State v. Smith

Citations

• 338 Conn. 54

Syllabus

Pursuant to this court's decision in State v. Polanco (308 Conn. 242), the proper remedy for a double jeopardy violation arising out of cumulative convictions is to vacate one of the convictions rather than merging them. The defendant, who had been convicted of felony murder and manslaughter in the first degree, among other crimes, appealed from the trial court's denial of his motion to correct an illegal sentence. The sentencing court had merged the defendant's felony murder and manslaughter convictions and sentenced him to sixty years' incarceration in connection with the felony murder conviction. In his motion to correct, the defendant claimed, inter alia, that the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy was violated because, under Polanco, which was decided after the defendant was convicted, the sentencing court had incorrectly merged the felony murder and manslaughter convictions instead of vacating the manslaughter conviction. The trial court denied the defen- dant's motion to correct, concluding that the rule announced in Polanco did not apply retroactively to the defendant's case because this court decided Polanco pursuant to its supervisory authority over the adminis- tration of justice. The Appellate Court affirmed the trial court's denial of the motion to correct, and the defendant, on the granting of certification, appealed to this court. Held that the Appellate Court improperly affirmed the trial court's denial of the defendant's motion to correct an illegal sentence because the trial court should have dismissed that motion for lack of subject matter jurisdiction rather than having denied it: the defendant did not claim that his sentence was affected in any manner by the allegedly cumulative convictions, the sentencing court did not impose any sentence on the merged manslaughter conviction, and the only remedy that the defendant sought, namely, vacatur of the man- slaughter conviction, would have had no effect on the length, computa- tion or