State v. Joseph V.

Citations

• 345 Conn. 516

Syllabus

A criminal information is duplicitous when it charges a defendant in a single count with two or more distinct and separate criminal offenses, thereby implicating the defendant's constitutional right to a unanimous jury verdict. In the companion case of State v. Douglas C. (345 Conn. 421), this court recognized that a duplicitous information may raise two distinct and separate kinds of issues regarding a defendant's right to jury unanimity: unanimity as to the elements of a crime, which arises when a defendant is charged in a single count with having violated multiple statutory provisions, subsections, or clauses, requiring the court to determine whether the statutory provisions, subsections, or clauses constitute sep- arate elements of the statute, thereby requiring jury unanimity, or alterna- tive means of committing a single element, which do not require jury unanimity; and unanimity as to instances of conduct, which arises when a defendant is charged in a single count with having violated a single statutory provision, subsection, or clause on multiple, separate occasions. Convicted of the crimes of sexual assault in the first degree, risk of injury to a child, and conspiracy to commit risk of injury to a child in connection with his sexual abuse of the victim, the defendant appealed to the Appellate Court. T, the victim's half brother, began sexually abusing the victim when the victim was four or five years old. In 2006, T moved to a new residence with his and the victim's father, where the victim would periodically have overnight visits. T's sexual abuse of the victim continued at the father's residence. The defendant, who is a first cousin of the victim and T, also began to sexually abuse the victim at that time. The defendant and T often abused the victim simultaneously, and the In accordance with our policy of protecting the privacy interests of victims of the crime of risk of injury to a child, we decline to use the defendant's full name or to identify the v