The compelling need for a "guilty but insane" verdict option in Washington, which would prevent certain violent offenders from slipping through loopholes in the criminal justice system, was highlighted in my previous posting.

But reform must not end there. While the question of whether a defendant is mentally competent to stand trial is more complex, the applicable law in these cases also must be changed in this state. Those accused of violent crimes must not be allowed to escape answering forever the charges against them --and even walking free again -- which is what existing law makes possible. In fact, it is far easier for such a violent defendant to escape both accountability and supervision than an unsuspecting public realizes.

"Exhibit A" on this count is a travesty within Washington's criminal justice system, which had its tragic origin in Des Moines seven years ago and still drags on in King County Superior Court. In March 2001, Richard and Jane Larson, along with their grandson Taelor Marks and his girlfriend Josie Peterson, a popular high school cheerleader, were brutally slain at their home in Des Moines. Two days later, Leemah Carneh, who allegedly was obsessed with Miss Peterson, was arrested and charged with four counts of aggravated first-degree murder.

Mr. Carneh faces life in prison without parole if convicted. Yet he may be no closer to trial now than he was then. For much of the intervening time, having been found mentally unfit to stand trial, he has been held for treatment at Western State Hospital. When the charges against Mr. Carneh were dismissed, as required by state law, in 2005 and he was sent from the King County Jail back to the mental treatment facility, prosecutors said it was unlikely -- even if he never stood trial for the murders -- that he ever would be free again. But in late 2007, prosecutors learned that he had made enough "improvement" to be unsupervised and perhaps even allowed to leave the grounds of the institution. At that point, they re-filed charges of aggravated first-degree murder against Mr. Carneh. And once again, he was found mentally unfit.

Western State staff are employing "additional treatment alternatives" they believe will help Mr. Carneh become competent so he finally can stand trial. Before the court approved these new therapies, however, his defense attorney tried to block this move, arguing that previous attempts at treatment had failed. This coward -- who hides behind the charades of his lawyer, whose legal games make a mockery of our criminal justice system -- deserves to stand trial. He deserves a fair trial, to be sure.

But Mr. Carneh also deserves never to walk free again, regardless of his mental state, until he has been held to account in a court of law for the four counts of aggravated first-degree murder with which he is charged. Anything less denies justice for the victims, who cry out from their graves, and for the families of those who were murdered whose lives never will be the same because of their losses. And it denies justice for all of us in civil society who, until Mr. Carneh stands trial, live with a threat that last fall almost became reality -- that an accused killer could escape trial and return to the outside world, where he could kill again. If ever that should happen, the blood of those victims would be on the hands of the lawyer and the judges who let him go free.

Although Democrats who dominate Olympia perennially fail to enact measures that will increase protection for the public from violent criminals, theirs need not be the last word. The people, who gave Washington its "three-strikes" law, again can effect change to make our streets and our state safer for all. As we approach a new legislative election season, it's time to make these issues of crime and punishment -with real life-and-death implications - a campaign issue for 2008.