State v. Alvarez

Citations

• 209 Conn. App. 250

Syllabus

Convicted of two counts of the crime of sexual assault in the fourth degree and two counts of the crime of risk of injury to a child, the defendant appealed to this court. The defendant's conviction stemmed from his alleged sexual abuse of the minor victim, K, who was a resident of the rehabilitation facility where the defendant was employed. Before trial, the court granted the state's motion to allow the introduction of uncharged misconduct evidence, specifically, evidence regarding the defendant's sexual abuse of A, another resident of the rehabilitation facility, and P, a woman the defendant allegedly had assaulted while he was employed as a police officer. Prior to trial, both the state and defense counsel subpoenaed records pertaining to K and A from, inter alia, the Department of Children and Families and various mental health facilities that had treated K and A. The court conducted an in camera review of these records for exculpatory material and released certain unspecified records to the parties; the rest of the records remained under seal. Held: 1. The trial court abused its discretion in keeping certain confidential records under seal and by not taking the steps required by State v. Esposito (192 Conn. 166) to disclose those records to the parties: several of the sealed records not disclosed to the defendant contained references to A's credibility and capacity for truthfulness, and the defendant did not have access to this information about A from another source; moreover, the court's failure to disclose these records was not harmless, as, although the state relied on evidence other than A's testimony to corrobo- rate K's testimony, there was little physical evidence that corroborated K's allegations, A was the only witness who testified at trial to seeing the defendant act in an inappropriate manner toward K, the prosecutor focused a significant portion of her closing argument on A's testimony, and defense counsel's probe of A's credibility during cross-