State v. Castro

Syllabus

Convicted of the crime of murder in connection with the shooting death of the victim, the defendant appealed. He claimed that the trial court vio- lated his right under the confrontation clause of the sixth amendment when it admitted into evidence a certain ballistics report, whose author did not testify at trial, after defense counsel expressly waived the defen- dant's confrontation right. The state had elicited testimony from R, a police forensics supervisor, about the findings of the report, which R neither authored nor peer-reviewed. Defense counsel indicated to the court that, to expedite matters, he had no objection to the admission of the report or to R's testifying about its contents. The defendant further claimed that this court should hold that the right to confrontation can only be personally waived by the defendant because article first, § 8, of the Connecticut constitution provides greater protection than the federal constitution. Held: 1. The defendant could not prevail on his unpreserved claim that counsel's waiver of his confrontation right was invalid because the trial court failed to make a finding that counsel's decision was a legitimate trial tactic or part of a prudent trial strategy: despite the defendant's claim that his counsel's rationale for the waiver, which was to expedite matters, could not be considered a legitimate trial tactic or part of a prudent trial strategy, counsel's indication to the court that he had no objection to the admission of the ballistics report or to R's testifying as to its contents constituted a valid, express waiver of the defendant's sixth amendment confrontation clause claim, and this court declined to apply a rule requiring the trial court to explore defense counsel's rationale for the waiver and to make a finding that it was either a legitimate trial tactic or part of a prudent trial strategy before accepting the waiver, our Supreme Court having repeatedly and expressly rejected the proposition that a trial co