State v. Gonzalez

Citations

• 214 Conn. App. 511

Syllabus

The defendant, who had been convicted, on a plea of guilty, of the crimes of assault in the first degree and carrying a pistol without a permit, appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court denying his motion to correct an illegal sentence. The defendant was sentenced in 2017 to a term of incarceration followed by a period of special parole. Subsequently, the legislature enacted No. 18-63, § 2, of the 2018 Public Acts (P.A. 18-63), which repealed and replaced subsection (b) of the special parole statute ((Rev. to 2017) § 54-125e), to require a trial court, when sentencing a person, to determine, based on various factors, whether a period of special parole was necessary to ensure public safety. The defendant alleged in his motion to correct an illegal sentence that P.A. 18-63 applied retroactively to his sentence of special parole and that the court should vacate that part of his sentence and hold a new sentencing hearing. The court denied the defendant's motion, concluding that P.A. 18-63 did not apply retroactively. On the defendant's appeal to this court, held: 1. The defendant could not prevail on his claim that § 2 of P.A. 18-63 was intended to apply retroactively to his sentence of special parole on the basis that § 54-125e is procedural in nature rather than substantive: this court concluded that the defendant's claim was governed by its decision in State v. Omar (209 Conn. App. 283), in which it determined that, because P.A. 18-63 repealed and replaced the imposition of a form of punishment for a criminal conviction, the plain meaning analysis set forth in State v. Bischoff (337 Conn. 739) controlled and the criminal savings statutes (§§ 54-194 and 1-1 (t)) applied to P.A. 18-63, and, having considered the plain language of § 2 of P.A. 18-63, determined that the act clearly and unambiguously prohibited retroactive application; moreover, this court determined in Omar that, in the absence of a clear and unequivocal expression of legislative inten