Regalado

In a bifurcated proceeding, a jury convicted Oscar Regalado of committing a lewd act upon a child under the age of 14 and then found prior conviction allegations to be true. Regalado appeals, contending he was denied due process when the trial court read jurors an instruction permitting them to infer he was predisposed to commit the current offense after considering evidence of his prior sexual offense. He also insists the court erred by failing to require the prior offense be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. We conclude the court’s instructions to the jury were correct; neither deprived Regalado of the process to which he was due.

The issues before us today have more to do with questions of law than with the specific facts of this case. However, because we conclude that any instructional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, we observe that the facts concern Regalado’s digital penetration of a five-year-old boy’s rectum during a brief visit in the backyard of a daycare facility.

The youngster testified to Regalado’s act, and a subsequent medical examination of the minor confirmed his story, revealing redness and irritation around his anus, external to the…