Filed 1/5/21 CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION COURT OF APPEAL, FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT DIVISION ONE STATE OF CALIFORNIA D077483 In re WILLIAM JIM MORSE on (Super. Ct. No. EMH-000347) Habeas Corpus. Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus. Jeffrey Bruce Jones, Judge. Petition denied. Benjamin Salorio, Public Defender, Darren Bean, Deputy Public Defendant for Petitioner. Xavier Becerra, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Julie L. Garland, Assistant Attorney General, Michael Pulos and Joy Utomi, Deputy Attorneys General, for Real Party in Interest. William Jim Morse petitions for a writ directing the superior court to reverse its finding under the Sexually Violent Predators Act (Welf. & Inst. Code,1 § 6600 et seq.) (SVPA) that there is probable cause to believe petitioner is likely to engage in sexually violent predatory behavior without treatment or custody. The court during the section 6602 probable cause hearing sustained petitioner’s objection based on People v. Sanchez (2016) 63 Cal.4th 665 (Sanchez) to portions of the experts’ psychological evaluations, 1 Unless noted otherwise, all further statutory references are to the Welfare and Institutions Code. but nonetheless found the remaining evidence was sufficient to support a finding that petitioner met the criteria of a sexually violent predator (SVP).2 At the probable cause hearing, a court must “review” the SVP petition. (See § 6602, subd. (a).) The petition, in turn, must be supported by statutorily mandated evaluations that in some, if not most, cases rely on a broad array of sources dating back years, if not decades, that an evaluator must consider under the SVPA as part of his or her standardized assessment of a person. Petitioner argues that the court correctly found Sanchez applied at the probable cause hearing; that, after sustaining his hearsay objection to the experts’ evaluations, there was insufficient evidence to support the court’s probable cause finding; and that the People “waived” their right to assert section 6602 is an implied exception to the hearsay rule by failing to raise this specific ground at the hearing. Petitioner therefore argues the petition must be dismissed. As we explain, we conclude the court erred in sustaining petitioner’s hearsay objection at the section 6602 hearing. We find the SVPA as a whole, and section 6602 in particular, evince a legislative intent to allow a court to consider hearsay in the experts’ evaluations when making a probable cause determination. In our view, requiring an evaluator to rely on nonhearsay only in preparing his or her evaluation of a person, or requiring the People to produce at an interim probable cause hearing independent foundational 2 A “ ‘Sexually violent predator’ means a person who has been convicted of a sexually violent offense against one or more victims and who has a diagnosed mental disorder that makes the person a danger to the health and safety of others in that it is likely that he or she will engage in sexually violent criminal behavior.” (§ 6600, subd. (a)(1).) 2 evidence to support the historical information relied on by evaluators, would undermine ...
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