State v. Jean-Baptiste

Citations

• 226 Conn. App. 702

Syllabus

The defendant, who had been convicted, following a jury trial, of the crimes of larceny in the third degree, assault of public safety personnel, and interfering with an officer, appealed to this court, claiming that his sixth amendment right to counsel was violated by the trial court's alleged inadequate response to his claims of ineffective assistance of counsel during the trial. Held that the record was inadequate to review the defendant's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel on direct appeal to this court: the proper vehicle for the defendant to litigate his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel was a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and this court was unable to review, on the basis of the record before it, whether defense counsel's decisions not to object to the intro- duction of a police officer's body camera recording or to obtain a medical expert constituted ineffective assistance, as opposed to sound trial strat- egy, as the record did not reflect what other defenses or courses of action defense counsel considered, what options, if any, were available to him, how he concluded that a medical expert would not be helpful, or whether a medical expert's testimony would have, in fact, been helpful to the defense; moreover, because the defendant asked this court to review two specific allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel, while maintaining that he was not waiving any other ineffective assistance of counsel claims that he might assert against his defense counsel in a later habeas corpus proceeding, a review of the defendant's claims at this stage would result in a piecemeal resolution of the defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claims in the event that the defendant pursued additional claims in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus; furthermore, the duty the defendant sought to impose on the trial court would have required the court to make a qualitative judgment of defense counsel's performance throughout the trial proceedings,