State v. Bester

Citations

• 353 Conn. 720

Syllabus

Convicted of murder and criminal possession of a firearm in connection with the shooting death of the victim, the defendant appealed to this court. He claimed, inter alia, that his constitutional right to confrontation was violated when the trial court allowed G, the state's gunshot residue expert, to base her testimony on the data and notes of K, the analyst who performed the gunshot residue test but who did not testify at trial, and when the prosecutor, while cross-examining the defendant, elicited certain testimonial hearsay statements. Held: The defendant's unpreserved claim that his right to confrontation was vio- lated when the trial court allowed G to base her testimony on the data and notes of K failed under the first prong of State v. Golding (213 Conn. 233), as the record was inadequate to determine whether K's data and notes were testimonial in nature. This court declined to adopt the state's proposed blanket rule, which was based on its assertion that the confrontation clause is not self-executing, that all confrontation claims that are not preserved at trial are forfeited and thus not reviewable under Golding. The state's proposed rule ran the risk of undermining the purpose of Golding review, which is to save unpreserved but meritorious constitutional claims that implicate fundamental rights when the record is adequate for appellate review, by eliminating a narrow class of unpreserved but not affirmatively 353 Conn. 720 DECEMBER, 2025 721 State v. Bester waived confrontation clause claims, even when a constitutional violation is apparent from an adequate record. The confrontation clause's prohibition against the admission of an unavail- able witness' out-of-court statements applies only to testimonial hearsay, and a determination of whether hearsay is testimonial is dependent in part on whether the declarant had a reasonable expectation, under the circum- stances, that his or her words subsequently could be used for purposes of prosecution. In the pres