State v. Bradley

Syllabus

The defendant appealed to this court from the judgments of the trial court rendered in accordance with his conditional pleas of nolo contendere to charges of sale of a controlled substance and violation of probation. The charges stemmed from the discovery by probation officers of approximately thirty ounces of marijuana in the defendant's possession while they were conducting a home visit at his residence. At that time, the defendant was serving a sentence of probation in connection with a prior conviction of possession of marijuana with intent to sell. The defendant filed motions to dismiss the charges, claiming, inter alia, that his prosecution under Connecticut's statutes criminalizing the posses- sion and sale of marijuana violated his rights under the equal protection clause of the United States constitution because such statutes were enacted for the illicit purpose of discriminating against persons of Afri- can-American and Mexican descent. Following a hearing on the motions, the trial court, relying on State v. Long (268 Conn. 508), in which our Supreme Court stated that a genuine likelihood of criminal liability is sufficient to confer standing to challenge a statute, determined that although the defendant is Caucasian, he had standing to raise an equal protection challenge to the statutes under which he was charged, con- cluding that the defendant did not necessarily need to be a member of the class discriminated against by a challenged statute to be personally aggrieved by the statute. The trial court, however, denied the defendant's motions, ruling that he could not prevail on the merits of his equal protection claim. On the defendant's consolidated appeals to this court, held that the defendant could not prevail on his claim that the trial court erred in denying his motions to dismiss: although the trial court misapplied the rule set forth in Long and thereby incorrectly concluded that the defendant did not necessarily need to be a member of the class di