California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Steele, 164 Cal.App.4th 1195, 79 Cal. Rptr. 3d 866 (Cal. App. 2008):
(7) "Where the jury receives evidence of more than one factual basis for a conviction, the prosecution must select one act to prove the offense, or the court must instruct the jury that it must unanimously agree on one particular act as the offense. [Citations.] A unanimity instruction is not required if the evidence shows one criminal act or multiple acts in a continuous course of conduct." (People v. Jantz (2006) 137 Cal.App.4th 1283, 1292 [40 Cal.Rptr.3d 875] (Jantz).)
"The `continuous conduct' rule applies when the defendant offers essentially the same defense to each of the acts, and there is no reasonable basis for the jury to distinguish between them." (People v. Stankewitz (1990) 51 Cal.3d 72, 100 [270 Cal.Rptr. 817, 793 P.2d 23].)
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