State v. William G.

Citations

• 232 Conn. App. 317

Syllabus

Convicted, after a jury trial, of sexual assault in the first degree and sexual assault in the second degree, the defendant appealed to this court. He claimed, inter alia, that the trial court improperly instructed the jury not to consider the victim's delayed reporting of the sexual assault when evaluating her credibility. Held: The trial court improperly instructed the jury that it should not consider the victim's delayed reporting when evaluating her credibility because, although the court's instruction was proper at the time that it was given, the Supreme Court's subsequent decision in State v. Adam P. (351 Conn. 213), which was released while the defendant's appeal was pending before this court, reinstated the standard, articulated in State v. Troupe, (237 Conn. 284), that a defendant in a sexual assault case is entitled to an instruction that ''any delay by the victim in reporting the incident is a matter for the jury to consider in evaluating the weight of the victim's testimony.'' The defendant met his burden of demonstrating that the trial court's improper jury instruction regarding the victim's delayed reporting was harm- ful and that he was entitled to a new trial because, as the verdict turned on the victim's credibility and the defendant's theory of defense related the victim's delayed reporting to her credibility, it was reasonably probable that the jury was misled into thinking it could not consider the delay in assessing the victim's credibility and that it could therefore not consider the defen- dant's principal theory of defense. The trial court properly instructed the jury regarding evidence of certain uncharged misconduct, as, pursuant to the Supreme Court's decision in State v. Cutler (293 Conn. 303), the trial court was not required to instruct the jury that, before it may consider such evidence, it must find that the state proved the uncharged misconduct by a preponderance of the evidence. Argued March 11—officially released April 29, 2025