State v. Carter

Citations

• 194 Conn. App. 202

Syllabus

The defendant, who had been convicted of the crimes of assault in the first degree, attempt to commit assault in the first degree, risk of injury to a child and criminal possession of a firearm, appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court dismissing his motion to set aside the judgment of conviction. The court dismissed the defendant's motion to set aside the judgment, filed in 2017, on the ground of collateral estoppel in that the defendant's claim of ''after-discovered fraud'' on the court had already been considered and rejected multiple times before, includ- ing, most recently, when the trial court denied a motion to open and set aside the judgment he had filed in 2010, which alleged, inter alia, fraud concerning ballistics evidence. Alternatively, the court concluded that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the 2017 motion to set aside the judgment and that, even if the defendant could make out a cognizable fraud claim, no fraud exception exists to the finality of crimi- nal judgments. Held that the defendant could not prevail on his claim that the trial court erred in dismissing his 2017 motion to set aside the judgment of conviction, as the defendant's appeal was rendered moot because he failed to challenge all independent grounds for the court's adverse ruling: although the defendant claimed that it was error for the trial court to find that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the 2017 motion to set aside the judgment, he failed to challenge the court's independent ground for dismissing the 2017 motion to set aside the judgment, namely, that the defendant's claim was substantively the same as others he had made multiple times before, most recently in 2010, and, thus, was collaterally estopped, and, therefore, even if this court agreed with the defendant on the merits of his subject matter jurisdiction claim, there was no practical relief that could be afforded to him in light of the unchallenged collateral estoppel basis for the