State v. Smith

Citations

• 209 Conn. App. 296

Syllabus

The defendant, who previously had been convicted on a plea of guilty of the crime of possession of narcotics with intent to sell, appealed to this court following the trial court's denial of his motion to correct an illegal sentence. In 2013, as part of his plea agreement, the defendant was sentenced to five years of incarceration, followed by five years of special parole. In 2018, our legislature enacted a public act (P.A. 18-63), which amended certain statutes (§§ 53a-28 (b) and 54-125e (b)) to eliminate special parole as a punishment for certain drug related offenses, includ- ing that for which the defendant had been convicted and sentenced, and to require the trial court to make certain determinations prior to the imposition of a period of special parole. Thereafter, the defendant filed a motion to correct an illegal sentence. The defendant argued that he should be resentenced because P.A. 18-63 eliminated special parole as a possible punishment for the offense for which he had been sen- tenced. The state filed an objection to the motion. The trial court denied the motion, stating that §§ 53a-28 (b) and 54-125e (b) were substantive, rather than procedural, in nature and, as such, the amendments required by P.A. 18-63 did not apply retroactively. Held that the trial court properly denied the defendant's motion to correct an illegal sentence: contrary to the defendant's claim, this court's retroactivity analysis was not con- trolled by the doctrine of clarifications because P.A. 18-63 was a change in the law, rather than clarifying legislation, as the legislature did not incorporate into the act an explicit statement of its intent to clarify §§ 53a-28 (b) and 54-125e (b), the prior language of those statutes was already clear, and, through the enactment of P.A. 18-63, the legislature added language to change such statutes by narrowing their application, and, accordingly, this court was not required to consider the legislative history of the act in determining the