State v. Rodriguez

Citations

• 337 Conn. 175

Syllabus

Convicted, after a jury trial, of sexual assault in the first degree and criminal attempt to commit sexual assault in the first degree, the defendant appealed. The defendant's conviction stemmed from an incident in which two Hispanic men pulled a woman, who was walking on a street in New Britain, into the backseat of their car and sexually assaulted her. The listing of justices reflects their seniority status on this court as of the date of oral argument. 176 JULY, 2021 337 Conn. 175 State v. Rodriguez Approximately ten years after the incident, the defendant became a person of interest based on a match between the DNA sample that had been extracted from the victim's sexual assault evidence kit and a sample of the defendant's DNA that had been placed into a database at some point after the victim's assault. The police interviewed the defendant, and he denied that the incident in question occurred but consented to the taking of a buccal swab, which the police submitted to the state forensic laboratory for analysis. The laboratory subsequently reported a match between the DNA from the defendant's buccal swab and that taken from the victim's sexual assault evidence kit, and the police inter- viewed the defendant again. During the second interview, the defendant admitted that he did have a threesome after he picked up a man and a woman near an automobile parts store. At trial, three laboratory reports analyzing the DNA samples were introduced into evidence through the testimony of P, a forensic science examiner with the state forensic laboratory. The first of the three reports was produced in 2007 and described the results of the victim's sexual assault evidence kit. The second and third reports were produced in 2016 and were based on comparisons of the DNA samples from the sexual assault evidence kit and the defendant's buccal swab. P testified regarding the procedures used to test the DNA evidence and the results contained in the three reports. The third and final rep