State v. Daren S.

Citations

• 236 Conn. App. 377

Syllabus

Convicted of several crimes, including sexual assault in the first degree, in connection with an incident involving his adult stepdaughter, A, the defen- dant appealed. He claimed, inter alia, that the trial court improperly admitted evidence of uncharged sexual assaults he committed against A when she was a minor. Held: The trial court properly exercised its discretion in permitting A to testify about three prior incidents of uncharged sexual assault against her for the purpose of establishing the defendant's propensity to engage in similar aberrant sexual behavior pursuant to the exception to the hearsay rule in a provision (§ 4-5) of the Connecticut Code of Evidence, as the charged offense and the uncharged misconduct both involved aberrant sexual behav- ior and were similar in nature and circumstance to the charged conduct, the uncharged misconduct was relevant in that it was not too remote in time from the charged offense and was committed against the same person, and the highly probative value of the uncharged misconduct evidence out- weighed its prejudicial effect, which the court mitigated by giving the jury a limiting instruction. This court was not convinced that the trial court abused its broad discretion by permitting the state to offer expert testimony about why A never reported the defendant's past misconduct against her, as the testimony was relevant to the jury's assessment of A's credibility, and the defendant provided no authority to support his argument that the expert's testimony was irrelevant simply because A's delay in reporting pertained to only the properly admitted uncharged misconduct evidence. This court rejected the defendant's unpreserved claim that his conviction of both sexual assault in the first degree and sexual assault in the third degree amounted to multiple punishments for the same act in violation of In accordance with our policy of protecting the privacy interests of the victims of sexual assault and family violence, we declin