Monday, August 10, 2026
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Court of Appeal:
Evidence Disposal, Eight-Year Delay Do Not Gut Conviction
Opinion Says No Due Process Violation Where There Was No Indication of Bad Faith, Filing Delay Justified by New Claims Which Provided Additional Support for Case
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
Div. Three of the Fourth District Court of Appeal on Friday rejected a defendant’s claims that his due process rights were violated by an eight-year delay in bringing charges against him, at which point some of the materials in the investigative file against him had been destroyed.
Justice Martha K. Gooding authored the unpublished opinion, joined in by Presiding Justice Joanne Motoike and Justice Thomas A. Delaney. She acknowledged that “[b]oth the United States and California constitutions protect criminal defendants from ‘unjustified and prejudicial’ precharging delay” but said:
“Even assuming for the sake of argument that defendant established a minimal amount of prejudice due to the destruction of the investigative materials, the record shows a strong justification for the prosecution’s delay in bringing charges, which heavily outweighs any potential prejudice. After [a minor] accused defendant of molesting her [in 2016] and the Riverside County District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute, defendant committed a nearly identical act of molestation just three years later in 2019.”
She continued:
“That conduct constituted new evidence that bolstered the 2016 case. We agree with the People that…there was a profound and qualitative shift in the strength of the evidence against defendant as to the 2016 case, particularly given the sexual nature of both offenses, the similar means by which defendant molested both victims, the lack of any familial relationship…, and the cross admissibility of sexual offense evidence under Evidence Code section 1108.”
2016 Incident
The question arose after Rodolfo Flores was accused of entering the bedroom of an 11-year-old girl, identified only as “S.M.,” placing his bare hand under her clothes, and touching her buttocks while she was spending the night at his mother’s home on Aug. 14, 2016. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department arrested Flores, but the District Attorney’s Office declined to press charges.
Two years later, before the statute of limitations had run on potential charges, some of the evidence in the police filed was destroyed, including photographs of the defendant’s father and brother, which were shown to S.M. to exclude them as suspects, as well as audio recordings of police interviews with Flores, S.M., and her mother.
In March 2019, a 15-year-old minor, referred to in court filings as “A.M.,” said that the defendant, who was dating her cousin at the time, entered her room in Santa Ana while she asleep, placed his hand under her clothes, and touched her from behind. The minor reported the incident to the police, but she was not interviewed by investigators until August 2021.
Charges Filed
Officers with the Santa Ana Police Department did not make contact with Flores until November 20, 2023. Approximately one week later, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office filed a felony complaint charging the defendant with committing two lewd acts in violation of Penal Code §288, one relating to the 2016 incident and the other based on the 2019 encounter.
Flores moved to dismiss the charges against him in September 2024, arguing that he had been denied due process by the eight-year delay in filing and by the destruction of investigative materials relating to the 2016 incident. Orange Superior Court Judge Terri K. Flynn-Peister denied the request.
On Oct. 3, 2024, a jury found him guilty of both crimes, and he was sentenced to more than three years in prison two weeks later.
Prefiling Delay
Gooding noted that, in assessing whether a prefiling delay is unjustified or prejudicial, courts are directed to balance the harm suffered by the defendant against the prosecutors’ asserted reasons for the postponement. She wrote:
“We first address defendant’s assertion of prejudice. In addition to the passage of time and its potential impact on the memories of witnesses, defendant contends law enforcement’s destruction of the investigative materials relating to the 2016 incident prejudiced his ability to defend the case because the destroyed material ‘likely was exculpatory.’ We find no error in the trial court’s conclusion that the defendant’s claim of prejudice was speculative.”
She acknowledged that the defendant asserted that some of the materials might have corroborated testimony indicating that S.M had expressed that she was homesick and wanted to go home on the night in question. However, the justice remarked:
“During trial, defense counsel fully examined witnesses and argued about S.M.’s credibility, including the possibility she concocted the accusation because she was homesick and just wanted to go home. Defense counsel also exposed multiple inconsistencies in S.M.’s testimony and statements to police.”
Some Prejudic
She opined that, even if Flores was able to show some prejudice from the destruction of the materials, it was outweighed by the strong justification for the delay in light of the new allegations against him. She cited the 2025 decision by Div. One of the Fourth District in People v. McInnis, saying:
“[That] court held that a 27-year delay in charging a defendant with murder was justified where the evidence was insufficient to charge him until, many years later, forensic technology and funding for cold case investigations became available and enabled the prosecution to identify the defendant as a suspect and establish his guilt through a DNA comparison analysis….The fact that the inculpatory evidence was not available until years later constitutes ‘investigative [delay] and weighs heavily in favor of the prosecution in the balancing test.’ ”
Analogizing to those facts, she commented:
“[D]efendant’s molestation of A.M. in 2019 was admissible to show defendant’s propensity to commit the 2016 crime against S.M.”
Failure to Retain
Addressing the claim that the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s failure to retain some of the materials in the investigative file amounted to a constitutional violation, Gooding recognized that due process precludes the state from destroying evidence if the exculpatory value is readily apparent. However, she pointed out that if a defendant only shows that the information is “potentially useful” to him, he must prove that bad faith was involved.
Based on those principles, she reasoned:
“Substantial evidence supports the trial court’s conclusion there was nothing more than speculation supporting defendant’s contention that the investigative materials destroyed in 2018 possessed exculpatory value that was apparent before they were destroyed….And even assuming for the sake of argument the materials contained information potentially useful to the defense, there is nothing in the record to indicate the destruction was in bad faith.”
She added:
“Defendant argues that law enforcement’s selective preservation of only certain materials, such as defendant’s photograph shown to S.M. but not the photographs of defendant’s brother and father, and the failure to maintain a record of what was destroyed shows the materials had apparent exculpatory value. Defendant also argues that destroying evidence just two years after the incident occurred and before the statute of limitations had run constitutes bad faith. We disagree with both contentions….”
The case is People v. Flores, G064794.
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