Release of rapist ordered
A state appeals court has ordered the release of an Alameda County man who spent 13 years in prison for rape convictions, and has been locked up for nearly 14 years since then awaiting trial on the state’s attempt to hold him as a “sexually violent predator.”
Terrance Butler attended only a handful of the more than 50 court hearings held in his case from November 2006 onward, and asked for a speedy trial whenever he was allowed to attend, said the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. It said Butler’s public defenders, county prosecutors and several Superior Court judges were responsible for the postponements.
“Blame for the delay must be shared between a district attorney’s office that abdicated its responsibility for prosecuting this case, a public defender’s office that disregarded Butler’s repeated demands for trial, and a trial court that took no meaningful action,” Justice Gabriel Sanchez said in the 30 ruling on Wednesday.
Under California’s “sex predator” law, sex offenders who are diagnosed as posing a threat of sexual violence because of mental illness can be held in a mental hospital after serving their criminal sentence until they show they are no longer dangerous.
The proceedings are held in civil court and are not covered by the constitutional right to a speedy trial in criminal cases. But the court said Butler had suffered a “significant deprivation of liberty” and had the right to a “timely” trial that was violated by the state.
He remains confined, however, pending a possible appeal by prosecutors.
Butler was convicted in 1993 of raping two women and attempting to rape a juvenile and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. With time off for good behavior, he was nearing release in late 2006 when prosecutors sought to hold him as a sexually violent predator.
Based on testimony from two mental health experts, as required by law, Judge Joan Cartwright found probable cause that Butler was mentally ill and dangerous in January 2007 and transferred him to Coalinga State Hospital in Fresno County while awaiting a trial that was supposed to determine whether he should be confined indefinitely under the predator law.
That trial has never been held. The court said Cartwright allowed three proposed trial dates to be canceled “without any showing of good cause” and that she and her successors in the case failed to protect Butler’s rights.
Butler was represented by a series of eight county public defenders who agreed to successive postponements of the trial, mostly without consulting Butler, the court said. One defender advised him to seek treatment rather than pressing for a trial to improve his chances for eventual release, but Butler said he had been rehabilitated in prison and wanted to return to his family.
The court also said six successive prosecutors took no steps to bring the case to trial.
The public defender’s office bowed out of the case in January 2019, and a new courtappointed lawyer sought Butler’s release. Superior Court Judge Morris Jacobson agreed in December that Butler’s rights had been violated and he was entitled to be freed. He said there had been a “systemic breakdown in the management of this case,” and the appeals court agreed.
“A series of public defenders failed to take seriously their client’s desire for, and right to, a timely trial,” Sanchez said. “And the judges who managed the case for over 12 years did little to ensure that the prosecution and the defense fulfilled their respective obligations.”
Opposing lawyers in the case were not immediately available for comment.