Monday, May 09, 2016

People v. Landau (Cal. Ct. App. - April 20, 2016)

There's a lot in this lengthy opinion about Confrontation Clause issues, the SVP statute, and a wide variety of other interesting things.  A reader could learn a lot from it.  Wholly beyond the issue of whether the elderly Mr. Landau, who's a pedophile, should now be released because his age and other circumstances (including his prostate surgery) means he's currently unlikely to reoffend.

(To give you a sense of Mr. Landau's age, the factual recitation in the opinion begins by saying "Sid S. (Sid) met appellant in 1969, when Sid was eight years old and went to a Boys’ Club basketball game where appellant was the score keeper. Shortly thereafter, appellant . . . took Sid to a drive-in theater to see “101 Dalmatians.”)

I'll only specifically mention a couple of very brief, non-doctrinal, factual statements that I found of particular interest:

(1)  "[Dr. Park] Dietz said pedophilia is a lifelong condition and its onset usually occurs when the individual (usually a male) is eight to 12 years old."  Wow.  I didn't know it started that early.

(2)  "Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist, was retained by the district attorney and was paid approximately $90,000 at the rate of $600 an hour."  Wow.  That's a lot of money.