Fight Over Release of Serial Rapist Continues

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich continues his battle against the release of man into Los Angeles County who admitted raping nearly 40 women, 26 in Southern California in the 1970’s.

On Oct. 29, a motion submitted by Antonovich to send a five-signature letter to Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Gilbert Brown opposing the release of serial rapist Christopher Evans Hubbart into Lake Los Angeles was unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors during its most recent meeting.

That afternoon Antonovich’s office issued a news release encouraging residents opposed to Hubbart's release to email comments to the District Attorney’s office at HubbartLASafetyTaskForce@da.lacounty.gov or mailing them to:

Hubbart L.A. Safety Task Force
c/o District Attorney’s Office Sex Crimes Division
320 West Temple Street, Room 777
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Last week Judge Brown ruled that Hubbart may be conditionally released to reside at 17132 Laredo Vista, Lake Los Angeles, according to Antonovich’s news release. 

“The Board’s letter will urge the judge to reject the location based on its proximity to Stephen Sorensen County Park, Twin Lakes Community Church and a bus stop,” according to the news release.

When news first broke about Hubbart's release, many Claremont residents feared he would try to return to the town where his family lived briefly in the early 1990’s.

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 was returned to prison after he accosted a woman in Santa Clara County.

Hubbart has been held at Coalinga State Hospital in Santa Clara County. In July his attorneys argued that their client's detention violates his rights to due process.

In May, Judge Brown ruled that Hubbart should be released from prison -- a decision that Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey insisted needed to be reversed.

Lacey petitioned the court in July to keep him out of Los Angeles County arguing that, although Hubbart was born and raised in Los Angeles County, he had 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 argued. 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 Sixth 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.