State v. Oscar H.

204 Conn. App. 207
CourtConnecticut Appellate Court
DecidedApril 27, 2021
DocketAC43622
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 204 Conn. App. 207 (State v. Oscar H.) 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. Oscar H., 204 Conn. App. 207 (Colo. Ct. App. 2021).

Opinion

*********************************************** The “officially released” date that appears near the be- ginning of each opinion is the date the opinion will be pub- lished in the Connecticut Law Journal or the date it was released as a slip opinion. The operative date for the be- ginning of all time periods for filing postopinion motions and petitions for certification is the “officially released” date appearing in the opinion.

All opinions are subject to modification and technical correction prior to official publication in the Connecticut Reports and Connecticut Appellate Reports. In the event of discrepancies between the advance release version of an opinion and the latest version appearing in the Connecticut Law Journal and subsequently in the Connecticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports, the latest version is to be considered authoritative.

The syllabus and procedural history accompanying the opinion as it appears 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 reproduced and distributed without the express written permission of the Commission on Official Legal Publica- tions, Judicial Branch, State of Connecticut. *********************************************** STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. OSCAR H.* (AC 43622) Lavine, Prescott and Suarez, Js.**

Syllabus

The defendant, who had been convicted of several crimes, including murder, as a result of the stabbing death of N, appealed, claiming that the trial court improperly admitted into evidence the deposition testimony of B, whom the defendant also stabbed during the same incident, after having improperly determined pursuant to the former testimony exception to the rule against hearsay in the applicable provision (§ 8-6 (1)) of the Connecticut Code of Evidence that B, an undocumented immigrant, who had returned to her native Guatemala prior to trial, was unavailable to testify. The defendant also claimed that his conviction of attempt to commit murder and assault in the first degree as to B violated the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy because each crime was predicated on the same act against B. Prior to trial, the court granted the state’s motion to issue a subpoena for B to be deposed, as her return to Guatemala would put her beyond the state’s subpoena power. At the judicially supervised deposition, which was video-recorded and tran- scribed, the defendant had an opportunity to cross-examine B without any restrictions by the court. B, who spoke no English, thereafter left for Guatemala. At trial, P, a director of an immigrant services organization, testified that she had spoken with B at least once a month after B returned to Guatemala and that, at the state’s request, she spoke to B by phone three days before the trial and B indicated that she would not voluntarily return to Connecticut to testify. The defendant argued that the state had failed to establish B’s unavailability because, inter alia, P spoke with B only by phone and did not testify that she had seen B in Guatemala, there was no evidence that B had been forced to leave the United States and because the state should have advised B not to return to Guatemala. The trial court admitted the videotaped deposition, con- cluding that the state had met its burden of establishing B’s unavailability pursuant to § 8-6 (1). Held: 1. The trial court properly determined that B was unavailable to testify and admitted her deposition testimony at trial, the state having acted in good faith and with due diligence to procure her attendance: under the totality of the circumstances presented, the defendant’s rights to confrontation and due process were not violated, as the state made sufficient efforts to establish B’s unavailability, the defendant provided no legal authority that required the state to take additional steps beyond those it pursued to procure B’s attendance at trial, the state was aware of her immigration status and desire to return to Guatemala, it kept in touch with her throughout the pretrial proceedings through P, who maintained contact with B after she left the United States and, at the state’s request, contacted B three days before trial to inquire if she would be willing to return, and, as it was highly unlikely that any addi- tional efforts by the state would have succeeded in convincing B to return voluntarily, this court was not convinced that the state was required to expend any and all available resources to eliminate the complex challenges posed by her immigration status or to extend logisti- cal and financial incentives to induce her return to Connecticut; more- over, despite the defendant’s unavailing assertion that, even if B had been properly found to be unavailable, the admission of the deposition transcript violated his rights to confrontation and due process, the defen- dant had an unfettered opportunity to confront B at the deposition, which was taken under agreed upon parameters and the direct supervision of a judge who did nothing to restrict the defendant’s cross-examination of her, B was under oath and subject to the penalty of perjury, the videotape of the deposition reflected her demeanor, the state made no objections to her testimony, and, to the extent that impeachment evi- dence existed, the defendant declined to present it at trial when given the opportunity to do so; furthermore, any potential that B’s examination at trial might have differed from her deposition testimony or that the defendant might later have become privy to additional information to utilize during cross-examination was speculative and not a basis on which to conclude that his confrontation rights were violated. 2. The defendant could not prevail on his unpreserved claim that his convic- tion of attempted murder and assault in the first degree violated the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy, which was based on his assertion that he was punished twice on the same evidence for the same offense against the same victim, B: because attempted murder requires intent to cause the death of the victim, which is not an element of assault in the first degree, and assault in the first degree requires serious injury to the victim with a deadly instrument, which are not elements of attempted murder, those crimes are not the same offense for purposes of double jeopardy, nor can assault in the first degree be a lesser offense included within attempted murder; moreover, although the operative information charged attempted murder and assault in the first degree in separate and distinct counts, nothing in the language of those counts could be construed as evincing any intent by the state to charge the defendant in the alternative, as the charges were not pursued by the state in an alternative manner, nor was such a theory discussed in closing argument, and the defendant requested no instruction, nor did the court give any instruction to the jury, indicating that it should consider the charges only as standing in a greater-lesser relationship; furthermore, the defendant’s failure to raise his double jeopardy claim at trial belied any indication that the double jeopardy claim was obvious on the face of the information or in the manner in which the case was charged, and the defendant advanced nothing from which to discern any legislative intent to preclude the prosecution of a criminal defendant for both attempted murder and assault in the first degree. Argued October 20, 2020—officially released April 27, 2021

Procedural History

Substitute information charging the defendant with the crimes of murder, attempt to commit murder, assault in the first degree and risk of injury to a child, brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of Fairfield and tried to the jury before Russo, J.; verdict and judgment of guilty, from which the defendant appealed. Affirmed. Naomi T.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
204 Conn. App. 207, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-oscar-h-connappct-2021.