State v. Easton

CourtConnecticut Appellate Court
DecidedAugust 19, 2014
DocketAC35112
StatusPublished

This text of State v. Easton (State v. Easton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Connecticut Appellate Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Easton, (Colo. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

****************************************************** The ‘‘officially released’’ date that appears near the beginning of each opinion is the date the opinion will be published in the Connecticut Law Journal or the date it was released as a slip opinion. The operative date for the beginning of all time periods for filing postopinion motions and petitions for certification is the ‘‘officially released’’ date appearing in the opinion. In no event will any such motions be accepted before the ‘‘officially released’’ date. All opinions are subject to modification and technical correction prior to official publication in the Connecti- cut Reports and Connecticut Appellate Reports. In the event of discrepancies between the electronic version of an opinion and the print version appearing in the Connecticut Law Journal and subsequently in the Con- necticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports, the latest print version is to be considered authoritative. The syllabus and procedural history accompanying the opinion as it appears on the Commission on Official Legal Publications Electronic Bulletin Board Service and in the Connecticut Law Journal and bound volumes of official reports are copyrighted by the Secretary of the State, State of Connecticut, and may not be repro- duced and distributed without the express written per- mission of the Commission on Official Legal Publications, Judicial Branch, State of Connecticut. ****************************************************** STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. TERRANCE EASTON (AC 35112) Lavine, Bear and Borden, Js. Argued March 18—officially released August 19, 2014

(Appeal from Superior Court, judicial district of Fairfield, Hon. Lawrence L. Hauser, judge trial referee [motion to suppress]; Devlin, J. [judgments].) Craig A. Sullivan, assigned counsel, for the appel- lant (defendant). Emily D. Trudeau, deputy assistant state’s attorney, with whom, on the brief, was John C. Smriga, state’s attorney, for the appellee (state). Opinion

BORDEN, J. The defendant, Terrance Easton, appeals from the judgments of conviction rendered by the trial court after his entry of three conditional pleas of nolo contendere pursuant to General Statutes § 54-94a fol- lowing the court’s denial of his motion to suppress both a fingerprint record and an analysis of his DNA.1 In this appeal, the defendant claims that the trial court improperly denied his motion to suppress because: (1) the identifying information was confidential under Gen- eral Statutes § 54-76l and could not be released without a court order; (2) his DNA was gathered in violation of his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination; and (3) he met the necessary burden of showing that a warrant affidavit contained a falsehood or material omission as part of a hearing pursuant to Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 98 S. Ct. 2674, 57 L. Ed. 2d 667 (1978). We affirm the judgments of the trial court. The defendant was arrested on July 15, 2010, and was charged with possession of a controlled substance. He subsequently was charged after arrest in two infor- mations, each involving a count of home invasion, a count of sexual assault, and a count of burglary. The Bridgeport Police Department identified the defendant through a fingerprint record obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The defendant filed a motion to suppress the fingerprint identification and DNA sample taken by a buccal swab as part of his initial arrest. The defendant then amended the motion to sup- press to allege a Franks violation. The trial court ren- dered an oral decision denying the motion to suppress. Following the court’s denial of the defendant’s motion to suppress, the defendant entered conditional pleas of nolo contendere to each of the three dockets of charges pursuant to § 54-94a. The court rendered judgments encompassing all charges against the defendant on July 27, 2012. This appeal followed. The following facts and procedural history are rele- vant to the present case. On July 11, 2010, the Bridgeport Police Department processed the scene of a home inva- sion and sexual assault committed by an unknown per- petrator. The police believed the incident was likely linked to a similar home invasion and sexual assault that had occurred on March 28, 2010, also committed by an unknown perpetrator. The investigating officers collected latent fingerprints from a windowsill of the victim’s apartment and sent them to the state police forensic laboratory for processing. John Brunetti, a fin- gerprint examiner at the state police forensic labora- tory, entered the fingerprints into the Connecticut Automated Fingerprint Identification System. He dis- covered that the fingerprints recovered from the crime scene matched those of an individual in the database, who could only be identified by a state identification number. Brunetti contacted James Viadero, a captain in the Bridgeport Police Department, and provided him with the state identification number. Brunetti told Viad- ero, however, that he could not release the identity of the individual whose fingerprint record matched the fingerprints from the crime scene because the number was attached to a youthful offender file. Brunetti informed Viadero that, pursuant to a policy of the state police forensic laboratory, the information related to a youthful offender—including the identity of the offender—could not be released without a court order. Instead of seeking a court order, Viadero contacted Lisa Skelly, a special agent with the FBI, to obtain the identity of the individual. Viadero provided the state identification number to Skelly, who entered it into the FBI’s criminal justice information system and received a match along with a fingerprint record. The FBI records matched the state identification number to the defen- dant. The police prepared a search and seizure warrant for the defendant’s fingerprints to confirm the match with the latent fingerprints taken from the July 11, 2010 crime scene. When the police located the defendant on July 15, 2010, he was in possession of marijuana. He was arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance. As part of the booking process, the police, after having procured a warrant to obtain the defen- dant’s fingerprints, took his fingerprints and secured a DNA sample by buccal swab. Testing revealed that the defendant’s DNA matched DNA samples taken at both the March 28, 2010 and July 11, 2010 crime scenes. The defendant was charged in separate informations. The court, Hauser, J., heard evidence at the hearings on both the motion to suppress and the Franks claim. The court determined that the defendant had no liberty interest or reasonable expectation of privacy in the confidentiality of his juvenile offender fingerprint records. The court then stated that in the event there was a liberty interest or reasonable expectation of pri- vacy, the doctrine of inevitable discovery would never- theless have applied to the police department’s seizure. The court also found that the defendant voluntarily had consented to giving a DNA sample by buccal swab and thus waived any right to object to the DNA sample. With respect to the Franks claim, the court concluded that the defendant had not met his burden of demonstra- ting by a preponderance of the evidence that there was a falsehood or material omission in the warrant affidavits. Accordingly, the court, in an oral ruling, denied the defendant’s motion to suppress. The defendant thereafter entered a conditional plea of nolo contendere to each of the charges in the three informations. The court, Devlin, J., sentenced the defendant to a total effective term of forty years of incarceration, suspended after twenty-eight years, fol- lowed by thirty-five years of probation. This appeal followed.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Kent v. United States
383 U.S. 541 (Supreme Court, 1966)
Miranda v. Arizona
384 U.S. 436 (Supreme Court, 1966)
Schmerber v. California
384 U.S. 757 (Supreme Court, 1966)
Mathews v. Eldridge
424 U.S. 319 (Supreme Court, 1976)
Franks v. Delaware
438 U.S. 154 (Supreme Court, 1978)
Doe v. United States
487 U.S. 201 (Supreme Court, 1988)
Pennsylvania v. Muniz
496 U.S. 582 (Supreme Court, 1990)
United States v. Jiles, Anthony, Eliecer
658 F.2d 194 (Third Circuit, 1981)
State v. Pierre
890 A.2d 474 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 2006)
State v. Kalphat
939 A.2d 1165 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 2008)
State v. Batts
916 A.2d 788 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 2007)
State v. Fernandes
12 A.3d 925 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 2011)
State v. BB
17 A.3d 30 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 2011)
Frauenglass & Associates, LLC v. Enagbare
88 A.3d 1246 (Connecticut Appellate Court, 2014)
State v. Dolphin
488 A.2d 812 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1985)
Brown v. Employer's Reinsurance Corp.
539 A.2d 138 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1988)
State v. Bergin
574 A.2d 164 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1990)
State v. Weinberg
575 A.2d 1003 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1990)
State v. Geisler
610 A.2d 1225 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1992)
State v. Matos
694 A.2d 775 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1997)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
State v. Easton, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-easton-connappct-2014.