Court Opinion

ID: 9796635
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:01:21.787628+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:50:51.549499
License: Public Domain

*551WERGEGAR, J., Concurring.
I write separately to clarify my position with respect to a point of disagreement between the majority and our concurring and dissenting colleague. I disagree with the concurring and dissenting opinion’s implication that the statutory term “recurring access” would be reasonably understood by jurors to denote such intermittent “access” as is necessarily implied by discrete instances of actual contact. (See cone. & dis. opn., post, at p. 554.) I join the majority, rather, in its determination that the term’s commonly understood meaning is “an ongoing ability to approach and contact someone time after time.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 547, italics added.) As the majority correctly points out, “not every person who manages to molest a child three times during the requisite period necessarily would have an ongoing ability to approach and contact the child time after time.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 550.) Accordingly, not every person who manages to molest a child three times during the requisite period necessarily would be guilty of violating Penal Code section 288.5, and the concurring and dissenting opinion errs to the extent it suggests that a reasonable juror could conclude otherwise. (See cone. & dis. opn., post, at pp. 554-555.)