Case Title: Walker v. Superior Court

Citation: 

Docket Number: S263588M

State: california

Court: California Supreme Court

Date: 2021-10-14T00:00:00Z

Document:
1 
Filed 10/13/21 
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF  
CALIFORNIA 
 
JEFFREY WALKER, 
Petitioner, 
v. 
THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF  
SAN FRANCISCO, 
Respondent; 
THE PEOPLE, 
Real Party in Interest. 
 
S263588 
 
First Appellate District, Division Four 
A159563 
 
San Francisco City and County Superior Court 
2219428, 195198 
 
ORDER MODIFYING OPINION AND 
DENYING PETITION FOR REHEARING 
THE COURT: 
 
The majority opinion in this matter, filed on August 30, 2021, and 
appearing at 12 Cal.5th 177, is modified as follows:   
The last paragraph on page 206 under heading “C.” is modified to 
read:   
 
 
2 
The admission of the contested hearsay in the MacSpeiden and 
Karlsson evaluation reports represented material error under the 
standard set forth in Reilly v. Superior Court (2013) 57 Cal.4th 641, 
652–656.  Reilly involved the issue of whether an SVP petition must be 
dismissed if the evaluations supporting the petition were conducted 
under an invalid assessment protocol.  Reilly concluded the defendant, 
as the party seeking mandate, bore the burden of showing the error 
“materially affect[ed] the outcome of his probable cause hearing.”  
(Reilly, at p. 656.)  As described in Cooley, “a determination of probable 
cause by a superior court judge under the SVPA entails a decision 
whether a reasonable person could entertain a strong suspicion that the 
offender is an SVP.”  (Cooley, supra, 29 Cal.4th at p. 252.)  For the 
reasons discussed below, we believe the admission of the hearsay 
descriptions regarding the nonpredicate offenses materially affected the 
outcome of the probable cause hearing, i.e., it is reasonably probable 
that, absent the erroneously admitted hearsay, the trial judge would 
not have entertained a strong suspicion that Walker qualified as an 
SVP.   
This modification does not affect the judgment.  
The petition for rehearing is denied.