UNITED KINGDOM/MINNESOTA
MSNBC
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.”
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