In re Maliyah M.

Syllabus

The respondent parents in three separate cases appealed to this court from the judgments of the trial court terminating their parental rights as to their minor children. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the trials on the termination petitions were held virtually, either in whole or in part, via the Microsoft Teams platform, during which witnesses for the peti- tioner, the Commissioner of Children and Families, testified remotely. On appeal, the parents claimed that they were denied their rights to due process under the fourteenth amendment to the United States consti- tution because the trial courts did not first conduct an evidentiary hear- ing to determine whether, under State v. Jarzbek (204 Conn. 683), there was a compelling need for the petitioner's witnesses to testify remotely. Held that the records of the three trials were inadequate under State v. Golding (213 Conn. 233) to review the parents' unpreserved claims that they were denied due process when the trial courts failed to conduct hearings pursuant to Jarzbek before allowing the petitioner's witnesses to testify remotely: because the parents never objected to the virtual format of the termination trials on the ground that it violated their constitutional rights to confront the witnesses in person, the trial courts had no occasion to make findings of fact regarding the threat posed by COVID-19 and whether that threat was sufficiently compelling to curtail the parents' confrontation rights; moreover, the parents could not over- come the inadequacy of the trial records by claiming that they had an unqualified right to a hearing at which the petitioner would bear the burden of establishing by clear and convincing evidence a compelling governmental interest in presenting the witnesses' testimony virtually, that claim having been rejected by our Supreme Court in In re Annessa J. (343 Conn. 642); furthermore, even if the parents' claim was distinct from that asserted in In re Annessa J., it would fail under G