Court Opinion

ID: 9723622
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:23:19.651157+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:50.421716
License: Public Domain

STANIFORTH, Acting P. J.
I concur in the judgment.
Truett has a history of voyeurism, public masturbation, and lewd telephone calls since the age of 17. He is now 26 years old. Treatment and counselling have been ineffective and the reasonable probability is that, without successful therapeutic intervention, Truett will continue to expose himself and be a nuisance to the public.
From the probation report we learn that Truett’s background, symptomatology suggests a “textbook” case of exhibitionism. Experts in the field generally agree that exhibitionism is a species of personality disorder and that compulsory exhibitionism is characterized by passivity, narcissism, fear of castration. We do not treat here with the violent aggressive rapist-molester type of defendant whose wrong demands, prima facie, long prison terms. The typical exhibitionist is not a criminally antisocial individual but rather someone in dire need of psychological treatment. (See Millard v. Harris (D.C.Cir. 1968) 406 F.2d 964, 978 (conc. opn. of Wright, J.); Rickles, Exhibitionism (1950) pp. 65-66; Gaylin, Psychiatry and the Law, Partners in Crime (1965) 8 Colum. U.F. 23, 25; Mathis, The Exhibitionist, Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality (1979) pp. 89, 97; Riley, Exhibitionism: A Psycho-Legal Perspective (1979) 16 San Diego L.Rev. 853, 855.)
Truett was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to a second violation of Penal Code section 314, subdivision 1. One fact, and one fact alone, saves this sentence from being in blatant violation of the constitutional prohibition against cruel or unusual punishment for the cogent reasons outlined in In re Lynch (1972) 8 Cal.3d 410 [105 Cal. Rptr. 217, 503 P.2d 921], and Tracy v. Municipal Court (1978) 22 Cal.3d 760, 765 [150 Cal.Rptr. 785, 587 P.2d 227]. Truett’s victims here were 11- and 14-year-old females. The minority of the victim is a *166common and rational legislative basis for a sentence that would otherwise fail to pass constitutional muster. I would uphold constitutionality of a two-year prison sentence for a second offense of public exhibitionism on the basis of the minority of these victims.
A petition for a rehearing was denied December 11, 1981, and appellant’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied January 20, 1982.