Sex offender law questioned in wake of shooting
At least two of New York’s nine most dangerous sex offenders freed under a two-year old civil confinement law have faced arrest on sex charges again, including one who this week shot a police officer then killed himself.
State lawmakers said they’ll study the law, designed to restrict and monitor some sex offenders after they leave prison, to see if it’s too easy for some offenders to be returned to the streets.
The latest was Ken-Tweal Catts, who was freed from civil confinement by a jury in September, about a year after his release from prison. Catts was picked up Wednesday and was being charged with rape when he grabbed a Dutchess County detective’s pistol and fired a shot that grazed the officer’s head. He then holed up for three hours in the county building before shooting himself.
The first sex offender freed in the jury stage of the 2007 state law, Douglas Junco of Washington County, was accused of rape and kidnapping a woman in Georgia a year ago. That was eight months after a jury found there wasn’t enough evidence of a mental abnormality, as required under the law, to confine him or order him to be strictly supervised in the community.
