State v. Rogers

344 Conn. 343
CourtSupreme Court of Connecticut
DecidedAugust 16, 2022
DocketSC20469
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 344 Conn. 343 (State v. Rogers) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Connecticut primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Rogers, 344 Conn. 343 (Colo. 2022).

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. RODERICK ROGERS (SC 20469) McDonald, D’Auria, Mullins, Ecker and Alexander, Js.

Syllabus

Convicted of the crimes of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and assault in the first degree, the defendant appealed. The defendant and his cousin, A, had been driving when they stopped to pick up the defendant’s friend, J. They then drove to a housing complex, where the defendant and J exited the car and shot five individuals, one of whom died. The defendant and J returned to A’s car and left the scene. Because A was on probation, he wore a global positioning system (GPS) device that tracked his movement. Thereafter, the defendant and J were arrested, and their cases were consolidated and tried jointly. Prior to trial, the defendant filed a motion in limine seeking either the preclusion of evidence of information pertaining to the location of his cell phone or a hearing pursuant to State v. Porter (241 Conn. 57) to determine the scientific reliability of such evidence. The trial court did not rule on the defendant’s motion, and he did not renew it at trial. The state never disclosed an expert witness, but, when jury selection began, the state provided the defendant with a list of witnesses, which included W, whom it identified only as a police officer. Seven days before evidence began, the state provided the defendant with W’s resume and a copy of a slideshow presentation, prepared by W, that purportedly charted the location of the defendant’s and J’s cell phones, and A’s GPS device around the time of the shooting. J filed a motion in limine to preclude W’s testimony because of the state’s untimely disclosure of W as an expert on cell site location data. The defendant’s counsel did not file a similar motion, join J’s motion, or raise any concerns regarding the untimely disclosure at the hearing on J’s motion. The court denied J’s motion, and, at trial, W’s testimony and cell site location data showed that J, but not the defendant or A, had been near the crime scene at the time of the shooting. The defendant did not object to W’s testimony or the cell site location data and did not request a Porter hearing at that time. While cross-examining W, the defendant’s counsel emphasized that the data showed that the defendant had been with A in locations other than the crime scene, both before and after the shooting. After the defendant and J were convicted, the defendant appealed to the Appellate Court, claiming that the trial court improperly had admitted into evidence W’s testimony regarding the cell site location information without first conducting a Porter hearing, as required by this court’s decision in State v. Edwards (325 Conn. 97). The Appellate Court dis- agreed and affirmed the defendant’s conviction. During the pendency of the defendant’s appeal to this court from the Appellate Court’s judg- ment, this court reversed J’s conviction on the ground that the trial court had abused its discretion when it allowed W to testify without first granting J’s request for a reasonable continuance to obtain his own cell site information expert. Thereafter, this court granted the defendant’s petition for certification to appeal to this court, and the defendant claimed that, even though he admittedly failed to preserve any objection to the state’s untimely disclosure of W, this court should exercise its supervisory authority over the administration of justice to grant him the same remedy as J because they were tried jointly and suffered the same harm. The defendant also claimed on appeal that this court should review the merits of his unpreserved claim that the trial court improperly had failed to conducted a Porter hearing in accordance with Edwards. Held: 1. This court declined the defendant’s request to exercise its supervisory authority over the administration of justice to reverse his conviction, despite his failure to preserve any objection to the state’s untimely disclosure of W as an expert witness, as the defendant and J were not similarly situated or similarly harmed by the state’s untimely disclosure of W: W’s testimony regarding the cell site location data was less prejudi- cial to the defendant than it was to J insofar as it did not place the defendant near the crime scene at the time of the shooting, as it did with J; moreover, W’s testimony demonstrated, and the defendant’s counsel emphasized during cross-examination of W, that the defendant and A were together and not at the scene of the shooting both before and after it occurred, which suggested that defense counsel may have had strategic reasons for not objecting to W’s testimony; furthermore, the state’s case against the defendant was strong, as multiple witnesses identified him as the shooter, and a probation officer testified that he had witnessed A pick up the defendant from his home before the shooting and the defendant arrive back home after the shooting, whereas W’s testimony was central to the state’s case against J, who could not be identified as the shooter by any eyewitness; accordingly, because the defendant was not similarly situated to J, it was not anomalous to treat the defendant and J differently, and fairness and justice did not require the reversal of the defendant’s conviction. 2. This court declined to review the defendant’s unpreserved Porter claim: the trial court never ruled on the defendant’s pretrial motion in limine requesting a Porter hearing, he did not renew that request at trial, and this court recently rejected the same arguments that the defendant raised in the present case and determined that the retroactivity of the nonconstitutional evidentiary rule announced in Edwards, namely, that a Porter hearing is required to assess the scientific reliability of expert testimony concerning cell phone location information, does not relieve a defendant of his obligation to preserve such a claim; moreover, con- trary to the defendant’s contention, the requirement of preservation did not frustrate judicial economy by forcing attorneys to raise any conceivable legal claim in the hope that the law would change in the future. Argued May 2—officially released August 16, 2022

Procedural History

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
344 Conn. 343, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-rogers-conn-2022.