Pen. Code, § 861.5 · Chapter 7. Examination of the Case, and Discharge of the Defendant, or Holding Him to Answer
Pen. Code, § 861.5
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Notwithstanding subdivision (a) of Section 861, the magistrate may postpone the preliminary examination for one court day in order to accommodate the special physical, mental, or emotional needs of a child witness who is 10 years of age or younger or a dependent person, as defined in paragraph (3) of subdivision (f) of Section 288.
The magistrate shall admonish both the prosecution and defense against coaching the witness prior to the witness’ next appearance in the preliminary examination.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended by Stats. 2005, Ch. 279, Sec. 7. Effective January 1, 2006.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN§ionNum=861.5.
- Text hash
- sha256 515bfb103163154b461bcedf4e8cf50ddbc6fcbe003ac670a3d9eb551b8bcd0f
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
This section cites
Provisions in this library that the text above cites, as it prints each citation. A range cited as “ss. 61.13-61.16” links its first and last provisions.
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