Trial Opens in County’s 1st Test of Sex Predator Law

Ronald Herrera is a convicted rapist eligible for parole months ago. But Ventura County officials, fearing that he is mentally unstable and could attack again, are trying to keep him behind bars.

Today, in the county’s first test of the state’s new sexual predator law, prosecutors will try to convince a jury that Herrera fits the mold and should be transferred to a mental institution.

Under state legislation, convicts deemed to be sexual predators can be kept in custody for mental health treatment for two years or more after they have served their criminal sentences.

“I think Mr. Herrera is a model of the type of person the Legislature was thinking of when they enacted the law,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox said Tuesday. “He has just a long history of assaults.”

A former Santa Paula resident, Herrera was convicted in 1971 of raping a woman and her 15-year-old daughter during a home-invasion robbery in Ventura.

But less that a week later, Herrera escaped from the Oxnard City Jail and fled to Virginia, where he was later convicted of a series of armed robberies and attempted murder, prosecutors said.

Herrera served 13 years of a 50-year sentence before returning to Ventura County, where he was arrested for drunk driving in 1986 and sent to prison to serve eight years and eight months for the rape convictions.

In March, the 50-year-old was set for release when Ventura County officials decided to try to hold him under the controversial new sex predator law, which has provoked conflicting court rulings in counties throughout the state.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to review the issue in a case stemming from a similar law in Kansas. A ruling is due next year.

In the meantime, prosecutors will test the legal waters with Herrera’s case, which began with jury selection Tuesday.

The trial is expected to last less than a week as Fox tries to convince a jury that Herrera is a sex offender in need of mental health treatment and a man who represents a danger to the community if released.

The jury will not be asked to weigh guilt or innocence, but to decide if the allegations against Herrera are true, prosecutors explained.

It is unclear exactly what Herrera’s defense will be. He is representing himself and so far has indicated in pretrial hearings that his constitutional rights are being violated.

In a rambling court appearance last week, Herrera argued that the trial is essentially double jeopardy.

“When is a man given a chance to start over?” Herrera asked.

It is an argument that defense attorneys have voiced in opposition to the new law, which some argue violates the rights to due process and double jeopardy.

“To me, it is a thinly disguised form of [punishment],” said Ventura defense attorney Timothy Quinn, who represented Herrera at one point. “It’s what society wants, but it is really not an honest approach.”

Prosecutors, however, tout the law as a protection against violent sex predators who they say will almost certainly rape again.

And, they say, the law is not intended to extend imprisonment, but to place sex predators in care facilities that can help treat mental disorders that often lead them to commit sex crimes again.

According to Department of Corrections studies, 51% of sex offenders paroled in California in 1990 were back in custody by 1992. More than half of them--58%--came back for sex offenses.

But Herrera has asserted in court appearances that he does not fall under the criteria of a sex predator, and should be released.

“They want to send me to a nut house because I might go and commit a sex crime again,” Herrera said in a hearing last week. “I am sorry about that sex crime. It has never happened again. No way am I going to go and do something that dumb again.”

Staring down at the thin man clad in jail blues, Superior Court Judge James Cloninger responded: “That is the ultimate question a jury will have to decide.”

During jury selection Tuesday afternoon, Herrera appeared in court in a wrinkled dress shirt and slacks without handcuffs but wearing a restrictive leg brace intended to inhibit his movements.

Sitting behind the defense table, he questioned jurors about a range of issues, often rambling on about something and losing track of his original question.

Judges, prosecutors, investigators and defense attorneys have repeatedly urged Herrera to get an attorney, but he has insisted on representing himself.

“I feel this is my life,” he told Cloninger recently. “So I might as well do as best I can.”