California Court of Appeals, First District, First Division
Sonoma
County Superior Court No. SCR18094 Honorable Robert M.
LaForge Trial Judge.
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COUNSEL
Ronald
R. Boyer, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for
Defendant and Appellant.
Kamala
D. Harris Attorney General Gerald A. Engler Chief Assistant
Attorney General Jeffrey M. Laurence & Laurence K.
Sullivan and Bridget Billeter, Deputy Attorneys General, for
Plaintiff and Respondent.
OPINION
HUMES,
P.J.
Thomas
Earl Putney appeals from an order recommitting him to the
State Department of State Hospitals (SDSH) for an
indeterminate term after a jury found him to be a sexually
violent predator (SVP) within the meaning of the Sexually
Violent Predators Act (SVPA).[1] During the pendency of
the SVP proceeding, Putney was sentenced to 25 years to life
in prison for an intervening criminal offense. We conclude
that the trial court lacked authority to recommit Putney as
an SVP once his sentence for the intervening criminal
conviction became final, and we therefore reverse the order
with directions to dismiss the recommitment petition.
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I.
Factual
and Procedural Background
During
the summer of 1990, Putney sexually molested his two- and
four-year-old cousins, with whom he lived at the time, and a
nine-year-old neighbor. The following year, he pleaded no
contest to three felony counts of lewd acts on a child under
age 14 based on his offenses against the four- and
nine-year-old, and he was sentenced to 10 years in
prison.[2]
In
October 2002, shortly before Putney was due to be released on
parole, the People filed a petition seeking his commitment to
a state hospital as an SVP.[3] He admitted to the
petition’s allegations, and in February 2003 the trial
court committed him to Atascadero State Hospital for two
years. At the end of the two-year term, the People did not
seek to recommit Putney as an SVP, and he was released on
parole in February 2005. He moved several times due to public
outcry about his presence, became suicidal, and sought help
from his parole officer. Putney returned to prison in
approximately August 2005 after no other facility would
accept him, and his parole was revoked “based upon
[the] psychiatric return.”
In
September 2005, about a month before Putney was due to be
released, the People filed a second petition seeking his
commitment to a state hospital as an SVP. He did not contest
the petition, and the following month the trial court
committed him to Atascadero for another two-year term. The
People filed the instant petition to recommit Putney as an
SVP in July 2007, a few months before the expiration of that
two-year term. In February 2008, the trial court found that
the petition established probable cause to believe that
Putney was an SVP, and a jury trial was set for later that
spring.
The SVP
trial was continued many times and ultimately did not begin
until April 2014, almost seven years after the recommitment
petition was filed. Only one of the many reasons for the
delay is relevant to the resolution of this appeal: in
November 2010, Putney was charged with a felony count of
possession of a dirk and dagger based on an incident at
Coalinga State Hospital, where he was then housed.
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