People v. Preciado CA2/8

FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

At 2:30 in the morning, on January 12, 2012, a neighbor of appellant Brandon Preciado heard someone crying in the neighbor’s living room. The neighbor followed the sound and discovered appellant’s wife. (To protect the privacy of appellant’s wife, we refer to her as “wife” without using her name.) The neighbor had never seen wife before and did not know her. Wife said that appellant had beaten her and asked the neighbor to call 911. The transcript of the neighbor’s 911 call, which was introduced into evidence, records that the neighbor told the 911 operator that appellant had beaten wife with a flashlight. After the neighbor called 911, sheriff’s deputies arrived and found wife shaking and injured, with a swollen face and bleeding lip, a bite mark on her cheek, and bruises on her arms and legs. The deputies arrested appellant. The People charged appellant by information with 19 counts arising from eight episodes of domestic violence by appellant against wife from September 2011 to January 2012, the details of which are mostly unimportant to our review. The allegations, which appellant denied, charged multiple attacks involving corporal spousal abuse, assault…