In the Matter of the Civil Commitment of: Matthew Alan Radke.

CourtCourt of Appeals of Minnesota
DecidedSeptember 15, 2014
DocketA13-795
StatusUnpublished

This text of In the Matter of the Civil Commitment of: Matthew Alan Radke. (In the Matter of the Civil Commitment of: Matthew Alan Radke.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Minnesota primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In the Matter of the Civil Commitment of: Matthew Alan Radke., (Mich. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

This opinion will be unpublished and may not be cited except as provided by Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2012).

STATE OF MINNESOTA IN COURT OF APPEALS A13-0795

In the Matter of the Civil Commitment of: Matthew Alan Radke.

Filed September 15, 2014 Affirmed Hudson, Judge

Freeborn County District Court File No. 24-PR-12-625

Ryan B. Magnus, Jeremy J. Nauman, Jones and Magnus, Attorneys at Law, Mankato, Minnesota (for appellant)

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Craig S. Nelson, Freeborn County Attorney, Albert Lea, Minnesota (for respondent)

Considered and decided by Hudson, Presiding Judge; Ross, Judge; and Schellhas,

Judge.

UNPUBLISHED OPINION

HUDSON, Judge

In this appeal from his civil commitment as a sexually dangerous person (SDP),

appellant argues that the district court clearly erred by discrediting one expert’s actuarial

assessment, the SRA-FV, as a new measure, not yet widely used in Minnesota, and

crediting the opinion of another expert, who relied partially on structured clinical

judgment. He also argues that the district court’s findings reflect factor repetition, which

is impermissible under In re Civil Commitment of Ince, 847 N.W.2d 13 (Minn. 2014). He further challenges the district court’s determination that he failed to show the availability

of a less-restrictive alternative meeting his needs and public-safety requirements. We

affirm.

FACTS

In April 2012, a petition was filed to commit appellant Matthew Alan Radke as an

SDP. See Minn. Stat. § 253D.02, subd. 16 (Supp. 2013) (defining standards for

commitment as a sexually dangerous person).1 In 2008, appellant was convicted of

second-degree criminal sexual conduct based on repeated sexual contact with his

girlfriend’s daughter when she was four to ten years old. In 2007, he pleaded guilty to

fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct after grabbing a woman at a facility where he was

undergoing chemical-dependency treatment. As a result of the second-degree criminal

sexual conduct conviction, appellant was sentenced to 21 months in prison, with

execution stayed and probation for 0-20 years.

In 2008, appellant entered outpatient sex-offender treatment at the Safety Center,

Inc. After reports in 2009 and 2010 that he violated probation conditions by viewing and

masturbating to adult and child pornography, his probation was restricted and treatment

modified. In 2012, he was convicted of interference with privacy after he engaged in

window peeping, masturbated when he returned home, and then reported his behavior.

Appellant was suspended from treatment at the Safety Center, his probation was revoked,

1 In 2013, the Minnesota legislature recodified the statutes governing civil commitment of sexually dangerous persons. See 2013 Minn. Laws, ch. 49 at 213–14 (codified at Minn. Stat. ch. 253D). We cite the current versions of the statutes because, for purposes of this case, the legislature clarified pre-existing law without making substantive changes. See Braylock v. Jesson, 819 N.W.2d 585, 588–89 (Minn. 2012).

2 and he was sent to prison. In 1996, he was diagnosed with major depression, borderline

passive-aggressive personality traits, intense and unstable personal relationships, and a

global assessment of impairment in social functioning.

At a hearing on the commitment petition, appellant’s probation agent in the

Minnesota Department of Corrections outpatient enhanced sex-offender program testified

that appellant lacks impulse control and admitted to sexual fantasies about young

children, raising concerns about a future sexual offense. The agent testified that he was

also concerned because appellant had stated that he engaged in window peeping “because

he deserved it” after treatment success.

Appellant’s psychologist at the Safety Center testified that appellant showed

positive effects from his three-hour-per-weekday treatment and that he would be

considered for readmission because his last offense occurred during the relapse-

prevention phase. The psychologist testified, however, that he was concerned by

appellant’s window peeping near the end of treatment and his inability to use treatment

techniques to stop this behavior.

Appellant testified that he had learned from his treatment at the Safety Center and

was able to control his impulses “to a certain point.” He testified that he did not believe

his attraction to children would go away, but he could control himself if he stopped and

considered the consequences of an action. He testified that, since he was a teenager, he

would attempt to engage in window peeping three to four times every five or six months

on a regular basis; that, over a six-year period, he touched his girlfriend’s daughter

sexually “close to 200 times”; and that his attraction to young females had “stayed pretty

3 much the same” since he was 10 or 11 years old. He stated that he still had sexual

problems, but he did not “act on them as much as [he] used to.”

The two court-appointed psychologists, Dr. Linda Marshall and Dr. Mary

Kenning, submitted reports and testimony. Dr. Marshall gave her opinion that appellant

met the threshold for commitment as SDP; Dr. Kenning gave her opinion that he did not

meet that threshold.

Dr. Marshall administered the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2,

which showed that appellant had clinical elevations in Axis I disorders relating to

antisocial behavior, paranoia, and confused thinking. His scores on the Millon Clinical

Multiaxial Inventory-III indicated that he had pervasive and enduring personality traits

underlining his interpersonal difficulties. Dr. Marshall diagnosed appellant with Axis I

disorders of pedophilia, voyeurism, a rule-out diagnosis of paraphilia, not otherwise

specified, and histories of bipolar disorder, alcohol dependency, and cannabis abuse. She

also diagnosed him with Axis II, borderline personality disorder, which she believed

affected his judgment, his relationship difficulties, and the chaos in his life.

The results of the Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool-3.1 (MnSOST-3.1),

given during appellant’s end-of-confinement review, showed that he had a predicted

probability of sexual recidivism of 4.36 percent, with a percentile rank of 79.40, placing

appellant in the group of sex offenders with a moderate risk of committing another sex

offense within four years. Appellant scored a seven on the Static-99R, an actuarial

instrument that measures recidivism with static factors. Dr. Marshall testified that this

score placed him in the group of sex offenders at high risk for being charged or convicted

4 of another sex offense. She also administered the Sexual Violence Risk-20 (SVR-20), an

instrument that uses structured clinical judgment by assessing an organized list of risk

factors found to correlate with a risk of sexual offenses. On the SVR-20, appellant

scored 13 of 20 risk markers, placing him in the moderate-to-high-risk range for risk of

sexual violence.

Dr. Marshall testified that, in evaluating appellant, she looked at “the big picture,”

including his test scores and interview. She testified that it was a “red flag” that he had

engaged in window peeping after three years in treatment and that he should have been

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Related

In Re the Civil Commitment of Jackson
658 N.W.2d 219 (Court of Appeals of Minnesota, 2003)
In Re the Civil Commitment of Stone
711 N.W.2d 831 (Court of Appeals of Minnesota, 2006)
In Re Linehan
594 N.W.2d 867 (Supreme Court of Minnesota, 1999)
Matter of Knops
536 N.W.2d 616 (Supreme Court of Minnesota, 1995)
Matter of Linehan
518 N.W.2d 609 (Supreme Court of Minnesota, 1994)
Matter of Linehan
557 N.W.2d 171 (Supreme Court of Minnesota, 1996)
In re the Detention of Ritter
312 P.3d 723 (Court of Appeals of Washington, 2013)
In re the Civil Commitment of Navratil
799 N.W.2d 643 (Court of Appeals of Minnesota, 2011)
Braylock v. Jesson
819 N.W.2d 585 (Supreme Court of Minnesota, 2012)
In re the Civil Commitment of Crosby
824 N.W.2d 351 (Court of Appeals of Minnesota, 2013)
In re the Civil Commitment of Ince
847 N.W.2d 13 (Supreme Court of Minnesota, 2014)

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