Banks v. Commissioner of Correction

Citations

• 339 Conn. 1

Syllabus

In accordance with this court's decision in State v. Salamon (287 Conn. 509), when a criminal defendant is charged with kidnapping in conjunc- tion with another underlying crime, such as robbery, the jury must be instructed that the defendant cannot be convicted of kidnapping if the restraint imposed on the victim was merely incidental to the commission of that underlying crime. The petitioner, who had been convicted of multiple counts of kidnapping in the first degree and robbery in the first degree in connection with armed robberies at two separate retail stores, sought a writ of habeas corpus, claiming that his due process right to a fair trial under the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the United States constitution was violated. In each armed robbery, after the petitioner obtained money from his victims, he forced them at gunpoint into the store's bathroom and attempted to jam the bathroom door shut. The victims remained inside of the bathroom for only a few minutes, exiting once they believed that the petitioner left the store. Following this court's determination that Salamon, which had been decided more than ten years after the petitioner's trial, applied retroactively in habeas actions, the petitioner challenged his kidnapping convictions on the ground that the jury instructions at his criminal trial were not in accordance with the require- The listing of justices reflects their seniority status on this court as of the date of oral argument. 1 2 OCTOBER, 2021 339 Conn. 1 Banks v. Commissioner of Correction ments set forth in Salamon. The habeas court denied the petitioner's habeas petition, concluding that the respondent, the Commissioner of Correction, had demonstrated that the absence of a Salamon instruction was harmless error. On the granting of certification, the petitioner appealed to the Appellate Court, which reversed the habeas court's judgment. The Appellate Court concluded that a jury reasonably could have found that the petitioner's movement a