State v. Calderon-Perez

Citations

• 234 Conn. App. 228

Syllabus

Convicted, following a jury trial, of the crimes of assault in the second degree and breach of the peace in the second degree, the defendant appealed. He claimed, inter alia, that the trial court improperly excluded as irrelevant a uniform arrest report that included evidence of his physical appearance six months after the crime. Held: The trial court abused its discretion in excluding the uniform arrest report as irrelevant, as the central question before the jury was the identity of the perpetrator of the assault, it was vital to the defendant's theory of defense of mistaken identification that he be able to dispute the notion that he was the person depicted in a video of the perpetrator admitted into evidence, which necessarily involved a comparison of the appearance of the perpetra- tor in the video to that of the defendant, and the fact that the uniform arrest report was prepared six months after the assault was a matter concerning the weight of the evidence to be afforded by the jury, not its admissibility, and it did not diminish its relevance to the issue of the identity of the perpetrator. The trial court's erroneous exclusion of the uniform arrest report rose to the level of a constitutional violation of the defendant's right to present a defense, as the information pertaining to the defendant's appearance in the uniform arrest report was highly probative, material and potentially exculpatory, the record suggested that the excluded evidence was the most compelling evidence available to the defendant to establish his misidentifica- tion defense because it was the only evidence from an independent, objective party that the defendant could have offered at trial concerning his appear- ance closer to the time of the incident, the defendant took the steps necessary to exercise his right to present a defense, and nothing in the record indicated that there were other means by which the defendant was permitted to adequately present his misidentification defense. Th