Roger B. v. Commissioner of Correction

Citations

• 234 Conn. App. 630

Syllabus

The petitioner, who had been convicted of various crimes as a result of incidents that occurred between 1995 and 2000, appealed, on the granting of certification, from the habeas court's judgment denying his second petition for a writ of habeas corpus. He claimed, inter alia, that his criminal trial counsel, C, and his counsel in two previous habeas trials, R and B, had rendered ineffective assistance by failing to raise a statute of limitations defense regarding the eighteen month delay between the issuance of the warrant for the petitioner's arrest in 2005 and the execution of the warrant in 2007. Held: The habeas court properly concluded that the petitioner was required to present new evidence in his third habeas trial, which B had not previously introduced, to demonstrate that C and B had rendered ineffective assistance, as the petitioner's claim that the court improperly applied the law of the case doctrine was based on his misunderstanding of that doctrine. The habeas court incorrectly determined that the petitioner failed to estab- lish that C and B had rendered ineffective assistance of counsel, as the new evidence presented at the third habeas trial established that the police had made no attempts at all to serve him with the arrest warrant, and an expert's testimony laid bare C's misunderstanding of the required showing of preju- dice under State v. Crawford (202 Conn. 443) that was the basis of C's failure to file a motion to dismiss the charges against the petitioner. The petitioner satisfied his burden to establish that he was prejudiced under Strickland v. Washington (466 U.S. 668) as a result of C's failure to rely on the delay in the execution of the arrest warrant, and, in conjunction with other evidence adduced at the habeas trial, B's failure to introduce into evidence a blank arrest warrant service record form that had been in the possession of the police, which provided a devastating counterpoint that would have undermined the credibility of the