Herbert v. Manson
| Decision Date | 18 March 1986 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | Alan W. HERBERT v. John R. MANSON, Commissioner of Correction. |
Michael O. Sheehan, New Haven, for appellant (petitioner).
C. Robert Satti, Sr., State's Atty., with whom, on the brief, was Michael L. Regan Asst. State's Atty., New London, for appellee (respondent).
Before PETERS, C.J., and HEALEY, DANNEHY, CALLAHAN and STOUGHTON, JJ.
The sole issue on this appeal is whether the petitioner has established that his conviction of the crimes of sexual assault in the first degree and kidnapping in the second degree should be overturned because of ineffective assistance of counsel. 1 The petitioner, Alan W. Herbert, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus alleging incompetence on the part of his retained counsel. The trial court, after an evidentiary hearing, dismissed the petition but granted the petitioner's request for certification to permit his appeal to this court. We find no error.
The petitioner claims on appeal, as he did in the trial court, that in defending the criminal action, his counsel should have moved to suppress a dart seized by the Groton police, without a warrant, from the petitioner's automobile. 2 Alleging that the dart was a critical element in the state's case, because it tended to link him to the scene of the assault, the petitioner maintains that the failure to file a suppression motion constituted ineffective assistance of counsel. Such ineffective assistance, according to the petitioner, deprived him of his constitutional rights under the sixth and fourteenth amendments to the United States constitution.
The principles that govern claims of ineffective assistance of counsel have recently been fully articulated, both by this court and by the United States Supreme Court. In order to establish his claim for a new trial, a petitioner must make a two-fold showing: (1) that his counsel's performance fell below the required standard of reasonable competence or competence displayed by lawyers with ordinary training and skill in the criminal law; and (2) that this lack of competency contributed so significantly to his conviction as to have deprived him of a fair trial. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 688, 694-95, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2065, 2068-2069 80 L.Ed.2d 674, reh. denied, --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 3562, 82 L.Ed.2d 864 (1984); Levine v. Manson, 195 Conn. 636, 639-40, 490 A.2d 82 (1985); Williams v. Manson, 195 Conn. 561, 564, 489 A.2d 377 (1985).
The trial court in this case concluded that the petitioner had failed to prove that his trial counsel had been ineffective. The court expressly found, with respect to the admissibility of the dart, that the Groton police had discovered the dart "in plain view on the floor of the petitioner's automobile while checking the windows on the driver's side of the car, with the permission of petitioner's wife." The petitioner's own expert had testified that an object seized in such circumstances would be admissible. This expert also acknowledged that he had not read the entire transcript in the criminal case, 3 and that, in replying critically to three discrete hypothetical questions posed to him at the habeas hearing, he did not undertake to express any...
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Small v. Commissioner of Correction, No. 17803.
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