State Supreme Court Won't Review Decision to Conditionally Release Serial Rapist

The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review a lower court's decision allowing for the conditional release of a serial rapist in Los Angeles County later this year.

"We aggressively pursued and exhausted all legal avenues to stop the release of sexually violent predator Christopher Hubbart to Los Angeles County," District Attorney Jackie Lacey said. "We now are committed to working with our law enforcement partners to ensure that all terms and conditions of Hubbart's release from custody are strictly enforced."

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.

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.

On July 16, 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.

Ten days later, Lacey's office announced that it would file a petition asking the California Supreme Court to review the case.

Los Angeles County prosecutors contend that the criteria used by the Santa Clara County judge to determine Hubbart's domicile "was error."

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 the petition, Lacey'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."

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.

Photo by NBC Channel 4. Please click here to read their report.