Thirty-one years ago, Donovan Frank, then an Iron Range prosecutor working a child molestation case, made legal history after he put on the witness stand an expert to explain why children do not report such abuse and why wives, girlfriends and significant others support the abuser. Over objections from the defense, the trial judge allowed it. Such testimony, the first to be allowed and confirmed on a post-conviction appeal, is still law and common practice in this state.

On Wednesday, he made legal history again, this time on behalf of sex offenders.

In two separate cases three decades apart, the small-town boy from Spring Valley, Minn., went to bat for a child-rape victim and for perhaps the most detested class of criminal.

That, in a nutshell, underscores the beauty of American jurisprudence and by extension the Constitution. It also echoes a favorite phrase Frank utters in talks he has given over the years as one of the state’s most publicly visible jurists: “We will be judged by how we treat the most vulnerable among us.”

His ruling that Minnesota’s sex-offender civil commitment program is unconstitutional came as little surprise to most legal observers. Since its inception 20 years ago, not one civilly committed person has been outright released from treatment programs at Moose Lake and St. Peter. The U.S. Supreme Court found such laws constitutional unless the programs implementing them became unduly punitive rather than rehabilitative.

DRU SJODIN’S DEATH

Minnesota’s program essentially morphed into a prison-like environment, particularly after the brutal 2003 murder of Dru Sjodin at the hands of a released sex offender. The only way to leave civil commitment was in a body bag. The folks there, from sex offenders who had long completed prison sentences to juvenile offenders never convicted of a crime, were essentially serving indefinite life sentences.

As Dan Gustafson, the lawyer who represented the class-action lawsuit filed by the program “clients,” told me a few days ago, “No matter what you think of them, that is just wrong.”

The state Legislature, the entity that failed again this year to fund less-restrictive regional treatment centers and other sex offender task force recommendations or remedies, was content to let Frank do their job for them.

Sure. Let the judge hold the bag for us. Let him deal with the rancor and outrage from some segment of the public in this highly emotional, politicized issue. That legislative inertia did not go unnoticed in Frank’s 76-page decision.

“The court must emphasize that politics or political pressures cannot trump the fundamental rights of class members who, pursuant to state law, have been civilly committed to receive treatment,” he noted.

“The Constitution protects individual rights even when they are unpopular,” he added. “As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor sagely observed, ‘(A) nation’s success or failure in achieving democracy is judged in part by how well it responds to those at the bottom and the margins of the social order.’ ”

A PROSECUTOR-TURNED-JUDGE

You can’t get any lower in a public opinion poll than the residents at Moose Lake and St. Peter. But who is this Frank guy anyway? I tried hard to get dirt on him. I came up empty. He’s no preppy, out-of-touch, politically motivated or ambitious jurist. He’s about as down to earth and rooted as a cornstalk on any farm field in Gopher country.

His parents ran a modest TV and appliance store in town. His late father, Donald, was a former Golden Gloves boxer and kept a pair of gloves behind the counter of his shop.

Anyone who haggled a price with the old man could put on the gloves and try to knock him out. If they did, they got the lower price. Better luck with eBay. No one ever got the discount that way. But he did give breaks to families in need.

Frank graduated from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and later, Hamline University School of Law, magna cum laude, in 1977. He was quickly hired as an assistant prosecutor in St. Louis County, mostly working child neglect and abuse cases. A recovering alcoholic in his 38th year of sobriety, he was instrumental in encouraging screening of jail detainees for chemical dependency and mental health issues in the 1980s and 1990s. A treatment and a detox center in the Iron Range is named after him.

He was appointed as a state judge in 1985 and a federal jurist in 1998, after he was recommended by the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone and nominated by President Bill Clinton.

He’s on more boards than a professional surfer. They include boards overseeing diversity efforts in the legal profession and getting pro se litigants pro bono legal advice. He’s also involved in a project that brings high school students interested in the legal profession into the courthouse and sets up face-to-face meetings with judges and lawyers.

CHAMPION OF DISABILITY JUSTICE

He is embarking on an initiative to monitor recently released federal offenders dealing with chemical dependency and other issues. The effort includes a weekly meeting with him or another federal jurist, Susan Nelson.

He’s also on the board of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, a self-help group, and is known nationally as a reference source and must-call for judges across the nation who may be struggling with alcoholism and other issues. He is also a champion of disability justice and related issues involving people with developmentally disabilities. He traces his passion to his love and admiration for Dutch, a cousin of his father, who was developmentally disabled but capably worked at the appliance store and attended church on Sundays with Frank and other family members.

A few years ago, Frank lobbied hard to make sure that 22 developmentally disabled maintenance workers at the federal courthouse in St. Paul would not lose their jobs during a three-year-long building renovation project. He’s on a first-name basis with all of them.

“In his courtroom, regardless of background, religion, gender or disability, everyone receives equal justice under the law,” said Shamus O’Meara, a top private attorney who has a son with autism. “He is not afraid to tackle difficult issues, including topics that have been avoided by others for years, and work with parties and lawyers to bring about consensus and fair results.”

SWEARING IN CITIZENS ON THEIR DEATHBED

Frank also is a judicial liaison for the local branch of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Besides presiding over mass citizenship swearing-in ceremonies, he has gone to homes and hospitals, much like a priest administering last rites, and sworn in folks, some on their deathbeds, as U.S. citizens, because they are either dying or their health prevents them from attending ceremonies. He drove 75 miles at a moment’s notice a few years ago for a man about to die at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. He did it last week for an elderly St. Paul couple from Buhran, a part of Saudi Arabia, with serious health issues.

He did it for a U.S. Army enrollee of Somali descent about to enter boot camp and subsequent deployment to Iraq nine years ago.

Ever curious, Frank asked the recruit why he wanted to join the U.S. military during a time of increasing anti-Somali sentiment then sweeping the Twin Cities area.

“It is the least I can do for the country that saved my life,” the young man told Frank. “This is the country that gave me my first taste of freedom.”

There wasn’t a dry eye in the judge’s chambers in St. Paul, where the emergency ceremony took place. That included Frank himself, who at that moment remembered his late father’s words when he was appointed a state judge. It has helped govern the way he lives his life as a family man as well as a judge.

“No matter how poor, no matter how unimportant someone is, how rich or influential, everybody gets the same respectful treatment.”