreed to anything they said so I could get probation.” However, in a Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) Parole Case Summary, he stated that he knew the victim for approximately four years and had abused him four times. “I don’t know why I have these urges,” Russell stated at the time. He also admitted in his Parole Case Summary that he viewed pornography and had multiple sexual partners during incarceration. He also admitted to abusing more than 14 child victims.
In February 2005, Russell’s probation was revoked because he picked up a new case, this time for Failure to Register as a Sex Offender. He was sentenced to four years in prison.
While in prison, Russell was targeted as a candidate for civil commitment. After going through the process on February 25, 2008, Russell was civilly committed by the 435th Judicial District Court in Montgomery County. He was also given a copy of the Final Judgment and Order of Civil Commitment, which explained the terms and conditions of his civil commitment. He was ordered to “strictly comply with the commitment requirements of Health & Safety Code §841.082 … or be charged with a felony of the third degree.” Sexually violent predators who are civilly committed after serving their prison sentences must follow certain conditions, such as completing a daily thought journal (called “doing their homework”), not cussing, not having casual or anonymous sexual encounters, and taking their medication. Abiding by these conditions gives SVPs structure and sets appropriate boundaries for them, while violating these standards might indicate to case managers that an SVP isn’t taking his treatment or commitment seriously or, worse, that he might be vulnerable to committing another crime. Though these conditions describe behavior that is legal for the average citizen, they are illegal for an SVP; indeed, Russell signed and affixed his thumbprint on the judgment and order, affirming that he had read and understood them.
On September 5, 2008, Russell was released from TDCJ to Fort Worth, where he moved to the Avalon Half Way house (which, incidentally, is down the street from the Fort Worth Police Department’s training academy). There, he met with his case manager, Wesley Griffin, who spent three hours going over the terms and conditions of his civil commitment order.
Within a month of arriving at the Avalon Half Way house, Russell committed several violations, which ranged from not taking his prescribed medication to having casual or anonymous sex. Again, though these actions are not illegal to the average law-abiding person, the importance of complying with the conditions of his civil commitment was clearly spelled out in Russell’s order. He was arrested, and his case landed on my desk.
Worth another bite at the apple?
At first glance,
I felt like we were trying to get another bite at the apple. Were we really going to prosecute a criminal who actually served his full prison term—even though the United States Supreme Court upheld the process of civil commitment in Kansas. v. Hendricks1 —
for not doing his homework and cussing? ...continued...
Source: The Prosecutor » January-February 2012, Volume 42, No. 1 » Criminal punishment for violating a civil commitment order
12-5-15 Texas:
