UK Won't Extradite Sex Offender Accused of Raping, Molesting Girls in US

MSNBC
June 29, 2012

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Britain's High Court on Thursday blocked a U.S. bid to extradite Shawn Sullivan to Minnesota, saying the state's restrictive treatment program for sex offenders was too draconian.

LONDON -- Minnesota prosecutors' efforts to have a convicted sexual predator brought to trial in the United States were thwarted on Thursday when Britain's High Court dropped extradition proceedings, saying the U.S. hadn't guaranteed the suspect would be kept out a program some deem draconian.

Shawn Sullivan, 43, is accused of molesting two girls and raping a third in the 1990s in Minnesota. Sullivan fled the United States and eventually ended up in London, where authorities caught up to him two years ago.

Judges Alan Moses and David Eady said in a ruling finalized Thursday that if Sullivan were returned to the U.S., he could face a real risk of being placed in the state's civil commitment program -- which provides for the indefinite detention of people found to be sexually dangerous -- and suffer "a flagrant denial of his rights."

Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom, who charged Sullivan with molesting the 11-year-old girls, said authorities hadn't decided whether to pursue civil commitment. However, he said making such a guarantee "could open the floodgates."

"It's a very slippery slope to go down once you start making agreements," Backstrom said.

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Peter Wold, Sullivan's criminal defense attorney in Minnesota, said the British judges balked at the prospect of indefinite detention. "That offended them, and it should offend a lot of people, to have the prospect of people being committed with no end in sight," he said.

Human rights concerns periodically complicate efforts by U.S. prosecutors to extradite suspects. For example, European Union countries typically won't extradite suspects who could face capital punishment to the U.S. unless American prosecutors give assurances they won't seek the death penalty.

Still, Bruce Zagaris, a Washington, D.C.,-based attorney specializing in international criminal law, said this was one of the first cases he had seen in which the U.K. has said no to extradition.

"I think foreign courts no longer give us the benefit of the doubt," Zagaris said.

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Sullivan still faces a civil case in Minnesota, and Michael Hall III, the attorney representing the three alleged victims, said he expects that to go forward. He said significant punitive damages are possible.

Sullivan's attorney in the civil case was out of the office Thursday and did not return a message.

Hannah Treziok, who was 14 when she says Sullivan raped her, said she was disappointed with the British court's ruling but that she had prepared herself for this possibility.

"The reality is, we, the victims, have for 18 years been fighting the good fight, and there is no shame in that," she said. "Even though it is not the exact outcome that we desired ... we brought him out of the shadows and exposed him for who and what he really is."