SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — A bid by Kevin Coe to have his civil commitment thrown out because the trial included evidence from dozens of sexual attacks that never resulted in charges has been rejected.
Coe had asked the State Court of Appeals to undo the civil commitment that’s expected to keep him locked up for life as a sexually violent predator.
Coe’s attorney argued that Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor erred in 2008 when she allowed evidence from several uncharged cases where women alleged that Coe raped them. But Appellate Judge Stephen Brown rejected Coe’s arguments.
The decision comes 30 years after Coe’s arrest in 1981, following a string of dozens of rapes in Spokane attributed to the South Hill rapist. Coe served 25 years in prison for a single conviction, and since 2006 has remained incarcerated at the state’s Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island.
