Baker v. Superior Court

• Citation: 677 P.2d 219,35 Cal.3d 663,200 Cal.Rptr. 293
• Decision Date: 22 March 1984
• Docket Number: Cr. 22993
• Parties: , 677 P.2d 219 Donald Eugene BAKER, Petitioner, v. The SUPERIOR COURT OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Respondent; The PEOPLE, Real Party in Interest. In re Peter A. LAMPORT on habeas corpus. In re Douglas E. COUCH on habeas corpus.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (California)

Page 293

200 Cal.Rptr. 293

35 Cal.3d 663, 677 P.2d 219

Donald Eugene BAKER, Petitioner, v. The SUPERIOR COURT OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Respondent;

The PEOPLE, Real Party in Interest.

In re Peter A. LAMPORT on habeas corpus.

In re Douglas E. COUCH on habeas corpus.

Cr. 22993.

Supreme Court of California,

In Bank.

March 22, 1984.

J. Thomas Bowden and John T. Philipsborn, San Diego, under appointments by the Supreme Court, and Frank X. Nageotte, San Jose, for petitioners.

Quin Denvir, State Public Defender, and Adrian K. Panton, Deputy State Public Defender as amici curiae on behalf of petitioners.

No appearance for respondent Court.

George Deukmejian and John K. Van de Kamp, Attys. Gen., Robert H. Philibosian, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., Daniel J. Kremer, Asst. Atty. Gen., Steven V. Adler, Harley D. Mayfield and Jay M. Bloom, Deputy Attys. Gen., Edwin Miller, Dist. Atty., Peter C. Lehman, Thomas F. McArdle, and Henry R. Mann, Deputy Dist. Attys., for real party in interest and respondent.

KAUS, Justice.

In 1979 petitioners Baker and Lamport were convicted on charges arising out of separate incidents of oral copulation of a minor (Pen.Code, § 288a) and committed for three years to the Department of Mental Health as mentally disordered sex offenders (MDSOs), the commitments to expire in April 1982. In 1977 petitioner Couch was convicted of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under 14 years (Pen.Code, § 288) and committed as an MDSO for five years, the commitment to expire in May 1982. In each case, the district attorney filed a timely petition to extend the commitment (former Welf. & Inst.Code, § 6316.2). ¹ During the hearing on the petition, Baker demurred and moved to dismiss, contending that the repeal of the MDSO laws effective January 1, 1982, precluded extension of commitments after that date. The trial court overruled the demurrer and denied the motion; Baker seeks a writ of prohibition to prevent further proceedings on the petition for extension. After hearings, the commitments of Lamport and Couch were extended for two years. They seek habeas corpus, also asserting a lack of jurisdiction to extend their commitments.

I

Effective January 1, 1982, the MDSO provisions of the Welfare and Institutions Code (former §§ 6300-6330) were repealed. (Stats.1981, ch. 928, § 2.) At the same time, sections 1364 and 1365 were added to the Penal Code. Section 1364 provided in pertinent part: "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, when any person is convicted of a sex offense against a person under the age of 14 years or of a sex offense accomplished against the victim's will by means of force, violence, duress, menace, or fear of immediate and unlawful bodily injury on the victim or another person there shall be no hearing to determine whether the person is a mentally disordered sex offender. [p] The court after imposing sentence for such a conviction shall order the delivery of the convicted person to the Department of Corrections. The Department of Corrections shall inform such convicted persons of the state hospital program established pursuant to this section ...." (Italics added; Stats.1981, ch. 928, § 1.) ²

In support of their contention that the trial court has no jurisdiction to extend MDSO commitments, petitioners argue that if the Legislature intended to permit extended commitments, it would have provided a savings clause, with specific reference to section 6316.2, for MDSOs committed before January 1, 1982. ³

By and large, the indications of legislative intent are contrary to petitioners' position. For one thing, as the People note, the legislative purpose in repealing MDSO commitment procedures was to treat sexual offenders more harshly. In view of that purpose, it would be unreasonable to allow dangerous MDSOs to be released earlier than they would otherwise have been because of the fortuitous circumstance that the Legislature has decided to eliminate the MDSO program prospectively.

The Legislature's intent to retain the program as to persons already committed as MDSOs is clearly stated in sections 3 and 4 of chapter 928, the repealing statute: "SEC. 3. Nothing in this act shall be construed to affect any person under commitment [as an MDSO] ... prior to the effective date of this act. It is the Legislature's intent that persons committed as mentally disordered sex offenders and persons whose terms of commitment are extended under the provisions of Section 6316 of the Welfare and Institutions Code shall remain under these provisions until the commitments are terminated and the persons are returned to the court for resumption of the criminal proceedings. [p] The Legislature finds and declares that the purposes of the mentally disordered sex offender commitment have been to provide adequate treatment of these offenders, adequate controls over these persons by isolating them from a free society, and to protect the public from repeated commission of sex crimes. In making the repeal of the mentally disordered sex offender commitment procedures prospective only, the Legislature finds and declares that it is necessary to retain persons under this commitment who committed their crimes before the effective date of this enactment in order to have proper control over these persons and to protect society against repeated commission of sex crimes and that other enactments in the 1979-80 Regular Session of the Legislature and the 1981-82 Regular Session of the Legislature would yield prison terms which would provide this protection to society without the need to retain the mentally disordered sex offender commitment. [p] SEC. 4. In repealing the mentally disordered sex offender commitment, the Legislature recognizes and declares that the commission of sex offenses is not in itself the product of mental disease. It is the intent of the Legislature that persons convicted of a sex offense after the effective date of this section, who are believed to have a serious, substantial, and treatable mental illness, shall be transferred to a state hospital for treatment under the provisions of Section 2684 of the Penal Code." ⁴ (Italics added.)

Nothing could be clearer than the first sentence of section 3 as to the Legislature's intention to exclude from the repeal of the MDSO laws those persons who had been committed prior to the effective date of the new law. ⁵ People v. Superior Court (Martin), supra, 132 Cal.App.3d 658, 183 Cal.Rptr. 563, reaches the same conclusion, holding that "in order to insure against the immediate release of persons previously committed as MDSOs and who still pose a substantial danger to society, the Legislature specifically declared that these persons should continue to be subject to the provisions of Welfare and Institutions Code sections 6316 and 6316.2." (Id. at p. 663, 183 Cal.Rptr. 563, fn. omitted.)

Further, the Martin court saw no ambiguity in the use of the phrase, in section 3, that the repeal shall have no affect on " 'persons whose terms of commitment are extended.' " Had the Legislature contemplated no future extensions, it would have excluded from the repealing statute only " 'persons whose terms of commitment have been extended.' " (Id.)

An additional indicator of legislative intent is provided by Assembly Bill No. 3388, placed into effect in August of 1982 as urgency legislation. The bill amended section 1026.5 of the Penal Code to provide that before the termination of the commitment of any insane criminal offender, the medical director of the state hospital is required to submit his opinion as to whether or not the person is subject to the provisions for extended commitment. (Stats.1982, ch. 650, § 1.) Section 2 of the same bill made similar provisions applicable to mentally disordered sex offenders. The legislative counsel noted that the bill applied to MDSOs "who are still subject to extended commitment, having been committed prior to the recent repeal of provisions of law relating to such offenders."

While the later legislation could not validate an earlier unauthorized extension of a commitment (see, California Emp. etc. Com. v. Payne (1947) 31 Cal.2d 210, 213-214, 187 P.2d 702), the enactment does provide some indication of what the Legislature intended in 1981, when it repealed the MDSO laws. ⁶

In sum, the language of the repealing statute as well as the legislative history described above convinces us that the Legislature did not intend to preclude extension of commitments after January 1, 1982, for those persons who were in the program on that date.

II

Petitioners contend that extension of their MDSO commitments denies them equal protection of the laws. They claim impermissible discrimination in that persons who commit a sex offense and are convicted after January 1, 1982, are not subject to an indefinite--potentially lifelong--civil commitment and are instead imprisoned for a fixed period of time under the determinate sentence law.

No significant constitutional problem is presented by the prospective repeal of the MDSO laws. "A refusal to apply a statute retroactively does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment." (People v. Aranda (1965) 63 Cal.2d 518, 532, 47 Cal.Rptr. 353, 407 P.2d 265.) "[T]he Fourteenth Amendment does not forbid statutes and statutory changes to have a beginning and thus to discriminate between the rights of an earlier and later time." (Sperry & Hutchinson Co. v. Rhodes (1911) 220 U.S. 502, 505, 31 S.Ct. 490, 491, 55 L.Ed. 561, see also, Califano v. Webster (1977) 430 U.S. 313, 314, 321, 97 S.Ct. 1192, 1193, 1197, 51 L.Ed.2d 360.)

Legislation almost inevitably creates some disparities and the differential results which follow the termination of the MDSO program appear no different than those which inevitably accompany either the establishment or elimination of any statutory treatment program. (See Stickel v. Superior Court, supra, 136 Cal.App.3d 850, 186 Cal.Rptr. 560, where the defendant sought the benefits of the...