Sex offender granted rare discharge from civil commitment

11-30-2012 Wisconsin:

A judge in Racine this week reluctantly freed a 32-year-old man from civil commitment that followed his sentence for molesting young girls when he was a boy.

Cory R. Lamp has been held at the Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Facility in Mauston for more than a decade, but will be released in about two weeks because the state's own experts agreed he was no longer more likely than not to reoffend.

According to a report in the Racine Journal Times, Lamp molested three girls aged 6 to 9 in the early 1990s, when he was no more than 14. He was adjudicated delinquent. When his sentence was up, authorities petitioned to have him committed under Chapter 980. The law allows certain sex offenders to be indefinitely for treatment at Sand Ridge.

Racine County Circuit Court Judge Tim Boyle wrote that he wished there was some way to keep Lamp in treatment or require he receive services after discharge, but had no such options, the Journal Times reported.

Lamp's attorney, Robert Peterson, acknowledge the law provides no housing, no medical care, no support service at all for subjects discharged from Sand Ridge, even for those like Lamp who have been institutionalized most of his life.

Peterson said he couldn't comment on where Lamp might go or what he might do after his release.

Boyle's decision followed a three-day trial in September on whether Lamp could continue to be held indefinitely for treatment as a sexually violent person.

There are about 356 people held at Sand Ridge at a cost of about $100,000 a year. Lamp joins a list of about 70 subjects who have ever won discharge since Chapter 980 was adopted in 1994.

One who has tried repeatedly without success is Shawn Schulpius. He's been held since 1996 and has sought release for years. His case once threatened the constitutional underpinning of Chapter 980 when it got all the way to the state Supreme Court in 2005.

On Tuesday, the state Court of Appeals upheld a Milwaukee judge's 2010 decision to deny Schulpius' a discharge hearing just months after a jury had ruled found he had not met the criteria for release. ..Source.. by Bruce Vielmetti