http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/04/14/molester.freed.ap/
http://www.courttv.com/news/2004/0414/molester_ap.html
Molester serving life sentence freed
Accuser committed suicide before trial
Wednesday, April 14, 2004 Posted: 10:58 AM EDT (1458 GMT)
SANTA ANA, California (AP) -- A convicted child molester serving a life sentence was freed after an appeals court ruled he never had a chance to confront his accuser -- a teenager who committed suicide before the man's trial.
To the chagrin of prosecutors and even his sister, Edward Harvey Stokes was released from jail last week, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. Officials believe he has left the state.
"We worked extremely hard to make sure he would spend the rest of his life in prison," Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy said.
John Barnett, an attorney for Stokes, said the 4th District Court of Appeals ruling was fair because defendants have a right to cross-examine their accusers.
"Aside from the victim's testimony, little evidence existed to support the charges against the defendant," the court wrote.
Blue Karak, the alleged 16-year-old victim, was a runaway who police said Stokes met in a Seattle coffeehouse in 1996. According to court testimony, Stokes lured the boy to Disneyland and forced the boy to drink tequila and take LSD in a motel room before assaulting him. Stokes had been arrested for parole violation and released on $25,000 bail just days earlier.
Karak escaped, but he committed suicide several months before Stokes went on trial. Stokes was sentenced to life in prison under California's "one-strike" sexual assault law, which allows for a life term in aggravated cases.
The appeals court overturned Stokes' conviction in November.
Criminal history
"It is appalling to me that a person with his criminal history has been released," said Stokes' sister, Susan Stokes, in an e-mail to the Times. "He is dangerous."
Stokes was first arrested in 1974 and had been convicted at least five times in Washington and Oregon on rape, sodomy and kidnapping charges. In July 1995, he completed a three-year sentence in Oregon for sex abuse and sodomy.
According to police and court records, Stokes targeted runaways and other troubled youth because they typically did not tell authorities. He often gave his victims alcohol and drugs, with some victims waking up in handcuffs and leg shackles.
In a letter to a therapist in the early 1990s, Stokes said he had molested 212 victims and felt like a monster.
"I am angry at myself and others but I still seek out the weak and the unsuspecting as my victims," he wrote then.
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Police aren't sure where the hell he is. Yet they think he is in Washington State and as I type this the news on t.v. is reporting there IS an arrest warrant for him, yet I did not hear why there is a warrant. But cops are not sure where he is, at this moment.
sKally