People v. Ruiz
Annotate this CaseRuiz, convicted of sex crimes against his minor daughter, was sentenced to 44 years to life. The court of appeal rejected Ruiz’s argument that the trial court’s admission into evidence of the minor’s incriminating out-of-court statements to a social worker violated his confrontation clause rights and affirmed his convictions for continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14 and for forcible rape of a child under 14. The social worker’s primary purpose in interviewing the minor was to assess the child’s safety and the minor’s primary purpose in responding was to stop the abuse. The interview was informal and brief; it was a nontestimonial encounter to address an emergency situation. The court reversed his conviction for oral copulation or sexual penetration of a child 10 or younger, section 288.7, finding that the corpus delicti rule was not satisfied regarding that count; the rule requires, when a defendant makes extrajudicial incriminating statements, that there also be independent evidence of the corpus delicti (the body of the crime itself), in order to convict. The court noted forensic evidence and Ruiz’s own statements with respect to the other counts.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.