Carter v. State

Citations

• 194 Conn. App. 208

Syllabus

The petitioner, who had been convicted of the crimes of assault in the first degree, attempt to commit assault in the first degree, risk of injury to a child and criminal possession of a firearm, filed a petition for a new trial, alleging that he had been convicted due to fraud by the prosecutor. The trial court granted the motion for summary judgment filed by the respondent, the state of Connecticut, on the ground that the petitioner had filed the petition for a new trial past the applicable three year statute of limitations ([Rev. to 2001] § 52-582). The petitioner filed a motion for reconsideration in August, 2017, which the court denied in September, 2017, and the petitioner appealed to this court. In February, 2018, the petitioner filed a petition for certification to appeal from the denial of the petition for a new trial and a request for leave to file a late petition for certification, which the trial court denied. Subsequently, the peti- tioner filed a motion for reconsideration, which the court denied. On appeal, the petitioner claimed, inter alia, that the trial court abused its discretion by denying his late petition for certification to appeal. Held that the trial court properly denied the petitioner's request for permission to file a late petition for certification, as the petitioner failed to demon- strate how the court's ruling, based on the court's finding of a lack of good cause for the petitioner's delay, satisfied any of the criteria that constitutes an abuse of discretion; the record revealed that there was a delay of over four months from when the August, 2017 motion for reconsideration was denied and when the petitioner filed the petition for certification and the request for leave to file a late petition for certification, which was far beyond the statutory (§ 54-95 [a]) ten day time frame, and although the petitioner attributed the filing delay to errors by the office of the clerk, which incorrectly returned the petition to him, the trial cou