Thank you for reading D.C. Witness.
Help us continue our mission into 2025 by donating to our end of year campaign.
By
D.C. Witness Staff
- March 23, 2021
Court
|
Homicides
|
Policy
|
Suspects
|
A sex abuse defendant whose case got a DC statute invalidated has spent over a decade in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, DC psychiatric institution. But on March 23, a DC Superior Court judge released him to an outpatient treatment facility.
The defendant was charged with first-degree child sex abuse in 2009. A year later it was deemed unlikely that he would become competent to stand trial in the foreseeable future.
The defendant was then committed to St. Elizabeth’s in 2011 under the Sexual Psychopath Act (SPA) until the law was invalidated last year due to the defense’s successful efforts to challenge it.
During the March 23 hearing, Judge Danya Dayson read a Department of Behavioral Health (DBH) report that recommended the defendant be released into an outpatient treatment facility. The report recommended that the defendant be placed in residential housing run by the Department on Disability Services (DDS).
The report further stated that DDS would submit a treatment plan and regulations the defendant would need to follow while at the housing.
Judge Dayson ordered that the defendant follow every regulation DDS lays out for him and stay away from four victims and any children under the age of 18.
Judge Dayson also recommended that a status hearing be set six months out since the case isn’t dismissed, but, at this time, it is not moving forward.
The next hearing is scheduled to occur on Sept. 23.