State v. Police

Citations

• 343 Conn. 274

Syllabus

Convicted, on a conditional plea of nolo contendere, of the crimes of robbery in the first degree and assault in the first degree, the defendant appealed, challenging the trial court's denial of his motion to dismiss the informa- tion. In 2012, the victim was shot and robbed by an unknown assailant while she was standing near her car in a parking lot. The police thereafter conducted a search of an area near the crime scene and recovered various items, which were submitted to the state forensic science labora- tory for testing. In its DNA report, employees at the laboratory concluded that the DNA found on each item consisted of a mixture of DNA profiles and that the victim was not a source of or contributor to the mixed profiles. Following the release of video surveillance footage that cap- tured images of the suspect fleeing the crime scene, an anonymous caller contacted the police and reported that the suspect in the video footage looked like his cousin, the defendant, and that the defendant had told relatives that he had shot the victim. As part of their investiga- tion, the police compared the DNA profiles generated from the crime scene evidence with those in a database that contains the DNA profiles 343 Conn. 274 MAY, 2022 275 State v. Police of convicted felons. Because the police had been erroneously informed that the defendant's DNA profile was in the database, when the database search did not return a match, the police ceased their investigation of the defendant. In April, 2017, approximately six months before the expiration of the applicable five year statute of limitations ((Rev. to 2011) § 54-193 (b)), the police applied for a John Doe arrest warrant, alleging in an accompanying affidavit that there was probable cause for the statute of limitations to be tolled pending the arrest of an unknown male responsible for the assault and robbery of the victim, and allegedly identifiable through the DNA profiles obtained from the crime scene evidence and general d