DA Set To Ask for a New Hearing for Hubbart

By City News Service

Los Angeles County's district attorney will petition the state Supreme Court to order a new hearing on the conditional release of a serial rapist to someplace in Los Angeles County, she said today.

Christopher Evans Hubbart admitted raping about 40 women between 1971 and 1982, according to a 2004 opinion filed by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

"I am asking the California Supreme Court to grant us an opportunity to oppose the release of a sexually violent predator into any community -- not just ours," Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said.

"It's my job to safeguard our communities. This man has sexually assaulted nearly 40 women and, in my opinion, continues to pose a significant threat to public safety."

In addition, Lacey is asking the Supreme Court to determine that Hubbart's domicile is Santa Clara County -- not Los Angeles County -- and, in any case, halt Hubbart's release until the legal issues are resolved.

"This is an important issue that must be addressed," Lacey said. "The people of California deserve to have an advocate dedicated to protecting them all."

Hubbart, who was arrested in 1972 in Los Angeles, was deemed a "mentally disordered sex offender" and sent to Atascadero State Hospital. He was released in 1979 after doctors said he posed no further threat.

Over the next two years he raped another 15 women in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to court documents. He was again imprisoned, then paroled in 1990. Hubbart subsequently was returned to prison after he accosted a woman in Santa Clara County.

Hubbart currently is being held at Coalinga State Hospital in Santa Clara County. His attorneys have argued that their client's detention violates his rights to due process.

In May, Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Gilbert Brown ruled that Hubbart should be released from prison -- a decision that Lacey contends was in error.

In the petition, the district attorney's office argues that although Hubbart was born and raised in Los Angeles County, he has not lived there since 1972 -- with the exception of two months in 1993, when he was paroled to San Bernardino County but lived in Claremont.

Hubbart lived in Santa Clara County in the years leading to his last arrest and no longer has family living in Los Angeles County, Lacey argues. California law requires that a sexually violent predator be conditionally released to the county of his or her domicile "prior to the person's incarceration."

Earlier this month, the 6th Appellate District of the state Court of Appeal in San Jose denied an emergency writ seeking to vacate Brown's ruling that Hubbart be released to Los Angeles County.

Hubbart is not scheduled for release until November. A prosecutor in Santa Clara County said Hubbart, if released, would be under strict supervision, including electronic monitoring.