Santaniello v. Commissioner of Correction

Citations

• 230 Conn. App. 741

Syllabus

The petitioner, who had been convicted of several crimes, appealed, on the granting of certification, from the habeas court's judgment denying his habeas corpus petition. The petitioner claimed, inter alia, that the habeas court improperly rejected his claim that his prior habeas counsel, B, had rendered ineffective assistance, inter alia, by failing to allege that his criminal trial counsel, R, and his counsel on direct appeal, S, were ineffective in failing to raise a claim that the admission of statements by a jailhouse informant, M, at the petitioner's criminal trial violated the petitioner's sixth amendment right to confrontation under Crawford v. Washington (541 U.S. 36), which had been decided eleven days before his sentencing. The habeas court properly concluded that B did not render ineffective assistance by not raising the Crawford claim as to R because R did not perform deficiently by failing to move for a new trial in the eleven day period before the petitioner's sentencing, as no court during that time frame had further clarified how Crawford applied generally or specifically as to the statements of government informants such as M, and R's failure to advance a novel constitutional argument did not constitute ineffective assis- tance. This court concluded that B did not render ineffective assistance by not raising the Crawford claim as to S because, although S should have known that she could have raised the unpreserved Crawford claim on direct appeal in light of State v. Greene (274 Conn. 134), which had adjudicated an unpre- served Crawford claim several months before S filed her appellate brief, the habeas court properly concluded that any improper admission of M's statements constituted harmless error, as M's statements were unnecessary and cumulative of other independent evidence of the petitioner's guilt, and, because there was not a reasonable likelihood that the Crawford claim would have succeeded on appeal, the petitioner was not prejudiced by S