State v. Ziolkowski

Citations

• 351 Conn. 143

Syllabus

Convicted of the murder of her minor son, E, and of arson in the second degree, the defendant appealed to this court. The defendant claimed, inter alia, that the trial court had improperly admitted into evidence certain posts from her purported social media account and that the evidence was insufficient to find her guilty of the offenses of which she had been con- victed. Held: The defendant's claim on appeal that her inability to remember the twenty- four to thirty-six hour period surrounding the murder and arson deprived her of her constitutional right to a fair trial failed under the first prong of State v. Golding (213 Conn. 233) insofar as the defendant had not asked the trial court to make the requisite posttrial determination regarding the fairness of the trial, and, consequently, the record was inadequate for this court's review of this unpreserved claim. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting into evidence certain posts from the defendant's purported social media account, that court having correctly concluded that the posts were properly authenticated. The testimony at trial was sufficient to satisfy the low bar for a prima facie showing of authenticity, and, although this court recognized the potential for manipulation in the context of electronically stored information, the threshold for authentication continues to be a modest one, and any doubts that existed with respect to the reliability or authorship of the posts went to the weight of the evidence rather than its admissibility. The evidence was sufficient to support the defendant's conviction of murder, as the jury reasonably could have found from the cumulative force of the evidence presented at trial that it was the defendant who caused E's death and that she had the intent to do so. The evidence was sufficient to support the defendant's conviction of arson in the second degree, as the jury reasonably could have found that the defendant started the fires that formed the basis of h