California v. Young

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Defendant Shawn Young was convicted by jury of sexually abusing his two daughters, A. and H., as well as their friend, M., who lived next door. The trial court sentenced defendant to serve an aggregate determinate prison term of 18 years, plus a consecutive indeterminate term of 85 years to life. On appeal, defendant contended: (1) the Court of Appeal had to reverse the judgment because the trial court lacked good cause to excuse one of the sitting jurors (Juror No. 4) and doing so in the absence of both defendant and his assigned trial counsel violated defendant’s constitutional rights; (2) defendant’s convictions for Counts 3 and 6 had to be reversed for insufficient evidence; (3) defendant’s Count 6 conviction had to be vacated because Penal Code section 288.5 (c), mandated charges of continuous sexual abuse and specific sexual offenses, pertaining to the same victim over the same period of time, be charged in the alternative; (4) the trial court prejudicially erred and violated defendant’s constitutional rights by allowing two prosecution witnesses to testify to their opinion that the complaining witnesses were credible; (5) defendant’s trial counsel provided constitutionally deficient assistance by failing to object to certain assertions of prosecutorial misconduct; and (6) the trial court prejudicially erred by failing to instruct the jury on attempted sexual penetration as a lesser included offense to Count 7. The Court concluded the trial court did not have good cause to excuse Juror No. 4. Furthermore, the Court concluded doing so outside defendant’s presence and while he was represented by an attorney who was standing in for defendant’s temporarily ill trial counsel, and who was told she was appearing to agree to a continuance on defendant’s behalf, violated defendant’s federal constitutional rights. Because the Court could not conclude this error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, it reversed the judgment. This conclusion made it unnecessary to address defendant’s remaining claims except those challenging the sufficiency of the evidence. As to those, we conclude sufficient substantial evidence supports defendant’s conviction in Count 3, not so with respect to Count 6. The Court reversed the judgment on that count for insufficient evidence. View "California v. Young" on Justia Law