Republican hypocrisy among northern CA district attorneys is so blatant in the sex crimes and child porn area of my practice I barely take note. But drinking until almost sunup while taking responsibility for electing the leader of the free world?

The GOP thinks it so important that their delegates be allowed to drink almost all night that they ask the convention host city to make an exception of long-established booze laws during this world-important event?

Time and time again I have heard a deputy DA appearing in my San Francisco, Marin, Alameda, Contra Costa, Sonoma, Napa, San Mateo or Santa Clara county DUI cases go on and on and on about how everyone knows the dangers of drinking and driving.

I realize there are taxis available at 2 AM in St. Paul (there are, aren’t they?), but somehow this news item really grated on me as someone defending DUI cases on a regular basis.

I guarantee you that one or more of those GOP delegates will drive drunk in St. Paul during 2 and 4 AM between September 1 and September 11, 2008, due in part to the exception to the MN law that the GOP has requested.

Most likely no GOP delegate(s) will get stopped for driving drunk (statistically less than .09% of drunk drivers actually do get stopped) but still . . .

A neighbor’s DVDs show Mr. Price making love to the table, first in his living room, to climax, and then lugging his picnic table out to his deck, where he repeatedly confirmed his passion and commitment with multiple climaxes—as the neighbor’s DVDs confirm.

Criminal problem? The poor guy was doing this whatever-nonsense was 3 blocks from an elementary school and this is America with a prosecutorial disease of needing to show how protective we are of our children, especially when it comes to ANYTHING relating to sex.

[Editorial note: the author is one of the few California criminal defense lawyer who has spent over a decade in third-world countries—and as a result he is appreciative of the U.S. criminal justice system compared to most others; for instance, he spent many hours and too much money helping Australian, New Zealand, and American drug defendants in Thailand jails (where oral and anal sex is permitted if the jailers get to participate or at least watch].

The victim, lacking English-speaking skills, and the arresting officers not speaking table talk, had no comment to the arresting officers and will not be put on the witness stand.

This post appears on my blog on April’s Fools Day—but it is not a joke; this is real, this is Ohio; this is America.

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.

The subject of recent late night comedy skits, Mr. Milio, one of two 93-year old men arrested in an increasingly common form of Internet sex sting, is actually going to trial on the charges, according to the prosecutor in Manatee County, Florida.
Read more about 93 Year Old Man Charged In Prostitution sting

As a California criminal defense lawyer specializing in sex crimes, this story says it all. Not really, but it does maybe help you understand why some “sex perverts” should be legally represented after all!

I will continue to follow the case and let you know if Mr. Milio goes to jail.