People v. Cardoza CA3

Filed 5/7/25 P. v. Cardoza CA3 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published,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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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 THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT (Yuba) ----

THE PEOPLE, C099873

Plaintiff and Respondent, (Super. Ct. No. CRF2202384)

v.

JOHN MANUEL CARDOZA, JR,

Defendant and Appellant.

A trial court found defendant John Manuel Cardoza, Jr., guilty of several counts alleging various charges related to molesting his daughter, J. The trial court sentenced defendant to a determinate term of 31 years consecutive to an indeterminate term of 70 years to life. On appeal, defendant argues the trial court lacked sufficient evidence to find him guilty of all counts. We affirm the judgment. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND In early 2015, when J. was about five years old, she and defendant began living with defendant’s then romantic partner D. in a trailer home. Defendant and D. had two children together, and J. grew close to D. and her stepsiblings. In February 2021, D. broke up with defendant. Defendant moved and D. continued to live in the trailer home. After defendant moved, he became engaged to another woman and they moved in together. J. alternated

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between living with D. and living with defendant and his fiancée approximately every other week. In October 2022, J. wrote a letter to D. saying defendant had been sexually abusing her. The next day, D. took J. to the sheriff’s department to report the sexual abuse, and a community service officer conducted a child forensic interview with J. The week after the interview, at the direction of a detective, D. told defendant that she was taking J. to a medical clinic to be examined. Defendant said he would go too, and when he arrived at the clinic, police officers arrested him. The following facts are based on the letter J. wrote to D., J.’s statements in the child forensic interview, and J.’s testimony at trial. When J. was eight, defendant began forcing her to perform sexual acts with him. He threatened to hurt D. or her stepsiblings if J. told anyone about the abuse. When D. was out of the home running errands, defendant showed J. pornographic videos on his phone. This happened “a couple times a week.” While they watched the videos, defendant forced J. to masturbate him until he ejaculated. If J. refused to watch the videos or touch his penis, defendant would slap her across the face. When J. was nine and one-half years old, defendant began forcing J. to orally copulate him once or twice per week. Even though J. would cry and felt scared, defendant would “push [her] head to do it” until he ejaculated. Sometimes defendant told J. to remove her clothes or he removed them and squeezed her breasts with both hands while he forced her to perform other sexual acts. When J. was nine or ten years old, defendant started to rub his “[penis] in between [her] legs.” While defendant lay down, he would force J. to sit on his penis and “slide up and down [on] it” with her vagina. When defendant would try to put his penis inside J.’s vagina, she fought him but he would not stop. During one incident, defendant made J. lie on her back, lifted her legs up, and rubbed his penis “in between” her “[bottom] front half.” After defendant moved out of the trailer home, defendant continued to rub his penis on J.’s vagina while she stayed with him when his fiancée was not at the house. At the new