State v. Maharg

Citations

• 352 Conn. 355

Syllabus

Convicted, after a trial to a three judge panel, of murder and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, the defendant appealed to this court. The trial court had suppressed certain statements the defendant made to the police during a station house interrogation, including the defendant's confes- sion that he had killed the victim, on the ground that those statements were not voluntarily made. The trial court, however, declined to suppress certain other statements the defendant had made after the station house interroga- tion ended and while he was in the hospital, including another confession that he had killed the victim, on the ground that those statements were spontaneous and freely made. On appeal, the defendant claimed, inter alia, that he was deprived of his federal and state constitutional rights to due process and against self-incrimination because, although the trial court had properly suppressed his station house statements, the prosecutor improperly relied on those statements in securing his murder conviction. The defendant also claimed that the admission into evidence of his hospital statements violated his constitutional right to due process because those statements were a product of the station house interrogation and confession. Held: The defendant's unpreserved claim that the prosecutor and the trial court had improperly relied on his station house statements in securing his murder conviction and in finding the defendant guilty, respectively, failed under the first prong of State v. Golding (213 Conn. 233), as the record was inadequate for this court's review of that claim. The defendant's claim was premised on the argument that, to develop their own opinions, three experts who testified at trial, two for the state and one for the defendant, relied in part on an investigative report prepared by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) that referred to the suppressed station house confession, but the defendant failed to demonstrate that