Public Guardian of Sonoma County v. E.H. CA1/4

Filed 6/22/16 Public Guardian of Sonoma County v. E.H. CA1/4 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION FOUR

PUBLIC GUARDIAN OF SONOMA COUNTY, Plaintiff and Respondent, A145979

v. (Sonoma County E.H., Super. Ct. No. SPR82694) Defendant and Appellant.

E.H. is charged with first degree murder in the April 2007 death of his mother. Reportedly, he stabbed her with a sword 16 times after his persistent Star Wars delusions convinced him that she had been taken over by the “dark side.” After being found incompetent to stand trial pursuant to section 1370 of the Penal Code, E.H. was committed to Napa State Hospital in September 2007. As he was not restored to competency after a period of three years, the Sonoma County Public Conservator (Public Conservator) petitioned the court in June 2010 to establish a so-called “Murphy conservatorship” for E.H. under the Lanterman-Petris Short Act (LPS Act), Welf. & Inst. Code, § 5000 et seq.1 This renewable one-year conservatorship was most recently

1 All statutory references are to the Welfare and Institutions Code unless otherwise indicated. These preliminary facts are taken from our prior unpublished opinion in this matter—Public Guardian of Sonoma County v. E.H. (April 14, 2015, A143271) [nonpub. opn.] (E.H.)—a court record of which we take judicial notice. (Evid. Code, §§ 452, subds. (c) & (d), 459, subd. (a).)

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extended by the trial court on August 4, 2015, to cover the period from July 26, 2015, through July 26, 2016. E.H. appealed from this latest renewal, and his appellate attorney has filed a brief raising no specific issues but asking us to conduct an independent review of the record pursuant to People v. Wende (1979) 25 Cal.3d 436 (Wende) and Anders v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 738 (Anders). Although appellate counsel acknowledges that, in Conservatorship of Ben C. (2007) 40 Cal.4th 529 (Ben C.), the California Supreme Court declined to extend Wende/Anders procedures to “typical” LPS Act appeals, he argues that a different result is required for appeals involving Murphy conservatorships due to their entanglement with an underlying criminal matter and their less extensive procedural protections. Appellate counsel made an identical argument last year in connection with the appeal from the previous extension of E.H.’s Murphy conservatorship. (E.H., supra, A143271 at p. 2.) In that prior case, after reviewing the matter, we expressed doubt that an appeal involving a Murphy conservatorship is distinguishable in any meaningful way from existing precedent which refused to mandate Wende review in similar contexts. (Id. at pp. 6-7.) Nevertheless, since the record was short and E.H. had been committed for a significant period of time without any appellate review of his circumstances, we exercised our discretion to retain the appeal and conduct a full record review. (Id. at p. 8.) We elect to follow a similar procedure here, both because the record is short and because we are now very familiar with E.H.’s case. I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND A summary of E.H.’s prior conservatorship proceedings can be found in our previous opinion, Public Guardian of Sonoma County v. E.H. (April 14, 2015, A143271) [nonpub. opn.]. In June 2015, the Public Conservator petitioned the trial court for reappointment as E.H.’s Murphy conservator for an additional year. The petition was supported by the medical opinion of two physicians who opined that E.H. continued to be gravely disabled as defined by subdivision (h)(1)(B) of section 5008, such that a Murphy conservatorship