People v. Bradford

The defendant was charged with the offense defined in section 288 of the Penal Code, convicted thereof, and sentenced to five years in the state prison. He appeals from the judgment and from an order denying a new trial.

Defendant contends on this appeal that section 288 of the Penal Code, which provides that “Any person who shall willfully and lewdly commit any lewd or lascivious act, other than the acts constituting other crimes provided for in part ll of this code,” etc., is unintelligible in that part II of the code referred to relates solely to criminal procedure and in no way describes acts constituting other crimes, and that v,diere a new offense is sought to he created by a section of the code it should have greater • certainty in its terms. It is true that in part I, and not in part II, of the Penal Code is to be found the statement of the acts constituting other crimes; it is evident that either by legislative oversight or by clerical misprision the characters “II” were inserted for the character “I” in such section, and -that section 288 should be so construed. Such construction is warranted by the decision of our supreme court in California Loan Co. v. Weis, 118 Cal.…