Haywood v. Commissioner of Correction

Citations

• 194 Conn. App. 757

Syllabus

The petitioner, who had been convicted of, inter alia, felony murder and robbery in the first degree as an accessory, filed a second petition for a writ of habeas corpus, claiming that his prior habeas counsel, D, and his original appellate counsel, F, had provided ineffective assistance. The habeas court rendered judgment denying the habeas petition. There- after, the court denied the petition for certification to appeal, and the petitioner appealed to this court. On appeal, he claimed that the habeas court improperly concluded that he was not denied the effective assis- tance of counsel by D with respect to D's efforts to establish that F was ineffective. Although F, in a petition for certification to appeal to our Supreme Court, claimed that it was improper for this court in the petition- er's direct appeal to order that the trial court modify the petitioner's conviction of robbery in the first degree as an accessory to a conviction of accessory to attempt to commit robbery in the first degree, he failed to include a citation to State v. Sanseverino (287 Conn. 608) (Sansever- ino I), in which our Supreme Court, after reversing the defendant's kidnapping conviction, noted the possibility that the state could ask the court to modify the defendant's conviction to the lesser included offense of unlawful restraint in the second degree. The petitioner also claimed that F was ineffective in failing, while the petition was pending in our Supreme Court, to file a motion for reconsideration in this court regard- ing the modification issue after our Supreme Court officially released its decision in Sanseverino I. He further claimed that D was deficient in the petitioner's first habeas trial because he failed to point out suffi- ciently F's errors, and because he failed to advance the legal analyses set forth in the concurring opinion by Chief Justice Rogers in State v. Sanseverino (291 Conn. 574) (Sanseverino II), which questioned the wisdom of allowing the modification of