Friday, March 01, 2013

People v. Landau (Cal. Ct. App. - March 1, 2013)

Landau was convicted in the 80s of molesting children.  He's been in prison since then, but he's now served his sentence.

Does that mean Landau gets released?

No.

He's now 74 years old.  He's had prostate cancer while in prison, a heart attack, and has had a pacemaker installed.  None of these things exactly enhances his libido and makes him want to go out and molest more children.  He can't keep an erection and the radiation treatment he's had for prostate cancer makes it affirmatively painful for him to ejaculate.  He's taken responsibility for his prior acts and says he's reformed, and there's substantial medical reasons to think he might be right.

But the District Attorney disagrees, saying that pedophila isn't curable.  So they file to keep Landau incarcerated as an SVP even after he's served out his sentence.

It takes him six years to get to trial on the SVP petition.  The jury hangs 11-1 in favor of finding the petition untrue and accordingly releasing Landau.

He then gets a second trial.  Two years later.  Jury hangs again.

Third time's a charm?  Not for Landau.  This time he loses.  As he does in the Court of Appeal.

So no freedom for the 74-year old Landau.  Presumably ever.

P.S. - I haven't seen this before.  When he's incarcerated, as part of his psychological "treatment" (for an allegedly uncurable illness), his doctors affirmatively tell him that he should view pornography, so he does.  (Presumably so he can start getting excited by age-appropriate photographs.)  I've heard of people saying that they do lots of things "for medicinal purposes," but never heard of anyone saying that for porn.  Much less heard of it ever being accurate.  Strange but true, apparently.