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Court of Appeal:
Sex Offender Must Meet Release Rules Despite Disability
Opinion Says Expert’s Conclusion That Sexually Violent Predator Can Be Safely Treated in Community by One-on-One, Line-of-Sight Supervision Is Not Tantamount to Finding Defendant Can Control His Behavior
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
The Third District Court of Appeal held yesterday that a defendant committed under the Sexually Violent Predator Act is not entitled, following the completion of a term of imprisonment, to conditional release based upon an expert’s opinion that the offender may be safely handed over to an alternative program at a state hospital that would provide one-on-one therapy and constant line-of-sight supervision.
Eligibility guidelines for the suitability for conditional release following commitment under the act—including a finding by a court that the offender is not likely to engage in sexually violent criminal behavior if under supervision and treatment in the community—must be met regardless of a defendant’s intellectual disabilities which might impair his ability to meet that goal, the court said.
Seeking conditional release under the Sexually Violent Predators Act (“SVPA”) was Michael Ingram, who was convicted of sexual crimes against children in four separate cases over a 15-year period. In 1999, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for lewd and lascivious acts on a child under the age of 14.
Committed to Hospital
Before he was released from prison, Ingram was committed for an indeterminate period to a state hospital upon a jury finding that he was a sexually violent predator as defined in the act.
In 2020, he petitioned for conditional release. At his hearing, Ingram presented the expert testimony of psychologist Gerry Blasingame, a licensed marriage and family therapist.
Blasingame opined that it would be possible to create an alternative to the typical conditional release that would both provide Ingram with the specialized sex offender treatment he needs to accommodate his intellectual disability and provide around-the-clock security and care to ensure that he does not reoffend.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Alyson L. Lewis denied the petition, acknowledging that Ingram’s intellectual disabilities may explain why his risk to the community was “virtually unchanged since his commitment” but finding that “the remedy for that is not release.”
Presiding Justice Laurie M. Earl authored the opinion affirming the denial. Justices Ronald B. Robie and Jonathan K. Renner joined in the opinion.
Safe Release
Earl noted that the SVPA allows but does not require a court to consider proposed alternative programs to a state hospital commitment but framed the issue on appeal as follows:
“[T]he question in this case is whether the SVPA and the evidence admitted at the hearing required the trial court to find Ingram could be safely conditionally released to an alternative program that includes the enhanced treatment and supervision recommended by Dr. Blasingame. We conclude the answer to that question is no.”
She opined:
“[E]ven if we were to assume for the sake of argument that release conditions must be reasonable, Ingram fails to convince us the release conditions in this case are unreasonable. He argues it is not reasonable to expect him to comply with the requirements of a typical [conditional] release because his disability prevents him from progressing through [the sex offender treatment program]. We disagree. We note initially that Ingram’s failure to complete the [program] is not the primary reason the state’s experts believed he was unsuitable for conditional release. This is because completing the program is not an end in and of itself; it is means to an end—namely, teaching…how not to reoffend if released. What the state’s experts believed was that Ingram was unsuitable for conditional release because he had not yet learned how not to reoffend.”
The jurist continued:
“These expectations…align with the goals of the SVPA….The SVPA is thus based on the principle that until an SVP has learned to control his or her sexually violent behavior, he or she continues to pose a threat to the public and must remain confined. Disability or no disability, there is nothing unreasonable about requiring [sexually violent predators] to learn how to control their sexually violent behavior before they are conditionally released. Here, however, even Ingram’s expert acknowledged he had not yet learned to control his sexually violent behavior, as evidenced by the fact that he agreed Ingram…would require constant supervision if conditionally released.”
Control by Others
Turning to the alternative program proposed by Blasingame, Earl said:
“What Ingram’s expert effectively believed is that others can control Ingram’s sexually violent behavior for him—i.e., he believed Ingram is not likely to reoffend if he is provided with 24/7, one-on-one, line-of-sight supervision for the foreseeable future. Control by others, however, is not the premise of conditional release. If it was, there would be no need to civilly commit [sexually violent predators] in the first place and they could all be supervised, controlled, and treated in the community.”
She added:
“Ingram comes close to acknowledging as much when he states, ‘if the conditional release program involved each patient being accompanied 24 hours a day by three security guards, a psychologist, a social worker, a nurse, and a psychiatrist, everyone could be safely treated in the community.’ He admits that his hypothetical scenario is a ‘ridiculous extreme[]’ and we agree. Dr. Blasingame’s recommendation, however, is not that much less of a ridiculous extreme than Ingram’s hypothetical, and the only difference between the two is the number of people assigned to accompany the [offender] at all times. In any event, we find Dr. Blasingame’s recommendation is neither reasonable nor required by the SVPA, and the trial court was not required to adopt it.”
The case is People v. Ingram, 2024 S.O.S. 3164.
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