Not the state's duty to protect. - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

AustinsCE · #1 02-15-2009, 04:01 PM

Jackasses. But nope! Self defense is a privilege, get in line. Hope you make it...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/14/BAPU15UF6V.DTL&tsp=1

Quote:

(02-14) 19:02 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- A San Francisco judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the state for a near-fatal stabbing by a parolee who was mistakenly released from San Quentin State Prison without supervision, a ruling that left the victim's mother frustrated and bewildered.
"There's no recourse for anything that they do regardless of how grossly negligent their behavior is," Linda Schaller said last week in an interview from her San Francisco home, where her 17-year-old daughter, Loren, is still recovering from her wounds in the May 2007 attack.

"That's something we, as the public, never understood. ... I don't understand how the public can be so dismissed."

But the state generally can't be held legally responsible for harm caused by released prisoners whose behavior it no longer monitors or controls. In this case, Superior Court Judge Peter Busch said the state has no duty to protect the public from a newly freed parolee, even if the prison system violated its own rules on how and when high-security inmates should be paroled.

For an inmate like Scott Thomas - classified as "high-control" because he had battered a guard at another prison and was held in solitary confinement at San Quentin - the rules dictated that he could be freed only in the custody of his parole officer, who is in Los Angeles. State law also prohibited his release on the day before a weekend because he was required to report within 24 hours to the parole office, which is closed on weekends.

Thomas, 26, had been in and out of prison for a series of nonviolent crimes and parole violations for seven years and was finishing up a four-month stretch at San Quentin for violating parole conditions by traveling more than 50 miles from his home without permission and failing to report to his parole officer.
Mistakenly released

In what a state inspector's report later described as "a series of mistakes, oversights, and failures to follow (Corrections Department) policy," he was set free on a Friday evening, May 18, 2007, and was left at the San Rafael bus station. There, authorities say, he bought a ticket to San Francisco.

The next afternoon, 15-year-old Loren Schaller went to Creighton's American Bakery in the quiet Miraloma Park neighborhood and was getting ready to leave when a man, identified by authorities as Thomas, lunged at her with a hunting knife. He slashed her in the wrist, stabbed her in the neck, and cut her repeatedly until he was pulled away by Kermit Kubitz, a 60-year-old lawyer who was stabbed in the chest.

Loren has undergone multiple surgeries and has partially lost the use of her right arm, her family says. Kubitz has joined her in the lawsuit against the state. Thomas was found mentally incompetent to stand trial and was hospitalized but is due back in court this month.

The suit says the state, normally immune from liability for parolees' crimes, should be held responsible in this case for failing to treat Thomas for symptoms of psychiatric disorders he showed in prison and for releasing him in violation of its own written policy.
Knew he was dangerous

Prison employees knew Thomas was dangerous, based on his record and "high-control" classification, and that he was likely to attack someone if freed without supervision, the victims' lawyers said in written arguments.

"They have rules to protect the public from people like him," said Andrew Schwartz, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

But those rules don't make the state responsible for harm inflicted on a member of the public by a former prisoner, even if he was freed by mistake, lawyers from the attorney general's office argued.

They said courts have held the state accountable for negligently releasing a prisoner only if authorities should have known that the prisoner posed a danger to a specific person - someone he had threatened, for example, or someone in whose house he was placed when released.

The victims in this case cannot claim "that they were a foreseeable or readily identifiable target of Mr. Thomas' threats," state lawyers said in court papers. The state, they said, has "no duty to members of the general public" to protect them from a former prisoner.

Busch agreed in a ruling from the bench Tuesday, saying prison officials had no reason to believe Thomas would attack these particular people.

The victims' lawyers plan to challenge his ruling in the First District Court of Appeal. Attorney Dennis Riordan noted that the same court overturned another Busch decision last year and ruled that prison guards can be held responsible for failing to protect an inmate from repeated attacks by a cellmate.

"If (the state) owes that duty to other criminals, it should certainly owe a similar duty to innocent members of the public," Riordan said.

Kubitz, who came to Loren Schaller's aid and has permanent scars from the wounds to his chest, said his chief concern is that the same thing could happen again, especially if the state has to release thousands of inmates to local supervision or parole to comply with a federal court order on prison overcrowding.

He said he wrote a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in October 2007, asking what measures the prisons were taking to prevent the mistaken release of dangerous prisoners, but never got an answer.

"I don't want anyone else, particularly anyone else's 15-year-old daughter, to have to undergo an incident like this," Kubitz said.

waybomb · #2 02-15-2009, 04:14 PM

Imagine what's going to happen when they release 30% of the inmates because of overcrowding.

tankdriver · #3 02-15-2009, 04:19 PM

What's the point of the rules then?

LUVMBDiesels · #4 02-15-2009, 08:15 PM

Sickening...

Come to California, the Golden State...
Land of CARB, Gun Control, Mexican flags waving over high schools and now a flood of convicts getting out.

How much do you want to bet that the state will release more problem inmates in the 30% reduction. I bet that they won't release only non-violent criminals, but the first 30% they can count.

It is no wonder that Californians are moving to Utah and other states...

Kuan · #5 02-15-2009, 08:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by waybomb

Imagine what's going to happen when they release 30% of the inmates because of overcrowding.

Marijuana sales go through the roof?

Hatterasguy · #6 02-15-2009, 08:40 PM

Stuff like this makes me want to get a CC permit.

LUVMBDiesels · #7 02-15-2009, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hatterasguy

Stuff like this makes me want to get a CC permit.

Move to an open carry state and strap one on...

Actually I have never seen a person with a shootin' iron strapped on the entire time I have been in WV.

I wonder how many inmates are currently rotting on 'death row' in Cali. I don't think they have executed anybody in decades.

The Clk Man · #8 02-15-2009, 10:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AustinsCE

Jackasses. But nope! Self defense is a privilege, get in line. Hope you make it...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/14/BAPU15UF6V.DTL&tsp=1

Parole him to KY, we know how to handle those kind of ******* here.

Botnst · #9 02-15-2009, 10:42 PM

Using "KY" and "a**holes" in the same sentence is disturbing.

The Clk Man · #10 02-15-2009, 10:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Botnst

Using "KY" and "a**holes" in the same sentence is disturbing.

Is that why you didn't answer my question?

Botnst · #11 02-15-2009, 10:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Clk Man

Is that why you didn't answer my question?

The message that was sent is the one you received and it should be abundantly clear.

The Clk Man · #12 02-15-2009, 10:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Botnst

The message that was sent is the one you received and it should be abundantly clear.

Well you know I'm simple, so I guess I need a yes or know.

aklim · #13 02-15-2009, 11:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Clk Man

Parole him to KY, we know how to handle those kind of ******* here.

Which part? I went to School in Morehead. Sad to say, the town never lived up to the name.

jplinville · #14 02-16-2009, 05:47 AM

It falls in line with a past Supreme Court ruling that it isn't the Police Department's job to protect personla property. That's why I keep and carry a gun!

Botnst · #15 02-16-2009, 08:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jplinville

It falls in line with a past Supreme Court ruling that it isn't the Police Department's job to protect personla property. That's why I keep and carry a gun!

Whence came you?

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