Archive for April 27, 2005

The Appellate Court released Smith v. Commissioner [pdf] and State v. Little [pdf] today. Both cases are brief, so here are brief summaries:

I.  In Smith, the petitioner appealed from the denial of a habeas corpus petition, in which he raised 1) IAC and 2) [F]actual innocence (he raised factual innocence, but presented legal authority for actual innocence so the court treated it as such).

The facts in Smith were that he robbed an 80 year old woman, pushed her to the ground and ran off. He was seen by two witnesses, one man and one woman. The woman rushed to the victim’s aid and the man threw a bottle at the petitioner that hit him, but did not deter him. The man made positive IDs pretrial and in court and the woman could only narrow it down to two "mug-shots" pretrial and was 90% sure it was him in court.

HIs claim of IAC was that he repeatedly claimed he was "innocent" and that his trial attorney did nothing to investigate his assertion. The Court described trial counsel’s performance as it oft does, glowingly, stating:

Upon review of the record, it is clear that the petitioner’s trial counsel conducted an adequate pretrial investigation. She obtained a complete copy of the state’s file in the matter. She met with Diaz [female witness] to attempt ‘‘to develop any discrepancies between what the witnesses were saying in their statements given to the police versus . . . the descriptive appearance of [the petitioner].’’ She attempted to meet with Pender [male witness], but he refused to meet with members of the defense team. She also investigated and developed the petitioner’s alibi defense.

The conduct of the petitioner’s trial counsel displays that she was attentive to the petitioner’s statement that he was not guilty of committing the crime and that she conducted an adequate pretrial investigation.

The next bit – the analysis of AI – is interesting for those who wish to know more about habeas law. The standard for a claim of AI is defined by Miller v. Commissioner, 242 Conn. 745 (1). The petitioner, in advancing a claim of Actual Innocence,

must establish by clear and convincing evidence, taking into account both the evidence adduced at the original trial and the evidence adduced at the habeas trial, that the petitioner is actually innocent and that no reasonable fact finder would find the petitioner guilty of the crime.

So you have to take all the evidence from the original trial and from the habeas trial and look at it together from the perspective of a jury and then decide whether a "reasonable jury" would convict. Quite different from the IAC standard.

The Court didn’t find any evidence to overturn the Habeas Court’s ruling that the AI standard wasn’t met.

II.  In State v. Little, the defendant was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree and carrying a pistol without a permit. The facts are unimportant, so if you want to know, please read the opinion.

The defendant raises two claims: 1) During the charge to the jury, the judge improperly marshaled the evidence against the defendant and in favor of the state and 2) Prosecutorial misconduct.

A claim of marshaling the evidence is not one that I have come across too often, so this is interesting to me. The appellate court has held that the trial court has the right and the duty to comment on the evidence adduced at trial. The purpose of this is to provide a summary, nothing more. To attain that, obviously, the court must achieve impartiality. It cannot be viewed as favoring one side of the case as opposed to the other. Applying it to the instant case, the Court held,

‘‘On review, we do not evaluate the court’s marshaling of the evidence in isolation. Rather, [t]o determine whether the court’s instructions were improper, we review the entire charge to determine if, taken as a whole, the charge adequately guided the jury to a correct verdict. . . . The pertinent test is whether the charge, read in its entirety, fairly presents the case to the jury in such a way that injustice is not done to either party under the established rules of law. . . . [I]n appeals involving a constitutional question, [the standard is] whether it is reasonably possible that the jury [was] misled.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Thompson, 81 Conn. App. 264, 282, (2004).

The Court reviewed the evidence adduced at trial and found that the trial court’s charge did not favor the state. It noted that the court repeatedly told the jurors to rely on their own memory and impressions and to judge the credibility of witnesses for themselves.

In claiming prosecutorial misconduct, the defendant stated that the prosecutor appealed to the emotions of the jurors.

‘‘It is well settled that [a] prosecutor may not appeal to the emotions, passions and prejudices of the jurors. . . . When the prosecutor appeals to emotions, he invites the jury to decide the case, not according to a rational appraisal of the evidence, but on the basis of powerful and irrelevant factors which are likely to skew that appraisal. . . .

The remarks in question were:

‘‘You also have . . . three individuals disputing [the defendant’s] claim that it was [the victim] chasing him and not the other way around. All three of those individuals told you that it was [the defendant], the man who had the motive, the man [who] now had the means, the man who took advantage of the opportunity at this point to chase and track down essentially [the victim].’’

Shortly thereafter, near the end of his closing argument, the prosecutor urged the jury

‘‘to recall the fact that the state claims the defendant had a motive, a clear motive, to shoot and kill [the victim]; the fact that he purposely sought out and obtained a deadly weapon to accomplish that; [and] the fact that he chased, in effect, hunted down, [the victim] over a block and a half . . . .’’

The court held that the prosecutor’s remarks were not improper and upheld the conviction.

Ok, so the summary wasn’t brief. Sorry.

(1) Larry Miller’s case is fascinating. Read a little about it here.