Convicted Murderer and Rapist Loren Huss Ordered Released

By Linda Orlando

More sad and disturbing evidence of our too-liberal justice system in decline took place this week in Polk County, Iowa. A civil jury ruled Wednesday afternoon that Loren Huss, 42, could no longer be kept in custody because they do not feel he is a danger to the public. Less than an hour later, Huss strolled out of the Polk County Jail wearing a suit and carrying a plastic bag containing his belongings. When a reporter asked him how it felt to be free after nearly 20 years in jail, Huss answered that it felt great, and then he got in a car and rode away with his silent family, leaving behind a stunned community and a former victim who is appalled at the jury’s decision.

Dorothy Wallace was Huss’s first documented victim, after he robbed her, beat her, and left her partially naked in a Des Moines parking lot in 1980. Convicted of robbery for the attack, Huss said he had committed the crime due to a combination of alcohol, drugs, immaturity, and a bad attitude toward women. The following year he took part in the gang rape of a young woman near Saylorville Lake, and gave the same reasons for his participation in that crime. By the time he left prison in 1984, he and his lawyers claimed that his attitude had improved while he was incarcerated. But in 1986, when he was living with Marilyn Sheets in an apartment in Des Moines, Huss began to get messages from the radio, television, and barking dogs that commanded him to fight the devil. Psychiatrists paid by Huss’s lawyers testified that he suffered from a psychotic delusional state and that he was in a manic state of bipolar disorder when he attacked his girlfriend on May 19, 1986. According to Huss, he was attempting to get the devil out of her when he bludgeoned her to death, bit off her nose, and then gouged out her eyes, using her blood to scrawl epithets on the walls of their apartment. When police found him in their demolished apartment, Huss was yelling and jumping around, and it took five officers to subdue him.

Huss was convicted of first-degree murder in 1987, but in 2001, a federal appeals court generously awarded him a new trial. Amazingly, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, so he was released from prison and held in a state psychiatric hospital for mental treatment. Two years later, in 2003, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that Huss was not dangerous because he had not shown any symptoms of the bipolar disorder since 1986—even though he had been in custody continuously since 1986. Because that court decision said that Huss could no longer be held for mental treatment, state prosecutors immediately filed papers to hold him indefinitely as a sexual predator. Lawyers with the Iowa attorney general’s office continued to argue that the murder of Sheets was a sexually motivated crime, and psychiatrists paid by the state testified that Huss remains dangerously attracted to nonconsensual sex—and therefore it is more than likely that he will commit another crime. But the jury disagreed, saying that the prosecution had failed to prove its case, and that Huss did not need to be confined any longer in a state treatment program.

Dorothy Wallace paced while the jury deliberated. When the verdict was returned, she was floored. "It's a sad verdict and every woman that ever comes in contact with him is in danger," Wallace said. "They turned a murderer and a rapist loose today. God help us all...every woman in this town is in danger."

Assistant attorney general Douglas Hammerand was also shocked by the decision and says the state would not have pursued holding Huss indefinitely as a sexual predator if they had not felt that he is a serious risk. "That's why we filed charges," Hammerand said. "We believe there was evidence there to show he's a sexually violent predator. Yet that's why we let a jury decide and obviously the jury didn't believe he was."

A spokesperson for Marilyn Sheets’ family reported that the family is overwhelmingly shocked. Dorothy Wallace agrees, saying "I never dreamed any jury would ever lower their self to let something like that loose." Doctors testified during the trial that Huss plans to move in with his sister and mother in Des Moines while he decides what to do with the rest of his life. In prison he accumulated more than 50 hours of college credit, and he now says he intends to work toward a degree at Iowa State University. Although he says he’s recovered from his illness and has had no relapses in years, and he intends to do "whatever is necessary to keep everybody safe," as of last week he had not settled on a long-term medication plan to keep his bipolar disorder at bay. He acknowledged Tuesday that he has rejected some sex-offender treatment because he doesn't believe he has that kind of problem, but he plans to continue to work with a doctor. But of course he would say that.

Hammerand has his doubts, but there’s nothing he can do. "He can do whatever he wants," Hammerand said. "He can see different groups and different doctors. But that's entirely up to him."