Court rejects bid to bar serial rapist from L.A. County

A state appellate court Tuesday rejected an attempt by Los Angeles County prosecutors to stop a convicted serial rapist from being released in the county.

The panel of three appellate justices denied the legal request without comment.

A Los Angeles County district attorney’s spokeswoman said prosecutors were evaluating their options to continue the effort to stop Christopher Evans Hubbart from being conditionally freed in the county.

The office argued in legal papers filed last week with the state’s 6th Appellate District that Hubbart, 62, should be released in Santa Clara County, where he committed his most recent crimes.

A Santa Clara County judge ruled in May that Hubbart should be freed under tight supervision in Los Angeles County, where he grew up and where he lived briefly the last time he was released from prison in 1993.

Hubbart was first arrested in 1972 on suspicion of committing a string of rapes in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, according to court documents. Los Angeles County prosecutors said he was responsible for more than two dozen attacks. After his release from a state hospital in 1979, he moved to the Bay Area and sexually assaulted more than 23 women, Los Angeles County prosecutors say. He was convicted again of rape and other charges and imprisoned.

Shortly after his release on parole in 1990, Hubbart assaulted two more victims in San Jose, according to Los Angeles County prosecutors. He was convicted of false imprisonment and sentenced to five years. He was released in 1993 and returned to his home in Claremont. His parole was revoked soon afterward.

In 1996, the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office successfully sought to have Hubbart committed under a law that allowed the state to confine “sexually violent predators” in state hospitals if they were diagnosed with a mental disorder and likely to offend again. Since then, Hubbart has been treated in state hospitals.

A Santa Clara County prosecutor has said Hubbart will be released once appropriate housing is set up and approved by the judge, a process that could take six months to a year.

jack.leonard@latimes.com