People v. Henry CA1/4

I. Background

The incident that gave rise to this case occurred on July 26, 2017, outside the Oakland home of 18-year-old Jane Doe. Doe was in a chair on her

1 front porch talking on her phone when Henry and three friends walked by on their way to visit Doe’s next-door neighbor. Henry, who was intoxicated, singing and talking to himself, went onto the porch and approached Jane Doe, telling her she was cute. Doe told Henry to go away and got up to go inside. Henry pushed her back into the chair and grabbed her crotch. Jane Doe, who was wearing boxer shorts, felt Henry’s fingers as they went inside the fly of her shorts and penetrated her through the thin material of her underwear. The contact was brief, and Henry had removed his hand before his friends led him away. An Oakland Housing Authority police officer who noticed the commotion approached the group, but Henry disappeared into the home of Jane Doe’s neighbor and tried to escape out the back door. The officer called for back-up and Henry was arrested. In May 2018, Henry was tried on a felony charge of sexual penetration with a foreign object. (Pen. Code, § 289, subd. (a)(1)(A); statutory references are to this code.) The…