The family of a woman who was raped and killed by an unsupervised and violent sex offender settled a wrongful-death suit for $3.1 million yesterday. The state agreed to pay $2.6 million and King County $500,000 to the family of Deborah Funk, a 40-year-old mother of three who was raped and slain in her Federal Way home April 14, 2000.
Roy Elexis Webbe, 34, a paranoid schizophrenic, was convicted of her murder in January this year and sentenced to life in prison after numerous court hearings that focused on his competency to stand trial.
One jury deadlocked on the issue. A second determined in September that Webbe was competent to stand trial and aid in his own defense.
Prosecutors said that Webbe, who had a history of mental illness and substance abuse, broke into Funk's apartment, attacked her and then fixed himself a breakfast of bacon and eggs.
His fingerprints were on the bacon wrapper and on Funk's cellphone, which Webbe later used to call a drug dealer.
He was also convicted of an assault earlier that day on a 60-year-old woman who lived near Funk. That woman's daughter awoke during the attack and forced Webbe to flee.
In Pierce County Superior Court, Funk's family sued the state and King County, claiming Webbe's violent behavior was foreseeable and preventable.
Jack Connelly, an attorney for Funk's family, said Webbe had a history of violence and assault and that his state Department of Correction's parole officer was negligent in supervising him.
Webbe, who had served a seven-year prison sentence for rape, was convicted of assault in 1998 after he attacked two children on a bus and pulled a knife on a person who came to their aid.
In sentencing him to more than a year in prison, King County Superior Court Judge Deborah Fleck made it clear he was to be closely supervised upon his release, according to Connelly. Fleck also ordered that Webbe receive drug and alcohol treatment and mental-health counseling upon his release.
Webbe was assigned a community-corrections officer from the Department of Correction's Special Needs Unit, which was designed to allow low caseloads and close monitoring.
However, Webbe repeatedly violated the conditions of his parole. Among other violations, he failed or refused to take several drug and alcohol screening tests and to register as a sex offender. In response, the Department of Corrections did nothing, Connelly said.
"The sad thing about this is that it was so preventable," he said.
The state agreed to settle the suit the day the civil trial was to begin.
The county, which was included in the lawsuit because it failed to follow up on Webbe's failure to register as a sex offender, settled for $500,000.
"I think the state recognized that it just did not do its job," said Connelly. "For months (Webbe) was doing things that should have earned him a bench warrant and trip back to prison if only they'd been paying attention."
The Webbe case is the most recent in a line of legal settlements alleging that government officials failed to properly supervise released criminals.
In 2001, the family of retired firefighter Stan Stevenson settled a lawsuit against King County for $5.5 million — the largest wrongful-death settlement in county history. Stevenson was killed by Dan Van Ho, a mentally ill man released from the King County Jail days before the slaying.
In 1999, King County paid $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit with the family of Alice Sauls, who was beaten to death by her mentally ill brother shortly after his release from jail.
In Pierce County, a jury awarded $15 million in 2000 to the family of a slain Tacoma woman after deciding the state Department of Corrections failed to properly monitor her killer. Yoshiko Couch was killed by Cecil Emile Davis, a drug abuser who suffered from mental illness and had a pattern of escalating violent behavior.
That same year, another Pierce County jury awarded the family of Paula Joyce $22.4 million in another wrongful-death case. Joyce was killed when an unsupervised felon crashed a stolen car into her truck.
Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com