State v. Chester J.

Citations

• 204 Conn. App. 137

Syllabus

The defendant, who had been convicted of various crimes in connection with the sexual assault of the victim, appealed, claiming, inter alia, that the trial court improperly denied his challenge to the jury panel, which he claimed did not represent a fair cross section of the community in violation of the sixth amendment and had been summoned under a process that violated his right to equal protection. The defendant further invited this court to exercise its supervisory authority to require the collection and/or maintenance of venire panel demographic data. During jury selection, the court conducted a hearing on the defendant's objec- tion to the jury panel. Relying on census data, information from the prospective jurors' questionnaires and the testimony of an expert witness who used a Baysean probability model to predict the race of the prospec- tive jurors, the defendant claimed that the state failed to engage in substantive changes to remedy the underrepresentation of minorities and overrepresentation of Caucasians in prospective jury pools and that the state failed to adopt measures to increase minority participation in jury pools. The questionnaires stated that prospective jurors had the option of providing information as to their race but that they need not do so if they found it objectionable. The defendant also provided testimony from eight witnesses about how venire pools were selected throughout the state and about the nonenforcement of civil penalties on nonappearing jurors. None of the witnesses testified that they or the state entities where they were employed compiled or maintained data as to the racial or ethnic composition of venire panels in the state. The defendant thus claimed that the Judicial Branch had seemingly demonstrated wilful blindness in regard to the statutory (§ 51-232 (c)) requirement that it assure that venire panels are nondiscriminatory. He also asserted that the state's failure to take action with jurors who did not report for duty