State v. Evans

Citations

• 352 Conn. 794

Syllabus

Convicted of murder and carrying a pistol without a permit in connection with the shooting death of the victim, the defendant appealed to this court. The defendant claimed that the trial court had improperly admitted the testimony of a lay witness, M, concerning his identification of the defendant in a photograph that was taken from surveillance video footage captured around the time of the victim's murder. The defendant also claimed that the trial court had improperly denied in part his motion to suppress certain cell site location information that the police had acquired after obtaining a search warrant for records relating to the defendant's cell phone. Held: Application of the factors articulated in State v. Gore (342 Conn. 129) for assessing whether a witness is more likely than the fact finder to correctly identify an individual depicted in a surveillance video or photograph led this court to conclude that the trial court had not abused its discretion when it allowed M to testify regarding his identification of the defendant from the photograph. Although M had encountered the defendant only once prior to identifying him from the photograph forty-three days after that encounter, the trial court appropriately considered the nature of the encounter in determining that M had more than a minimal degree of familiarity with the defendant, as M's focus during the encounter was heavily on the defendant, M had the opportunity to observe the defendant's gait and posture, M was able to view the defendant's face directly, the encounter took place during the daytime, and the defendant's face was unobstructed. Moreover, the photograph from which M identified the defendant was taken from surveillance footage captured just four days after M had seen and spoken with the defendant, and, thus, M would have been familiar with the 352 Conn. 794 AUGUST, 2025 795 State v. Evans defendant's facial features and other characteristics as they appeared in the photograph. Furthermore, ther