Holy Sh*t - Updated

Loren Huss has been released.

I'm stunned. I'm concerned. I want to know where he is at all times.

As State 29 points out, the case is a procedural nightmare and difficult to follow. I did my best to unravel and explain it after the last appeal that led to the remand for this hearing. My explanation is here. It's long, but that's cause it's really really confusing.

Why am I concerned? The facts of the case:

"In the early hours of May 19, 1986, Des Moines police responded to a domestic disturbance at the apartment of Defendant and Ms. Sheets. The apartment was virtually demolished. Broken furniture was strewn about. The walls were smeared with blood and peppered with holes. Defendant, soaked in his victim’s blood, was yelling scripture and kicking and pouncing on the nude, spread-eagled body of Ms. Sheets when police arrived. It took five officers to subdue Defendant, who continued to chant variations of the verse from John 3:16.

Ms. Sheets had been struck, kicked, bitten, and strangled. She suffered a lacerated liver, bite marks of the head and neck, a crushed upper and lower jaw, and a brain hemorrhage in addition to the numerous contusions, lacerations and abrasions of the body, face, and throat. Dirt was found in her vagina which Defendant had repeatedly kicked. He had bitten off her nose and gouged out her eyes. He had scooped blood from the sockets and smeared it over the doorway in some reference to Passover. These injuries were inflicted antemortem.

Two other assaults, also shocking, predated Huss’s attack on Sheets. In 1981, Huss—then eighteen years old—received a suspended sentence for second-degree robbery after committing a brutal, late-night assault on a woman in a parking lot. The victim was found unconscious, her clothes torn from her body, with multiple wounds including severe injuries to her eyes. A year later, Huss and several companions gang-raped a teenage girl. Huss, who was arrested at the scene, pleaded guilty to third-degree sex abuse. His prior probation was revoked and his ten-year sentence ordered to be served concurrently with his robbery conviction. It was while on parole for these convictions that he murdered Marilyn Sheets.

Holy sh*t. They found he's no longer a danger to society? To be fair, his mental illnes has apparently been in remission for a while. And the last remand did require him to undergo an evaluation for this hearing.

I certainly hope the jury was right. For all our sakes.

UPDATE:

They found that the State couldn't prove his crime was sexual in nature. As opposed to the non-sexual, garden-variety sadistic murder, that is:

"Huss has said he beat Sheets to death, gouged out her eyes and wrote on the walls in her blood because he was seeking to get the devil out of her. Iowa prosecutors contended that the crime was part of a larger pattern of sexual violence that proved Huss to be an ongoing danger.

Jurors contacted Thursday said their deliberations stopped after reaching agreement that prosecutors had failed to prove that Huss sexually abused Sheets or was sexually motivated during the killing. One noted that authorities couldn't account beyond a reasonable doubt for fluid and dirt found in Sheets' vagina, while bite marks and other details seemed to fit Huss' version of events.

'Eighteen years later, it's hard to come back and say it was (sexually motivated) when they never tested the evidence to begin with," one juror said. "We did our job according to the judge's instructions.'"

Obviously there's something I'm missing as I don't quite understand why fluid and dirt in the vagina would have to be "accounted for beyond a reasonable doubt" by the State in a hearing to prove sexual motivation of an admitted crime. Yes, it could go to the issue of whether she was sexually assaulted during the crime. But there is also a sexual motivation component, which can be proven circumstantially from the facts of the case as a whole:

To confine Loren Huss as a sexual predator, Iowa prosecutors had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt:

1. That the 1986 killing of Marilyn Sheets was a sexually motivated crime or that Sheets was sexually abused during the killing.

2. That Huss had a history of sexually motivated crimes. (Not disputed.)

3. That Huss suffered from some sort of "mental abnormality."

4. That the mental abnormality made it more likely than not that Huss would reoffend if released.

I understand he has his story of "getting the devil" out of her, trying to classify himself as a missionary or religious killer rather than a sexually-motivated one. But compare and contrast the modus operandi to the Jack the Ripper murders, which are classic examples of sexually sadistic murder with no evidence of sexual penetration - the knife did the penetrating for him. Not all sexually motivated murders involve penetration and rape. Are we going to require that as part of the standard, or a flat admission by a defendant, in order to find this component beyond a reasonable doubt? Take a look at this:

Serial sexual offenders will often kill by "hands-on" methods such as strangulation, asphyxiation and mutilation rather than use firearms. This "modus operandi" (MO) tends to remain constant throughout offences, deviating (if ever) only towards the end of an offender’s murder series as he becomes more disorganised. Organised offenders may take time to "stage" the murder scene. Evidence of "overkill" is particularly likely at the crime scene of the visionary serial killer. Souvenirs/trophies may also be taken. Detailed sexually sadistic offence characteristics are given in Table 1, however, Dietz et al. (1990) do not provide a breakdown by offence and number of victims which would assist in such an analysis. An analysis of offences by typology (e.g. organised/disorganised), or indeed exclusively of serial killers, would also be of considerable use. Dietz et al.’s (1990) sample is selected from cases identified as possible sexual sadistic criminals referred to the NCAVC between 1984 and 1989 and identified by the authors as displaying sexual arousal to images of suffering or humiliation. Evidence was obtained from interviews, police reports, court reports, crime scene photographs etc.

Characteristic / n / %

A partner assisted in offence 11 36.7
Careful planning of offence 28 93.3
Impersonation of police in commission of offence(s) 7 23.3
Victim taken to preselected location 23 76.7
Victim kept in captivity for 24 hours or more 18 60.0
Victim bound, blindfolded or gagged 26 86.7
Sexual bondage of victim 23 76.7
Anal rape of victim 22 73.3
Forced victim to perform fellatio 21 70.0
Vaginal rape of victim 17 56.7
Foreign object penetration of victim 12 40.0
Variety of sexual acts with victim 20 66.7
Sexual dysfunction during offence 13 43.3
Unemotional, detached during offence 26 86.6
Told victim what to say during assault 7 23.3
Intentional torture (see below for methods used) 30 100.0

Instruments 8 26.7
Painful insertion of foreign objects 7 23.3
Beating 6 20.0
Biting 5 16.7
Whipping 5 16.7
Painful bondage 5 16.7
Electrical shock 4 13.3
Twisting breasts until victim unconscious 4 13.3
Asphyxiation until victim unconscious 4 13.3
Burning 3 10.0
Other e.g. amputation, injection, immersion 7 23.3

Murdered victim (see below for cause of death of 130 murder victims total) 22 73.3

Ligature strangulation 42 32.3
Manual strangulation 34 26.1
Gunshot wounds 32 24.6
Cutting and stabbing wounds 13 10.0
Blunt force trauma 4 3.1
Hanging 2 1.5
Suffocation 1 0.8
Torture 1 0.8
Exposure 1 0.8

Committed serial murder (3 or more victims) 17 56.6
Concealed victim’s corpse 20 66.6
Victim beaten (blunt force trauma) 18 60.0
Recorded the offence (writing, drawing, videotape etc.) 16 53.3
Kept victim’s personal item 12 40.0

Notice anything? Only 56% had vaginally penetrated the victim, 40% had penetrated with an object and 66% had sexual acts not otherwise specified. The highest incidence appears to be anal penetration at 76%. That leaves quite a few with no overt sexual act. That correlates nicely with other sources:

Psychological Motivation
• It has been posited that all serial
murderers are necrophiles
• Most serial killers are serial sexual
murderers
• 60% of serial murders had violated their
victims sexually

–This could be an underestimate

Compound that by his admission that two of his prior crimes, a robbery and a gang rape, were sexually motivated: "He blamed those crimes on a combination of alcohol, drugs and a bad attitude toward women."

A "bad attitude"? Gang rape as a "bad attitude?"

I submit that if we're going to require a confession of a sexual motivation or evidence of penetration, we're holding the State to an impossibly high standard. Many sexual murderers are not stupid, they're intelligent, if psychopathic, and are not likely to make a confession against self-interest unless they've reached the "catch me if you can Mr. Lusk" stage of taunting the police.

Regardless, the jury has spoken. I'm still concerned. More so now, as the issue of whether he's a continuing danger wasn't really considered - if they did the analysis right, they took the sexual motivation issue up first and so never had to decide dangerousness. And if you're in the market for a counselor, you might want to take this into account:

"Jurors were told Monday that Huss garnered a 3.64 GPA while accumulating more than 50 hours of college credit behind bars. He has plans to finish school and get a job, possibly as some kind of a counselor."