State v. Williams

Citations

• 200 Conn. App. 427

Syllabus

Convicted, after a jury trial, of sexual assault in the first degree, sexual assault in the fourth degree and risk of injury to a child, the defendant appealed to this court. He claimed that he was entitled to a new trial on the basis of alleged prosecutorial improprieties during the state's closing argument and the state's examination of its witnesses, which resulted in a denial of his due process right to a fair trial, and that the evidence was insufficient to support the mandatory minimum sentence imposed by the court pursuant to statute (§ 53a-70 (b) (2)). Held: 1. The defendant could not prevail on his claim that he was deprived of his right to a fair trial as a result of alleged prosecutorial improprieties: the prosecutor's references to the complainant as the ''victim'' did not constitute prosecutorial impropriety as the prosecutor's use of the word ''victim'' was relatively infrequent, the court repeatedly instructed the jurors that the arguments of counsel were not evidence, the prosecutor reminded the jury at the beginning of her rebuttal that closing arguments were ''arguments,'' and, when defense counsel objected to the prosecu- tor's use of the word ''victim'' during closing argument, the trial court sustained the objection and immediately instructed the jury to disregard it, whereby the prosecutor promptly apologized in front of the jury; moreover, the prosecutor's statements expressing her opinion on the credibility of the victim during closing argument were proper argument because they reflected reasonable inferences that the jury could have drawn from the evidence produced at trial, and, as it was the defendant's theory of defense that the evidence showed that that the victim made up the allegations against the defendant, the prosecutor was allowed to address that argument in her closing argument; furthermore, the prosecutor did not improperly elicit comments on the credibility of the victim from the state's witnesses, as the witnesses' inappropriat