U.K. Won't Extradite Sex Criminal Over State's Sex Offender Law

LONDON—An English court has ruled that a dual U.S-Irish citizen who fled to Ireland in the 1990s after being accused of "raping a 14-year-old girl and sexually molesting two 11-year-olds in Minnesota" may not be extradited back to the States, the Washington Post has reported. The justification for the unusual ruling is that Minnesota has what the English High Court believes is too onerous a law regarding sex offenders. According to the Post, "The Minnesota program, which began in the mid-1990s, allows civil courts to commit a person for sex offender treatment if a judge decides the person is sexually psychopathic or sexually dangerous. As of April 1, 641 people were in the program. "The program," the articles continued, "has been criticized for holding people indefinitely beyond their prison sentences." The convicted child rapist, 43-year-old Shawn Sullivan, who fled the country after being accused of the crimes but before being convicted in absentia, was tracked to London two years ago, "where he’d moved using an Irish passport that spelled his last name in Gaelic as 'O’Suilleabhain.'" Though the magistrates overseeing the case made it clear that were it not for the law they would have approved the extradition of Sullivan, they could not overcome "a litany of concerns" about the law, including that "offenders don’t have to be mentally ill to be committed; their offenses don’t have to be recent; and in some cases, those placed in the program don’t even have to have been convicted of any crime." “There is a real risk that if returned," the judges wrote in the June 20 order, "Mr. Sullivan will be the subject of an order of civil commitment," and characterized such a possible punishment as a "flagrant denial" of his civil rights. Sullivan's attorney, Peter Wold, agreed, commenting on the judge's concern about the prospect of indefinite detention for his client: “That offended them, and it should offend a lot of people, to have the prospect of people being committed with no end in sight." The lawyer for Sullivan's victims, Michael Hall III, expressed disappointment with the ruling, saying, "Now, really the only avenue available to his victims in the U.S. is through the civil courts." A civil lawsuit was filed in January, but Hall admitted that even though he anticipates “significant punitive damages” against Sullivan, it will be difficult for his clients to enforce a judgment if Sullivan remains on foreign soil.