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Spokane and Kevin Coe will be the subject of a Prime Time television show this weekend, as a rare interview with convicted rapist was broadcast on KHQ.

Almost 26 years after Kevin Coe first began serving his sentence, and only months before the State Attorney General announced that he will try to civilly commit ga, Coe sat down with Dateline NBC.

The interview is the latest, and only one of the very few interviews in South Hill rapist has ever participated book also interviewed by attorneys involved in the case, as well as Washington State Attorney General.

The Spokane judge who will be chaired by rapist Kevin Coe's civil commitment trial this autumn has decided that there are 21 women on a list of uncharged rape and indecent liberties allegations can be included in the process to determine whether Coe is a violent sexual predators likely to rape again.

Of the 17 cases of rape were allowed, "I think, with a preponderance of the evidence that the offender was Mr Coe," Spokane County Superior Court Judge Kathleen M. O'Connor said in the decision released Friday.

The state is "very satisfied" with the ruling O'Connor, said Deputy Attorney General Todd Bowers, the lead attorney in the state of the case against Coe.

"This is an extremely important judgement. They defined the universe of admissible evidence that we and Mr. Coe's lawyers could use the defense as we prepare for trial," Bowers said Friday.

The state originally asked for proof of 44 alleged victims and maintain a psychologist who said Coe was suspected of between 50 and 100 additional violations, said Tim Trageser, Coe court-appointed lawyer. Trageser had asked for the unexplored cases.

The fact that O'Connor concluded the state can only introduce 17 alleged rapes and the lack of sufficient evidence for the others "is significant and is contrary to the myth that Mr. Coe is the 'South Hill rapist," " Trageser said.

At trial, Trageser said that he will prove that many of the 17 alleged victims "has not and can not identify Coe as the perpetrator" - and in fact were originally other people in police lineups. Coe was acquitted of two of the violations that are now being introduced in the civil commitment process.

Coe, dubbed the South Hill rapist by the media after a wave of sexual violence in Spokane starting in the 1970s, was convicted of one count of rape on October 23, 1980, and served a maximum penalty on the Washington state penitentiary. He was twice denied parole.

Coe was scheduled to be released in september 2006, but the Washington Attorney General's office moved to have him a sexual predator of violence. Coe the process is planned for early september 15.

O'Connor said she will allow a state expert, Dr. Robert Keppel, for his "signature analysis" concluded that 17 of the alleged rapes were similar in the method of a rape for which Coe was convicted. Coe defence lawyers, Trageser and Marla Polin, will present their own expert to rebut Keppel.

O'Connor will also make it possible to use a database in which Coe behavior and rituals were compared against thousands of other cases of sexual abuse. Coe's lawyers in their movements, have said the database is unreliable.

Coe's civil lawsuit is not a criminal procedure and the rules of evidence are different. The state must establish that Coe has been convicted of rape, suffers from a deviation that makes it difficult for him to his sexual urges, and show that his deviance makes him "more likely than not" to predatory sexual violence if he is released.

The rules for civil commitment trials using testimony from some previous victims, so a jury can weigh Coe's propensity for future violence, O'Connor said.

O'Connor omitted a woman raped on May 12, 1980, which was unable to her attacker and whose rape does not fit the "signature analysis."

O'Connor also ruled on the scope of what state expert Dr. Amy PHENIX, a California psychologist, able to present during the trial. Coe's lawyers had asked the defense to bar her to invoke unexplored sexual offences that were not raped.

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