Filed 8/26/26 P. v. Valladares CA2/1 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION ONE
THE PEOPLE, B343702 (Los Angeles County
Plaintiff and Respondent, Super. Ct. No. 24VWCF01377) v.
JAIME VALLADARES,
Defendant and Appellant.
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Michael V. Jesic, Judge. Affirmed.
Wayne C. Tobin, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Charles G. Ragland, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Susan Sullivan Pithey, Assistant Attorney General, Nicholas J. Webster and Amanda V. Lopez, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
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A jury convicted defendant Jaime Valladares of one count of first degree burglary (Pen. Code, § 459)1 for entering a woman’s home uninvited late at night. Valladares challenges his conviction, arguing there was no substantial evidence that he intended to commit theft or rape. Valladares also contends the trial court erred with respect to the admission of evidence concerning a similar offense he committed two years earlier. He does not claim the evidence was inadmissible, but he argues the trial court erred by refusing to tell the jury that the prior offense resulted in a charge and conviction for trespassing rather than burglary. Finally, Valladares argues the trial court erred by refusing to hold a jury trial on the issue of whether he was on probation when he committed the burglary, and then using his probation status as an aggravating factor to justify imposing the upper-term sentence. We find no prejudicial error, and we affirm.
FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS BELOW Samantha C. lived in a condominium in North Hollywood.
She slept in a bedroom with a sliding glass door that led to a small, enclosed patio. At around 12:45 a.m. on June 28, 2024, she awoke and saw Valladares standing about four feet from her bed near the sliding glass door. Valladares had his back to her and appeared to be doing something to the sliding door. Samantha was confused at first, then terrified. She yelled, “What the fuck are you doing? Get out of here.” Valladares turned around, put his index finger up to his mouth, and shushed her. He then
1 Subsequent statutory references are to the Penal Code.
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opened the door and fled to the patio, and Samantha closed and locked the sliding door.
Samantha called 911 and went out into the hallway. She saw that her kitchen window was open, and the screen had been ripped out. She grabbed a knife and hid in the bathroom for about 20 minutes until the police arrived. When they did, she went into the living room and saw that the window there was also open, and the screen was almost completely detached. She also saw a hat on her chair that had not been there previously, and the police found a bag outside her wall containing someone’s belongings. Nothing had been taken from her home.
At around 7:30 the next morning, Samantha looked outside the sliding glass door and saw Valladares outside near a dumpster. She was confident Valladares was the man who had broken in because lights from a nearby parking lot illuminated her bedroom, allowing her to see Valladares’s face clearly during the break-in. In addition, Samantha remembered seeing Valladares near the dumpster on the two nights leading up to the burglary. Only a few hours before the break-in, he had asked her what time it was. She felt uneasy about how close he was to her, and she made sure to close the garage door behind her.
At Valladares’s trial, the prosecution introduced evidence of a similar event that had happened two years earlier. Tiffany M. testified that, at 3:30 a.m. on July 21, 2022, she was in her bedroom in an apartment she shared with two roommates. The room was completely dark with the door ajar to allow in a breeze. Tiffany was on her bed looking at her phone when she heard a sound near the doorway. She shined her phone’s flashlight in that direction and saw Valladares standing about six feet away. She made eye contact with him and screamed. He put his index
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finger to his mouth, shushing her. Tiffany’s roommates, who were in another bedroom nearby, heard the noise, came to the rescue, and chased Valladares away. Tiffany testified that she believed Valladares intended to rape her, as he had ignored valuables in the living room of the apartment and instead went to her bedroom.
This was not the first time Tiffany had encountered Valladares. Valladares’s relatives lived in an apartment upstairs from her, and in the six months leading up to the break-ins, Tiffany had had increasingly scary and threatening interactions with Valladares. He would stand near the gate of her apartment complex so that she had to address him when she entered, and on several occasions, he blocked the entrance. In the week before the break-in, he had been watching her and following her, and the day before the incident, he tried to walk into her apartment. A couple of days after the break-in, Valladares knocked on the door to Tiffany’s apartment, leaving only when he could see police cars arriving.
DISCUSSION
A. Substantial Evidence Supported the Burglary Conviction Burglary is defined as “enter[ing] any house, room, apartment,” or any one of many other specified structures “with intent to commit grand or petit larceny or any felony.” (§ 459, subd. (a).) Valladares does not deny he entered Samantha’s condominium, but he argues we must reverse his burglary conviction because there was insufficient evidence that he intended to commit theft or another felony.
Valladares notes that Samantha testified there was nothing missing from her apartment, nor was there any evidence
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he brought a bag or flashlight with him. The prosecution theorized that Valladares intended to rape Samantha, but Valladares claims this is only speculation, and argues that if he had actually intended to commit a sexual assault, he would have moved toward Samantha when she awoke rather than fleeing from her. In addition, Valladares notes that Samantha testified that she had locked the sliding doors and closed the curtains before she went to bed. He argues that if he had intended to sexually assault Samantha, there was no reason for him to have opened the curtains and to be “doing something with the door” with his back to Samantha. He claims his behavior was more consistent with an expression of mental illness than an attempt to rape.
The problem with Valladares’s arguments is that they ask us to draw different inferences from the evidence than the jury did. That is not our role in deciding a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence. Instead, “ ‘[w]e review the whole record in the light most favorable to the judgment below to determine whether it discloses substantial evidence—that is, evidence that is reasonable, credible, and of solid value—from which a reasonable trier of fact could find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. . . .’ [Citation.] ‘ “An appellate court must accept logical inferences that the jury might have drawn from the evidence even if the court would have concluded otherwise.” ’ ” (People v. Solomon (2010) 49 Cal.4th 792, 811-812.)
As Valladares acknowledges in his opening brief, “[p]revious decisions have not demanded much in terms of evidence to support the element of intent for residential burglary” when reviewing for substantial evidence. This is in part because of the nature of these cases. As the court noted in People v.
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Moody (1976) 59 Cal.App.3d 357, “[p]roof of intent is rarely susceptible of direct proof and may be inferred from the circumstances of the case.” (Id. at p. 363.) Indeed, “burglarious intent [can] be reasonably and justifiably inferred from . . . unlawful and forcible entry alone.” (People v. Stewart (1952) 113 Cal.App.2d 687, 691; accord, People v. Fitch (1946) 73 Cal.App.2d 825, 827.) Thus, in Moody, the court affirmed a burglary conviction in a scenario similar to this one. In that case, the defendant entered a home “at night after all the doors had been locked and when discovered he had his arms outstretched toward the intended victim, a 15-year-old girl who was dressed only in a nightgown. When discovered he ran. Thereupon when confronted by a police officer [the defendant] once again took flight.” (Moody, supra, at p. 363.) The court held “there was substantial evidence to support a finding that [the defendant] had either entered the house with an intent to commit theft or to commit rape.” (Ibid.)
Valladares objects that Moody and other 20th century cases “should be considered in light of the California Supreme Court’s requirement that the reasonable doubt standard be accounted for by the reviewing court in any claim by the defendant that the conviction is not supported by substantial evidence.” But the case Valladares cites in support of this proposition, Conservatorship of O.B. (2020) 9 Cal.5th 989, addressed substantial evidence review of findings based on a standard of clear and convincing evidence, and the court held that “an appellate court must determine whether the evidence reasonably could have led to a finding made with the specific degree of confidence required by this standard.” (Id. at p. 1005.) This holding did not alter the standard of review as to findings in
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criminal trials. The court stated explicitly that the standard it enunciated “harmonizes with the firmly established rule in criminal cases that the prosecution’s burden of proving a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt affects how an appellate court reviews the record for substantial evidence.” (Id. at p. 1007.) For decades, our Supreme Court has instructed appellate courts to “determine whether a reasonable trier of fact could have found the prosecution sustained its burden of proving the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” (People v. Reilly (1970) 3 Cal.3d 421, 425.) There is no reason to suppose the existing cases on inferring intent in burglary applied an incorrect standard.
In addition, our substantial evidence review requires us to “ ‘review the whole record.’ ” (People v. Solomon, supra, 49 Cal.4th at p. 811.) That includes not only the immediate circumstances in which Samantha discovered Valladares, but also Valladares’s prior behavior. Of particular relevance is his apparent fixation on Tiffany over a period of several months leading up to his eventual decision to enter her apartment late at night, which sheds light on his intent as to Samantha. (See People v. Matson (1974) 13 Cal.3d 35, 41 [“The inference that [the] defendant entered Miss G’s apartment with felonious intent is amply supported by evidence that he used the same modus operandi to rape Mrs. H 11 days earlier”].) Although Valladares did not assault Tiffany, his prior behavior toward her supported an inference that he intended to. The jury could reasonably infer he had a similar intent toward Samantha, with whom he interacted only a few hours before entering her apartment. During closing argument, Valladares’s attorney argued that his client may have been experiencing a mental health episode, and
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only entered Samantha’s apartment in order to frighten or intimidate her, but the jury necessarily rejected that proposition when it convicted him of burglary. The jury’s finding was not unreasonable. B. The Trial Court Did Not Err by Refusing to Inform the Jury that Valladares’s Previous Conviction Was for Trespassing The trial court admitted Tiffany’s testimony regarding Valladares’s entry into her apartment even though that was not the basis of the charges in this case. Evidence of uncharged conduct is inadmissible to show the defendant’s propensity to commit other similar acts (Evid. Code, § 1101, subd. (a)), but it may be admissible for other purposes, including for proving the defendant’s intent and his identity (see id., subd. (b)). The trial court relied on the latter two grounds in admitting Tiffany’s testimony.
Valladares does not challenge that decision, but he argues the trial court erred by failing to admit evidence about the nature of his prior conviction in Tiffany’s case. Although the People did not seek to introduce any evidence that Valladares was charged or convicted in connection with his actions towards Tiffany, Valladares requested that the court take judicial notice that he had been convicted of aggravated trespassing rather than burglary of Tiffany’s apartment, and that the court describe his prior conviction specifically in its instruction to the jury regarding the use of evidence of uncharged prior conduct. The court declined the request for judicial notice, and in its jury instruction on evidence of uncharged conduct, stated that “[t]he People presented evidence that the defendant committed another
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offense that was not charged in this case” without specifying the nature of the prior offense.
Valladares contends this was error. He argues for an extension of the well-established rule that “if a trial court permits the prosecution to present evidence that the defendant committed one or more similar offenses for which he or she is not charged in the current prosecution, the trial court must also allow the defense to present evidence of the defendant’s acquittal, if any, of such crimes, and failure to allow such acquittal evidence constitutes error.” (People v. Mullens (2004) 119 Cal.App.4th 648, 664-665, citing People v. Griffin (1967) 66 Cal.2d 459, 464- 466.) Valladares was not acquitted of burglary in the Tiffany case, but he argues that the fact he was only charged with and convicted of aggravated trespassing would have been relevant to the jury’s evaluation of his conduct.
We are aware of only one case that nominally extended the rule our Supreme Court first established in Griffin in the direction Valladares advocates. In People v. Jenkins (1970) 3 Cal.App.3d 529, two defendants were jointly tried for possession of a completed check with intent to defraud (former § 475a), and the prosecution introduced evidence that the codefendant had previously been arrested for a similar scheme. (Jenkins, supra, at p. 533.) The court held that the trial court erred by refusing to admit evidence that the codefendant was not charged for that offense because “such evidence tended to weaken or rebut the prosecution’s evidence of the other crime.” (Id. at p. 535.)
Jenkins is not directly on point, because unlike in that case, Valladares was charged with and convicted of a crime for his prior conduct. In addition, we have doubts as to how far, if at all, the Griffin rule should be extended to cases where the defendant
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was not acquitted. In Griffin, the court reasoned that evidence of a defendant’s acquittal on previous charges may “assist[] the jury in its assessment of the significance of the evidence of another crime.” (People v. Griffin, supra, 66 Cal.2d at p. 466.) The jury would “know[] that at another time and place a duly constituted tribunal charged with the very issue of determining [the] defendant’s guilt or innocence of the other crime concluded that he was not guilty.” (Ibid., fn. omitted.) That rationale does not apply here, where no factfinder ever considered whether Valladares was guilty of burglary for entering Tiffany’s apartment. The decision to charge Valladares with trespassing rather than burglary was a matter of prosecutorial discretion, which was likely influenced by numerous factors having little to do with Valladares’s guilt or innocence of committing burglary.
We need not resolve this issue because even if the court did err by failing to inform the jury that Valladares’s prior conviction was for trespassing, the error was harmless. It is not “reasonably probable that a result more favorable to [Valladares] would have been reached” if the jury had known specifically what the prior offense was. (People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836.)2 The jury heard testimony about the actual conduct that led to his prior conviction, as Tiffany detailed her interactions with Valladares both on the night of the break-in and in the months leading up to it. The information that the prosecutor for unspecified reasons charged him with trespassing rather than burglary in the Tiffany case would have provided little assistance
2 Both Valladares and the People agree, as do we, that the Watson standard applies because admission of evidence on the nature of a defendant’s prior conviction is a matter of state law.
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to the jury in deciding Valladares’s guilt or innocence with regard to the burglary of Samantha’s home. C. The Error in Failing to Provide a Jury Trial on Valladares’s Probation Status Was Harmless In the information, the People alleged that several aggravating factors under California Rules of Court, rule 4.421(b) applied, but after the jury found Valladares guilty, the People elected to dismiss all of those factors except one: that “[t]he defendant was on probation, mandatory supervision, postrelease community supervision, or parole when the crime was committed.” (Id., rule 4.421(b)(4).) Valladares requested a jury trial on that issue, but the trial court concluded he was not entitled to one. The court found the aggravating factor true, and on that basis imposed the high term sentence of six years for burglary.
In June 2025, five months after Valladares was sentenced, our Supreme Court in People v. Wiley (2025) 17 Cal.5th 1069 held that a defendant is entitled to a jury trial on all aggravating factors “beyond the bare fact of a prior conviction, that expose[] a defendant to harsher punishment.” (Id. at p. 1084.) This includes even straightforward inquiries such as whether the defendant “remained on probation at the time he or she committed the new offense.” (Id. at p. 1083.)
Valladares argues Wiley applies to his case and, thus, the denial of his request for a jury trial was error. The People concede the point, and we agree. Nevertheless, we agree with the People that the error was harmless because we “ ‘conclude[] beyond a reasonable doubt that a jury, applying that same standard, would have found true all of the aggravating facts upon which the court relied to conclude the upper term was justified.’ ”
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(People v. Wiley, supra, 17 Cal.5th at p. 1087; see Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18 [87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705].) The trial court took judicial notice of two cases on which Valladares was serving probation at the time he committed the burglary of Samantha’s home. Valladares did not object, and we are aware of no basis for reasonable doubt on that issue.
DISPOSITION
The judgment of the trial court is affirmed. NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
WEINGART, J.
We concur:
BENDIX, Acting P. J.
M. KIM, J.