Court Opinion

ID: 9622223
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:14:05.45447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:14.964795
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I dissent. The Court of Appeal held that a person found not guilty by reason of insanity is constitutionally entitled to a jury determination of his or her mental state after a statutorily prescribed 180-day evaluation and treatment period. The Court of Appeal reached the correct result, and therefore I would affirm its judgment.
A former patient of mental hospitals in Long Beach and Brawley, and a self-described paranoiac suffering from delusions of persecution, Tilbury ran amok with a rifle in April 1984, shooting at several citizens and peace officers. He was charged with 12 felonies, including multiple counts of assault with a deadly weapon (Pen. Code, § 245, subd. (a)(2)),1 assault with a firearm on a peace officer (§ 245, subd. (c)), and attempted murder (§§ 187, 664). He entered guilty pleas to six counts of attempted murder, and admitted enhancements for use of a firearm and for the infliction of great bodily injury with respect to one of the counts. (§§ 12022.5, 12022.7.) It was agreed that his maximum term of imprisonment would be 23 years, 8 months, and that after accepting the guilty pleas the court could determine Tilbury’s sanity during the shooting spree on the basis of psychiatrists’ reports. The court found him insane during his crimes and committed him to Patton State Hospital.
Three times in 1986 and 1987 the director of Patton State Hospital recommended that Tilbury be released to outpatient treatment, on the ground that he was no longer a danger to himself or others. (§ 1603, subd. (a)(1).) Each time the director of the Orange County community mental health program disagreed with the recommendation of release, and the court therefore denied the request, as it must when the community program director maintains that release is not justified. (Id., subd. (a)(2).)
Tilbury then sought release to a supervised outpatient treatment program under an alternative release procedure, embodied in section 1026.2, on the ground that he would pose no danger to himself or others under supervision in the community. (§ 1026.2, subd. (e).) He requested a jury trial on the current state of his mental health. The trial court ruled, however, that defendant was not entitled to a jury trial, and heard the matter itself.
*72At the hearing, Tilbury testified that he participated in 30 hours of group therapy per week at Patton State Hospital. He emphasized his participation in the thought-disorder, anger-management and relapse-prevention groups, and in Narcotics Anonymous. On cross-examination, Tilbury admitted he had a delusion seven months before, lasting several days, that there was cocaine in the water at Patton State Hospital. Though Tilbury had a similar delusion the day of his rifle-wielding outburst, the court denied outpatient status on another factual ground, finding Tilbury to be, “because of his anger management problems, [still] a danger to himself and others, particularly to others.”
The Court of Appeal reversed. It held that In re Franklin (1972) 7 Cal.3d 126 [101 Cal.Rptr. 553, 496 P.2d 465] (hereafter Franklin), required a jury to pass judgment on Tilbury’s sanity at the end of an initial treatment and evaluation period that, by statute, follows a judgment of not guilty by reason of insanity. Although the current statutory scheme has changed so that instead of winning immediate release a patient found sufficiently sane to return to society must now spend one year in a supervised outpatient program, the Court of Appeal reasoned that the outpatient-treatment decision is a critical procedural juncture, requiring access to a jury. Otherwise, the Court of Appeal observed, Tilbury could be caught in a classic Catch-22: although under Franklin Tilbury would have the right to a jury review of his fitness for unrestricted release, it is possible that during his almost 24-year term of confinement no jury would have the chance to undertake this review, because a judge might deny access to the prerequisite supervised outpatient program.
I
A person found not guilty by reason of insanity has more than one avenue to change status. If a patient who committed an act that posed a serious threat of bodily harm to another can persuade both the community program director (an individual defined in § 1026, subd. (h); see § 1605, subd. (a)) and the director of the state hospital where he or she is confined that release to outpatient status is warranted, such status may be granted under section 1600 et seq. (See §§ 1601, subd. (a), 1603.) In the alternative, the individual may seek relief under section 1026.2. For a patient in Tilbury’s position, the requirements of section 1026.2 are easier to satisfy, for the concurrence of the community program director is not needed if the director of the state hospital where the patient is confined recommends release to outpatient treatment. (§ 1026.2, subd. (a).)
Before 1986, the predecessors of section 1026.2 mandated a minimum 90-day commitment for a person found not guilty by reason of insanity. (See *73former §§ 1026, 1026a.) After that period, the patient could be released outright if the trier of fact was persuaded that the patient’s sanity had been restored. The former scheme did not define “sanity.”
A more complex procedure is now in force, embodied in section 1026.2.2 Subdivision (e) thereof provides that once the hospital director has said the patient should be released, “[t]he court” must hold a “hearing” to determine whether “the person applying for restoration of sanity would no longer be a danger to the health and safety of [self or] others ... if under supervision and treatment in the community.” If “the court” decides the patient is a danger neither to self nor others, the patient must be placed in “an appropriate local mental health program for one year.” (Ibid.) Otherwise the patient must wait one year before again applying for release to outpatient treatment. (§ 1026.2, subd. Q.) After the year has elapsed, “[t]he court . . . shall have a trial to determine if sanity has been restored, which means the applicant is no longer a danger to the health and safety of [self or] others . . . .” (§ 1026.2, subd. (e).) The patient has the burden of showing fitness for release, either to an outpatient program or for outright release after a year in the program, by a preponderance of the evidence. (§ 1026.2, subd. (k).)
The majority conclude that the relevant statutory language evinces no legislative intent to require access to a jury. Under the rules of statutory construction, however, the Legislature is deemed to have preserved the right to a jury trial at the end of the 180-day postcommitment evaluation and treatment regimen that takes place within the confines of a state hospital. (See §§ 1026, subd. (a), 1026.2, subd. (d).)
Under the pre-1986 scheme, and hence under the virtually identical scheme now slated to resume in 1994, the patient was entitled to a jury trial at the end of the initial evaluation period under confinement in the state hospital. This right found its genesis in Franklin, supra, 7 Cal.3d 126. Franklin considered whether a person found not guilty by reason of insanity was entitled to a jury trial on the question of fitness for release to society under former section 1026a. Former section 1026a provided that after an initial 90-day evaluation and treatment period in a state hospital, if “the court,” in a “hearing,” found the patient’s sanity had been restored, the patient must be released outright.
Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Burke concluded that equal protection required the “ ‘essential safeguard’ ” (7 Cal.3d at p. 148) of a jury trial *74on request when the patient sought release after the initial 90-day evaluation and treatment period: “Although petitioner’s status as a member of a special or exceptional class justifies certain differences in commitment procedure, including mandatory or discretionary prehearing commitment . . . and imposition ... of the burden of proving . . . fitness for release, we find no sufficient reason why his status necessarily must deny him the jury hearing available to other persons committed to state hospitals.” (Ibid.)
Thus, when the Legislature chose to enact the current statutory scheme, existing law required a jury trial.3 Current section 1026.2 expresses no intent to abrogate Franklin. Its drafters added only two significant requirements, neither bearing on access to a jury: that the first year after release be spent in a supervised outpatient program in the community, after which the patient’s dangerousness to self or others would again be reviewed; and that the patient spend one hundred eighty days in the hospital before seeking release. We must therefore presume that the Legislature intended to preserve Franklin’s rule. (Bailey v. Superior Court (1977) 19 Cal.3d 970, 977, fn. 10 [140 Cal.Rptr. 669, 568 P.2d 394]; Kusior v. Silver (1960) 54 Cal.2d 603, 618 [7 Cal. Rptr 129, 354 P.2d 657].)
A case that reached the same result as the majority, Barnes v. Superior Court (1986) 186 Cal.App.3d 969 [231 Cal.Rptr. 158] (hereafter Barnes), approached the statutory construction issue somewhat differently. It found significant the Legislature’s use of “hearing” and “trial” to describe the procedures whereby a patient may seek release. Yet Barnes reviewed the legislative history behind the enactment of subdivision (e) only briefly, and did not consider the language of section 1026.2 as a whole in determining that the Legislature meant something different by “hearing” and “trial.”
After examining the history and wording of the statute I agree with another Court of Appeal that in fact “[s]ection 1026.2 uses ‘hearing’ and ‘trial’ interchangeably. (See, e.g., § 1026.2, subds. (b), (d), (f), (i), (k).) No distinction is made based on the presence or absence of a jury, and we are unable to divine the source for such a differentiation.” (People v. Superior Court (Almond) (1990) 219 Cal.App.3d 607, 612 [268 Cal.Rptr. 375] (hereafter Almond) [holding that the People have a right to a jury trial when the patient, already on outpatient status, seeks to have supervision ended and to gain outright release].)4
*75The statutory language buttresses the conclusion of Almond. One striking example, section 1026.5, subdivision (b)(4), provides in part: “The court shall conduct a hearing on the petition for extended commitment. The trial shall be by jury unless waived by both the person and the prosecuting attorney.” (Italics added.)5 Section 1026.2 is no less self-contradictory, though less obviously so. Subdivision (e) thereof defines both the “hearing” and the “trial” as “court” proceedings in which the patient’s danger to self or others will be evaluated. No discernible difference exists between the nature of the proceedings, except that the “hearing” is to occur first and the “trial” a year later. Subdivision (k) provides that in “any hearing” under section 1026.2 the patient bears the burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence; but because the section contemplates two separate proceedings to evaluate mental state in subdivision (e), the burden rule of subdivision (k) clearly is intended to apply to both the “hearing” and the “trial” described in subdivision (e). Finally, subdivision (a) of section 1026.2 provides that whether the patient is confined to the hospital and thus seeking a first-stage release “hearing” (subd. (e)), or is already in outpatient treatment under section 1601 and hence is seeking a second-stage release “trial” (subd. (e)), the court shall give notice of the “hearing” date to decide the patient’s status. Thus the statute reinforces Almond’s conclusion that if the Legislature intended to differentiate a “hearing” from a “trial,” the source and nature of any such distinction are unfathomable.
Nor does the legislative history suggest any intent to assign a distinct meaning to each term; rather, the committee reports confirm the lack of any such intent. The report of the Assembly Committee on Criminal Law and Public Safety announced that the minimum confinement period will rise to 180 days, from 90, before a patient may apply for “a sanity restoration hearing.” (Assem. Com. Rep., Com. on Crim. Law and Public Safety, p. 2, on Sen. Bill No. 1984 (1983-1984 Reg. Sess.).) After a year in an outpatient program, the patient may seek “a sanity restoration trial.” (Id. at pp. 5-6.) At first, this language suggests that the Assembly committee meant to differentiate the two proceedings. But that suggestion is immediately refuted by other language in the committee’s analysis, which recites that after the year of outpatient treatment the patient will be entitled to “a sanity restoration hearing.” (Id. at p. 5.) Thus, the Assembly committee analysis used “hearing” and “trial” interchangeably and no particular significance can be attached to the desultory use of one word in lieu of another.
The Senate committee analysis similarly reveals a lack of intent to distinguish between “trial” and “hearing”: it simply refers to both proceedings as *76a “hearing.” (Sen. Com. Rep., Com. on Judiciary, p. 5, on Sen. Bill No. 1984 (1983-1984 Reg. Sess.).)
Nor do I perceive any special significance to be attached to the word “hearing” as a matter of law. While the word often conjures an image of an administrative or judicial proceeding before a referee or a judge, we have previously defined a hearing as any “proceeding where evidence is taken to the end of determining an issue of fact and a decision made on the basis of that evidence.” (People v. Pennington (1967) 66 Cal.2d 508, 521 [58 Cal.Rptr. 374, 426 P.2d 942].) Thus, “hearing” subsumes “trial.”
Franklin uses the terms “jury hearing” and “jury trial” interchangeably to describe the constitutionally mandated procedural requirements that attach to proceedings to determine whether a civilly committed person is fit for release. (7 Cal.3d at p. 148.) And Franklin does not lack company; indeed, both the Legislature and the courts have implicitly acknowledged the lack of any necessary difference between “trial” and “hearing.” (See, e.g., § 1538.5, subd. (d) [illegally seized evidence “shall not be admissible against the movant at any trial or other hearing”]; §§ 1026.2, subd. (k), and 1026.5, subd. (b)(4), discussed ante; see also Cal. Law Revision Com. com., Deering’s Ann. Evid. Code (1986 ed.) § 145, p. 20 [suggesting “hearing” encompasses trial and other proceedings]; People v. Ivenditti (1969) 276 Cal.App.2d 178, 180, fn. 2 [80 Cal.Rptr. 761] [at second proceeding on People’s petition to commit defendant as a drug addict, statute forbade defendant to waive his right to “a second hearing with a jury, only”]; People v. Gallegos (1970) 4 Cal.App.3d 93, 95-96 [83 Cal.Rptr. 911] [“the nature of the hearing (by jury or by judge alone) is not of jurisdictional dimension”].)
The Legislature has stated that in 1994 the law will revert to that under which Franklin was decided.6 Had the Legislature desired that only a judge then hear petitions for conditional release, it would have taken note of our explicit observation in Franklin that “[i]t is noteworthy that section 1026a does not, by its terms, preclude a jury trial” (7 Cal.3d at p. 149), and would have specified that only a judge would hear the case. While Franklin's constitutional reasoning might have made any such attempt futile, legislative direction in the version to take effect in 1994 would at least have undercut Franklin's statutory conclusions. The Legislature’s failure to modify a scheme under which we found a right to jury trial confirms that it had no intent to have a judge necessarily decide Tilbury’s mental state.
*77II
Constitutional considerations also compel a conclusion that Tilbury was entitled to a jury trial after the initial evaluation and treatment period.
First, the scheme offends equal protection principles. There is no rational basis for granting the right of a jury trial to some civilly committed persons on the issue of eligibility for release (Welf. & Inst. Code, §§ 5302, 5303, 5304, subd. (b)) while denying the same to criminally committed persons, who may be no more dangerous than others who are entitled to a jury (see Morse, Excusing the Crazy: The Insanity Defense Reconsidered (1985) 58 So.Cal.L.Rev. 779, 832).7 There is, therefore, no rational basis on which to distinguish Tilbury from members of another class entitled to a jury trial. (In re Gary W. (1971) 5 Cal.3d 296, 304 [96 Cal.Rptr. 1, 486 P.2d 1201]; see also United States v. Brown (D.C. Cir. 1973) 478 F.2d 606, 611 [dictum; “no justification” for denying insanity acquittees trial by jury prior to commitment when prospective civilly committed persons enjoy that right].)8
The majority declare that in Franklin we wrongly compared criminal release statutes to various civil commitment and recommitment statutes. To the extent that Franklin compared commitment and release statutes, the juxtaposition may be questioned. But Franklin did not err in contrasting civil recommitment statutes with criminal release statutes for equal protection purposes. I cannot fathom the distinction the majority would draw between the two: if a patient is not recommitted under a civil statute, the result is release; if the patient is released under the Penal Code, the result is also release.
*78The majority’s conclusion, following this analysis, that the relevant equal protection comparison concerns the procedures available at the criminal trial and at a civil commitment hearing, arguably states the view of the United States Supreme Court on that issue. The question here, however, is whether equal protection is offended when a patient committed for an act that would be proscribed under the Penal Code must wait decades for a jury determination of the need for recommitment, while some civilly committed persons are entitled to a jury resolution of the same question in a matter of months (Welf. & Inst. Code, §§ 5302, 5303, 5304, subd. (b)). To ask the question is to answer it, unless it can be demonstrated that patients committed from criminal courts are less susceptible of restoration to sanity than those civilly committed.
With regard to due process, it is true that juries have not been found necessary in other proceedings that can result in deprivations of liberty. I therefore agree with much of the majority’s analysis of the general principles underlying that constitutional right. (Maj. opn., ante, p. 69.) Nevertheless, I conclude that the scheme before us does violate due process for other reasons.
First, it is arbitrary to provide access to community review of the patient’s fitness for release as an afterthought but to deny it at the crucial procedural stage. Barnes relied on its view that the first-stage proceeding is a lower hurdle than the second to reject a due process claim (186 Cal.App.3d at pp. 975-976), and the majority agree. But as amicus curiae observes, that notion is misconceived. In the first phase, a patient’s fitness to leave a life under lock and key and resume life in the community is at issue. This is a far more critical determination than that made in the second phase, when the only question is whether the patient has spent a successful year in the community and hence no longer requires supervision. The first step is the major hurdle, for it confers on the patient conditional but real reintegration into the community. To draw on the language of contract or property law, this status will be revoked only on failure of a condition subsequent—peaceful coexistence with society for one year. Entry into the supervised program is the critical juncture, the moment at which the full company of the community’s and the patient’s interests must take center stage; all that remains to be decided at the second phase is whether the previous judgment of the trier of fact was sound.
Second, the scheme before us violates due process because it arbitrarily conditions the length of time a patient must await a jury hearing not on current dangerousness, but on the nature of the act committed. Tilbury may have recovered his sanity just as quickly as a neighboring patient confined after being charged with a much less serious felony. Yet the neighbor has *79access to a jury in a year or two, while Tilbury must possibly wait decades. (See generally § 1026.5.) A patient who committed misdeeds that could otherwise have resulted in life imprisonment without possibility of parole could remain confined for life without access to jury review, though he or she might have recovered sanity as quickly as a patient originally charged with a far lesser offense. While this disparity also merits scrutiny on equal protection grounds, I believe at a minimum that it is arbitrary and hence violates due process. For example, a minimally disturbed patient originally charged with a tax offense may have to wait three years (see Rev. & Tax. Code, § 19405) before a jury review of his or her mental state, after which he or she can remain confined, while a much more dangerous patient charged with simple assault could be free after six months (see § 241, subd. (a)). (See § 1026.5, subds. (a)(1), (3), & (b)(1), (3).)
The Supreme Court of Canada very recently held that that country’s insanity-acquittee scheme offends a constitutional guarantee against arbitrary detention and imprisonment because it provided that “Where the accused is found to have been insane at the time the offence was committed, the court . . . shall order that he be kept in strict custody . . . until the pleasure of the lieutenant governor of the province is known.”9 (R. v. Swain (Can. 1991) 1 S.C.R. 933, 958 [63 Can Crim. Cas. 3d 481, 495], quoting former Can. Crim. Code, R.S.C. (1970) ch. C-34, § 542(2).) The justice commanding a majority concluded, “The detention order is automatic, without any rational standard for determining which individual insanity acquit-tees should be detained and which should be released. . . . The duty of the trial judge to detain is unqualified by any standards whatsoever. I cannot imagine a detention being ordered on a more arbitrary basis.” (Id. at p. 1012 [63 Can. Crim. Cas. 3d at p. 535].) “There is no time requirement within which the Lieutenant Governor must act .... In fact, the wording of the legislation does not require the Lieutenant Governor to ever make an order.” (Id. at p. 1016 [63 Can. Crim. Cas. 3d at p. 538.].)
Our statutory scheme does not offend due process in quite the same manner. But if the offensive elements in our scheme are different, they are no less Kafkaesque. Inability to reach a jury because a judge declines to advance the case, and variations in the time that must elapse before jury review is available according to prior act rather than current mental state— these restrictions are hardly less arbitrary than the scheme held unconstitutional in Canada. Because the first proceeding is a critical procedural juncture of the magnitude we contemplated in Franklin, and access to the outpatient program “becomes the sine qua non to freedom—the key to the *80door” (Barnes, supra, 186 Cal.App.3d at p. 980 [dis. opn. of Poché, J.]), I cannot agree that the statutory scheme satisfies due process.
As the Court of Appeal herein reasoned, “Such commitments are, as we have seen frequently in the history of many countries, and occasionally our own, subject to misguided or malicious manipulation. Those confined for potentially lengthy periods in institutions populated with the criminally insane should be accorded a reasonable opportunity for periodic citizen review for this, if no other, reason.” Without the opportunity for citizen review, it is conceivable that Tilbury could remain confined for a quarter of a century even though a jury would declare his fitness for supervised release, as has the medical director at Patton State Hospital. A becalmed ship sails not a league closer to land because the winds may someday blow; nor does Tilbury move an inch closer to freedom because a jury may theoretically hear him out someday during his 23-plus-year sentence.
The majority also declare that habeas corpus is a safeguard against abuse. I agree that habeas corpus is a substantial remedy. As Justice Poché observed in Barnes, however, judicial review of a judge’s factual findings cannot replace the right to trial by jury. (186 Cal.App.3d at p. 979 [dis. opn. of Poché, J.].) A patient may feel greater freedom to argue before a jury that “the system” has meted out unfair treatment than before a perceivedly less sympathetic audience of professionals, be they judges or psychiatrists.10
Ill
Because society is understandably ambivalent about releasing those who, though adjudged not guilty by reason of insanity, may have committed grave *81acts, a word is in order about the policy rationale behind having a jury decide fitness for release to supervised treatment in the community.
It must be stressed that there are few insanity acquittals. (See Morse, Excusing the Crazy: The Insanity Defense Reconsidered, supra, 58 So.Cal.L.Rev. 779, 832.) California’s standard for a finding of insanity is stringent: in essence, a defendant must have lost touch with reality, for he or she must prove by a preponderance of the evidence an incapability “of knowing or understanding the nature and quality of his or her act and of distinguishing right from wrong at the time of the commission of the offense.” (§ 25, subd. (b).) The People do not suggest that Franklin’s requirement of a jury trial has resulted in the release of patients who ought to have remained confined. Indeed, it is not unknown for the prosecution itself tp demand jury review pf a patient’s mental state when the latter would prefer to be heard by a judge. (Almond, supra, 219 Cal.App.3d 607.) Jurors must be, and can be, trusted to know they are charged with a grave duty, and to carry out that duty soberly. Finally, there is no reason to believe that trial by jury imposes too great a burden on prosecutors’ offices. A trial of the issue must take place every year in any event (§ 1026.2, subd. (j)); to have a jury decide the issue would not significantly increase the burden on judicial or prosecutorial resources.
In sum, I conclude that the Legislature did not intend to change existing law requiring a jury trial at the end of the initial treatment and evaluation period, and that access to a jury is constitutionally required. I therefore dissent.

Further unlabeled references are to this code.

 The pre-1986 scheme is scheduled to again take effect on January 1, 1994. (See § 1026.2, subd. (m).)

The majority criticize Franklin for comparing criminal release statutes to civil commitment and recommitment statutes. (Maj. opn., ante, pp. 66, 68; see, post, pp. 77-78.) For statutory construction purposes, however, the point is irrelevant.

For this reason and others outlined herein, the Legislature may wish to reexamine the statutory scheme before its scheduled 1994 expiration date.

The majority invoke the same language but reach a different conclusion regarding its significance. (See maj. opn., ante, p. 61, fn. 4.)

See future section 1026.2, to take effect January 1, 1994. As is true of the current statute, future section 1026.2 contains ambiguities and inconsistencies: subdivision (d), for instance, refers to “parole” under section 1611, a statute that was abolished. (Stats. 1984, ch. 1488, § 11, p. 5210.)

It seems obvious that a judge is no more able to predict violent tendencies in the long run than a juror. Indeed, mental health professionals’ ability to predict future dangerousness is at best questionable. (See id. at p. 828; Barefoot v. Estelle (1983) 463 U.S. 880, 920-922 [77 L.Ed.2d 1090, 1121-1123, 103 S.Ct. 3383] [dis. opn. of Blackmun, J.]; People v. Burnick (1975) 14 Cal.3d 306, 325-326 [121 Cal.Rptr. 488, 535 P.2d 352] [“Psychiatrists themselves would be the first to admit that however desirable an infallible crystal ball might be, it is not among the tools of their profession.”]; People v. Murtishaw (1981) 29 Cal.3d 733, 768-769 [175 Cal.Rptr. 738, 631 P.2d 446].)

In support of its view that it did not deny Barnes equal protection to refuse him access to a jury, Barnes, supra, 186 Cal.App.3d 969, also observed that Welfare and Institutions Code section 3151 permits an administrative board to decide whether to end the commitment of a narcotics addict not convicted of any crime in favor of outpatient status. I do not at this time undertake an extended exploration of the narcotics addict commitment statutes, but note that the members of the board to which Barnes referred should “have a broad background in law, sociology, law enforcement, medicine, or education, and shall have a deep interest in the rehabilitation of narcotic addicts.” (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 3150, subd. (a).) Whether a similar board to decide insanity acquittees’ release eligibility should be created is, of course, a legislative prerogative. The Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS) provide for a board of like composition that decides whether individuals with Tilbury’s status may be conditionally or absolutely released. (ORS § 161.325-161.351, 161.385(2); see Adams v. Psychiatric Sec. Review Bd. (1980) 290 Ore. 273 [621 P.2d 572].)

The lieutenant governor acts for the sovereign in her absence.

The majority conclude that the United States Supreme Court has decided that trial by judge is constitutionally sufficient when a person found not guilty by reason of insanity seeks outpatient status. (Jones v. United States (1983) 463 U.S. 354 [77 L.Ed.2d 694, 103 S.Ct. 3043] (hereafter Jones).) I believe Jones is distinguishable.
Jones held that a patient found not guilty by reason of insanity was not constitutionally entitled, on equal protection grounds vis-a-vis civilly committed persons, to a jury at a hearing following 50 days of confinement. (463 U.S. at p. 362, fn. 10 [77 L.Ed.2d at p. 704].) But Jones does not weaken Franklin. The 50-day hearing in Jones served only to certify the patient’s eligibility for eventual release (see id. at p. 357, fn. 3 [77 L.Ed.2d at p. 701]), and may be viewed as a prophylactic check on the jury’s then-recent finding that the patient was insane at the time of the offense. The lower court in the Jones litigation viewed the hearing as part of the commitment itself rather than a postcommitment procedure, even though actual physical confinement would precede the hearing. (Jones v. United States (D.C. 1981) 432 A.2d 364, 373, fn. 19.) The federal high court stated that it did not decide whether the release procedures were constitutional. (463 U.S. at p. 363, fn. 11 [77 L.ed.2d at p. 704].) Thus, even if we agreed that the federal standard should be our own, in my view Jones does not support the proposition that Tilbury is not constitutionally entitled to a jury trial on the question of his eligibility for the supervised outpatient regime.