People v. Almanza
Annotate this CaseAlmanza was charged with nonforcible lewd or lascivious act on a child under age 14 (Pen. Code, 288(a)), forcible sodomy (286(c)(2)), and forcible lewd or lascivious act on a child under age 14 (288(b)(1)) with respect to his girlfriend’s daughter. At one point the victim stated that she had lied about the molestations because she was angry about having been disciplined. The court was aware, before trial, that the prosecutor threatened to prosecute the defense investigator and insinuated that defense counsel could also be prosecuted, for hiring and revealing the victim’s name to an investigator who was not licensed. After a bench trial, Almanza was found guilty of the lewd-act counts but not guilty of the sodomy counts and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. The court of appeal affirmed, despite finding that the prosecutor precipitated a serious conflict of interest between defendant and defense counsel, that “the trial court did little to try to remedy and that defense counsel could have done more to address.” The court noted the evidence of guilt and cited the California Supreme Court’s statement that prejudice will be presumed only when counsel is representing multiple defendants concurrently and a conflict of interest arises from that circumstance.
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