Opinion ID: 792246
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Carty's Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Rights

Text: 45 As originally enacted, the SVP Act did not permit the use of documentary evidence. The California State Legislature, however, modified the SVP Act after prosecutors complained that they must bring victims back to court to re-litigate proof of prior convictions. People v. Otto, 26 Cal.4th 200, 109 Cal.Rptr.2d 327, 333, 26 P.3d 1061 (2001) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). 46 Carty argues that his substantive due process rights were violated when the San Diego County District Attorney used — as permitted by the SVP Act — documentary evidence to prove that Carty engaged in substantial sexual conduct with his child victims. Specifically, Carty complains that the superior court improperly admitted statements from his victims (ages five through fourteen) as memorialized in his probation report. In addition, Carty argues he was not given the same protections as California residents facing general civil commitment proceedings. In short, Carty claims that his constitutional rights were violated when unreliable documentary evidence was used against him during his civil commitment proceedings under the SVP Act. 47 To analyze Carty's due process challenge, we first look to Vitek v. Jones, 445 U.S. 480, 100 S.Ct. 1254, 63 L.Ed.2d 552 (1980), where the Supreme Court decided whether Nebraska violated a prisoner's due process rights by transferring him from prison to a state mental hospital for treatment. The Court held that in order to satisfy due process, a prisoner facing involuntary commitment to a mental hospital is entitled to: (1) written notice; (2) a hearing at which the evidence being relied upon for the commitment is disclosed to the prisoner; (3) an opportunity at the hearing for the prisoner to be heard in person, to present testimony and documentary evidence, and to cross-examine witnesses called by the State; (4) an independent decision-maker; (5) reasoned findings of fact; (6) legal counsel; and (7) effective and timely notice of these rights. See id. at 494-97. 48 Next we look to the Supreme Court's decision in Kansas v. Hendricks, 521 U.S. 346, 117 S.Ct. 2072, 138 L.Ed.2d 501 (1997), where the Court considered a substantive due process challenge to the Kansas SVP Act. See id. at 356, 117 S.Ct. 2072. The Court rejected Hendrick's challenge and stated that [w]e have consistently upheld such involuntary commitment statutes provided the confinement takes place pursuant to proper procedures and evidentiary standards. Id. at 357, 117 S.Ct. 2072. The Court noted that [t]he numerous procedural and evidentiary protections afforded a potential SVP did not transform a civil commitment proceeding into a criminal prosecution, but rather demonstrated that the Legislature had taken great care to confine only a narrow class of particularly dangerous individuals, and then only after meeting the strictest procedural standards. Id. at 364-65, 117 S.Ct. 2072. In the end, the Court held that the Kansas SVP Act comported with due process requirements and entailed civil and not criminal proceedings for constitutional purposes. Id. at 370-71, 117 S.Ct. 2072. 49 In addition to these decisions, the California Supreme Court's opinion in Otto is enlightening. In Otto, the California Supreme Court concluded that the SVP Act procedures, including its statutory hearsay exception, did not violate a defendant's right to due process. See Otto, 109 Cal.Rptr.2d at 334-38, 26 P.3d 1061. Otto challenged the use of child victim statements contained in a probation report that were used to establish substantial sexual conduct in his SVP Act civil commitment proceedings. Like Carty, Otto argued that the victim statements did not possess sufficient indicia of reliability to satisfy due process. See id. at 335, 26 P.3d 1061. The California Supreme Court disagreed, and noted that although Otto pled no contest, the factual basis for his plea was contained in the police reports which detailed the predicate offenses. See id. The California Supreme Court also noted that Otto received the probation report prior to his sentencing on the predicate offenses and did not challenge its contents when he entered his guilty plea before the state trial court. See id. at 336-37, 26 P.3d 1061. Carty, like Otto, received his probation report prior to being sentenced in April 1991 for the predicate offenses and did not challenge the contents of the probation report. 50 As to Otto's confrontation claims, the California Supreme Court noted that Otto did not attempt to call any witnesses of his own, and that Otto had the opportunity to confront his child victims at the time the underlying criminal charges were filed, but instead chose to accept a plea bargain. Id. at 338, 26 P.3d 1061. Similarly, Carty decided in April 1991 to accept a plea bargain as to the seven counts of lewd acts against children instead of confronting these witnesses at the time the underlying charges were filed. 51 In light of Vitek, Hendricks, and the persuasive opinion in Otto, we reject Carty's current due process challenge. 5 First, before being civilly committed under the California SVP Act, Carty was accorded all of the procedural protections identified in Vitek during his June 1999 initial civil commitment hearing. 52 Second, Carty fails to identify any Supreme Court case which imposes an obligation on the San Diego County District Attorney to proffer only live testimony at civil commitment hearings under the SVP Act. In these hearings, the superior court needs to find facts relating to the circumstances of sex offenses which are predominantly committed in private. Because of the incentive for defendants to enter into plea agreements, many of the facts underlying sex offenses are not determined by a trier of fact in a criminal proceeding. This means that the main witnesses at a sex offense trial usually are the victim and the offender. That is why, unlike other civil commitment proceedings, the SVP Act's special hearsay exception intend[s] to relieve victims of the burden and trauma of testifying about the details of the crimes. Otto, 109 Cal.Rptr.2d at 333, 26 P.3d 1061. Carty argues that the admission of the victims' statements in the probation report was fundamentally unfair. He wants the government — at the civil commitment proceedings under the SVP Act — to put on its case by bringing in live witnesses instead of using documentary evidence contained in the probation report so that he can cross-examine the child victim witnesses. But instead of accepting a plea bargain eight years earlier, Carty could have gone to trial and confronted the child victim witnesses. His waiver of a trial and his failure to challenge the content of the victims' statements in the probation report at the time of his sentencing undercuts this argument in light of the reasoning in Otto. Furthermore, the documentary evidence used by the superior court during Carty's initial civil commitment hearing in June 1999 possessed sufficient indicia of reliability to meet California's statutory hearsay exception. See Cal. Welf. & Inst.Code § 6600.1 (The details underlying the commission of an offense that led to a prior conviction, including a predatory relationship with the victim, may be shown by documentary evidence, including, but not limited to, preliminary hearing transcripts, trial transcripts, probation and sentencing reports, and evaluations by the State Department of Mental Health.); Cf. E.B. v. Verniero, 119 F.3d 1077, 1108-09 (3rd Cir.1997) (The prosecutor may base her case entirely on hearsay, if it shows indicia of reliability.). In fact, the superior court gave Carty the opportunity to challenge the documentary evidence contained in his probation report at his initial civil commitment hearing in June 1999. Equally important, during Carty's June 1999 initial civil commitment hearing, the superior court carefully evaluated a medical report and all of the victim statements contained in the probation report, and concluded that only two of the five acts committed by Carty against the child victims involved conduct that constituted substantial sexual conduct. 53 Finally, even looking to the Supreme Court cases on which Carty relies, he was not denied the necessary safeguards required by the Constitution. Particularly, at his initial civil commitment hearing in June 1999, Carty was represented by counsel, was given an opportunity to challenge the evidence used by the District Attorney, waived his right to a trial by a jury, and was adjudged, beyond a reasonable doubt, as an SVP who required civil commitment. See, e.g., Addington, 441 U.S. at 432-33, 99 S.Ct. 1804 (holding that to meet due process demands, the standard of proof for civil commitment proceedings must be higher than the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard); Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U.S. 504, 508-14, 92 S.Ct. 1048, 31 L.Ed.2d 394 (1972) (concluding that an evidentiary hearing was warranted when an individual was committed after his prison sentence allegedly without a jury trial, without counsel, and without an opportunity to challenge the initial determination that his crime was sexually motivated); Baxstrom v. Herold, 383 U.S. 107, 111-12, 86 S.Ct. 760, 15 L.Ed.2d 620 (1966) (For purposes of granting judicial review before a jury of the question whether a person is mentally ill and in need of institutionalization, there is no conceivable basis for distinguishing the commitment of a person who is nearing the end of a penal term from all other civil commitments.). 54 Due process calls for an individual determination before someone is locked away. Demore v. Kim, 538 U.S. 510, 551, 123 S.Ct. 1708, 155 L.Ed.2d 724 (2003). That is what happened here.