State v. Heriberto B.

Citations

• 207 Conn. App. 192

Syllabus

The defendant, who had been convicted, on a plea of guilty, of two counts of the crime of risk of injury to a child, appealed to this court, claiming that the trial court improperly dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction the first of two motions he had filed to correct an illegal sentence and violated his right to a jury trial. The defendant asserted in his first motion to correct that his sentence on both risk of injury counts violated the fifth amendment's prohibition of double jeopardy. Concurrently with that motion, he filed a motion for the appointment of counsel to assist him in preparing and filing a motion to correct an illegal sentence. The trial court appointed P, who found no merit to the issues raised in the first motion to correct. P then filed a second motion to correct an illegal sentence and to vacate the guilty plea on the ground that the defendant's plea to one of the two risk of injury counts was not made knowingly and voluntarily because the prosecutor's recitation of the factual basis for the plea with respect to that count had referenced a sexual assault that was not alleged in the arrest warrant or charged in the state's operative information. When the trial court then advised the defendant about the option of proceeding as a self-represented party if he wanted to pursue the claims in his first motion to correct, he stated that he did not intend to proceed as a self-represented party. The court then denied a motion the defendant had filed to discharge P and denied the second motion to correct an illegal sentence, concluding that the claims raised in the second motion were more properly brought in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Held: 1. This court declined to review the defendant's claim that the trial court improperly dismissed his first motion to correct an illegal sentence; the trial court could not, and did not, render judgment on the merits of that motion, as it was superseded by the second motion to correct an illegal