Washington will at this point require DNA samples from all registered sex
offenders only. Other states are targeting even juveniles and illegal
immigrants.... read more: DNA profiles can clear up crimes
The California Supreme Court ruled last week that a SVP (sexually violent predator) could avoid civil commitment otherwise required by Welfare & Institutions Code section 6600 et seq. under certain circumstances.
Under People v. Smith (2004) 32 Cal.4th 792, 796-799 (Smith), a person can be civilly committed as a SVP after serving his full prison term if he has been convicted of certain crimes and a jury finds he may engage in sexually violent behavior in the future.
In this case the defendant had been convicted in 1982 of four counts of oral copulation on a child under 14 and one count of sodomy of a child under 14; again, in 1988 he was convicted of 15 counts of committing lewd and lascivious acts on a child under 14.
Seven years later he was released on parole and three years later, in 1998, he completed parole. When he moved away from California to New York the following year he sent a change of address card to the Long Beach police, but it was not received (?!).
Failing to keep California authorities informed led to his arrest in New York and his return to the Golden State for five years in state prison. At this point the Los Angeles D.A. (for the first time) decided the defendant should be placed into civil custody as a SVP when he completed the five years.
However, meanwhile, Smith was appealing the conviction and he won! The Supremes apparently decided the police might have received that change of address card after all, or at least it was a close enough question to make the court wonder if five years in state prison was the appropriate consequence of a mail mishap.
So Smith won—but the D.A. STILL DEMANDED HE BE PUT INTO CIVIL CUSTODY AS A SVP immediately because the D.A. could demand it. By that I mean this: the D.A. “could” because, incredibly, the operative language reads: “An SVP petition shall not be dismissed on the basis of a later judicial or administrative determination that the individual’s custody was unlawful, if the unlawful custody was the result of a good faith mistake of fact or law.”
In this case our California Supreme Court made a decision that may lack political correctness but it absolutely was the right decision. The court concluded that, despite the above italicized language, it was not going to let the People (the D.A.’s office) twist the meaning of the language into something different than what the legislators must have intended (or what the Supremes thought was fair).
Accordingly, the court held an SVP commitment in this case was not authorized, reversing the Court of Appeal.
I wanted to comment of a very thoughtful article by Adam Liptak in his “Sidebar” column in today’s New York Times. Read the original article: Study of Wrongful Convictions Raises Questions Beyond DNA
The thrust of the piece is that, despite authorities with differing opinions on exoneration and innocence (you can be exonerated by DNA but still be guilty), no one denies that, “We know very little about any aspect of false conviction. But a few general lessons can be drawn nonetheless,” he concludes, and they are these:
1. Black men are more likely to be convicted of rape than white men under the same fact patterns, especially if the victim was white.
2. Minors are more likely to falsely confess to murder than adults.
3. Defendants who maintain their innocence are more likely to be innocent.
4. The longer it takes to solve a crime the more likely the defendant is not guilty.
Everyone knows blacks are at a disadvantage in our criminal system. The surprise, to me at least, is that minors are also at a disadvantage. The last two ‘lessons’ are well known to the criminal defense bar but likely far less well known to the public at large.
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