Inglis v. Comm'r of Corr.

• Court: Appellate Court of Connecticut
• Parties: ANTONIO INGLIS v. COMMISSIONER OF CORRECTION
• Docket Number: AC 44492
• Decision Date: 28 June 2022

ANTONIO INGLIS
v.
COMMISSIONER OF CORRECTION

No. AC 44492

Court of Appeals of Connecticut

June 28, 2022

Argued January 31, 2022.

Syllabus

The petitioner, who had been convicted of several crimes, including murder, as a result of a shooting in a nightclub, sought a writ of habeas corpus. He claimed that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance as to the petitioner's third-party culpability defense and the admission into evidence of eyewitness identifications of the petitioner. The petitioner further claimed that his right to due process under the state constitution (article first, §§8 and 9) was violated because the eyewitness identifications of him were obtained through unnecessarily suggestive identification procedures. The petitioner had claimed that he could not properly be identified as the shooter because the witnesses could not distinguish between him and his brother, W, who was present at the time of the shooting. The trial court declined the petitioner's request to instruct the jury on third-party culpability, reasoning that the evidence failed to establish a direct connection between W and the crimes at issue. The petitioner claimed that his trial counsel were ineffective for having filed a request to charge that did not adequately refer to the evidence in support of the charge, which, in turn, resulted in the court's declining to give the jury a third-party culpability instruction. The habeas court rendered judgment denying the petition and, thereafter, denied the petitioner certification to appeal, and the petitioner appealed to this court. Held:

1. The habeas court did not abuse its discretion in denying the petitioner certification to appeal with respect to his claims that his trial counsel were ineffective in litigating his third-party culpability defense and issues relating to the admission at trial of the eyewitness identifications of him:

a. The habeas court properly determined that the petitioner was not prejudiced by his trial counsel's failure to cite certain evidence in their request for a jury instruction on third-party culpability, the petitioner having failed to demonstrate that there was a reasonable probability that the outcome of his trial would have been different had counsel included references to that evidence in the request to charge, as this court previously determined in the petitioner's direct appeal from his conviction that the trial court did not improperly decline to instruct the jury on the proposed charge because the evidence raised merely a bare suspicion as to a third party, which was insufficient to establish the required direct connection to that third party so as to warrant a charge on third-party culpability; moreover, contrary to the petitioner's claim that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance in failing to present the testimony of certain eyewitnesses in support of the petitioner's identification defense, the petitioner failed to rebut the presumption that counsel declined to call those witnesses on the basis of reasonable professional judgment, the habeas court having credited counsel's testimony that they had engaged in a risk analysis concerning whether to call the witnesses, one of whom may have given contradictory statements to the police, and the other of whom, in a written statement to the police, had identified the petitioner as the shooter, and it was not for this court to second-guess the decision of trial counsel when counsel were aware of the substance of the witnesses' anticipated testimony and made the reasonable decision not to present it due to its potentially harmful nature.

b. The petitioner failed to show a reasonable probability that counsel would have been successful in seeking to offer the testimony of an eyewitness identification expert, as any such effort would likely have been fruitless in light of our Supreme Court's case law at the time of the petitioner's criminal trial, which made clear that such testimony generally was disfavored and that it would not have been an abuse of a trial court's discretion to refuse to allow it; accordingly, the petitioner could not demonstrate that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by declining to pursue a motion for expenses to retain and,

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ultimately, not to call, an eyewitness identification expert; moreover, the procedures the police employed concerning the photographic array of suspects that they showed to the witnesses were within the acceptable parameters of effective and fair police work and satisfied the requirements of due process, as the petitioner failed to present credible evidence that those procedures were so flawed as to present a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification; furthermore, the petitioner failed to establish that his trial counsel performed deficiently by not presenting evidence that an eyewitness to the shooting had chosen a photograph other than that of the petitioner from the array of photographs prepared by the police, as counsel's choice not to call that witness was not outside the wide range of reasonable professional assistance, the witness was only 50 percent sure of his choice from the array, he was not emphatic in his knowledge of the shooter's identity and, thus, could have testified that the petitioner was the shooter, thereby hurting the petitioner's defense, the witness' statement to the police tended to undermine the petitioner's third-party culpability defense and, even if counsel had performed deficiently by failing to question the witness, the jury's guilty verdict was supported by substantial other evidence concerning the petitioner's identity as the shooter.

2. The petitioner failed to establish cause and prejudice to overcome his procedural default in having failed to claim at his criminal trial and on direct appeal that the admission into evidence of the eyewitness identifications of him as the shooter violated his right to due process under article first, §§8 and 9; contrary to the petitioner's contention that good cause existed for that failure because established law at that time would have made his argument futile, the habeas court properly determined that he had a reasonable basis at that time to claim that the identification procedures at issue were unnecessarily suggestive and, thus, that he did not establish good cause and prejudice because our Supreme Court's case law at that time explicitly invited continued challenges to identification procedures.

Procedural History

Amended petition for a writ of habeas corpus, brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of Tolland and tried to the court, Chaplin, J.; judgment denying the petition; thereafter, the court denied the petition for certification to appeal and issued an articulation of its decision, and the petitioner appealed to this court. Appeal dismissed.

Vishal K. Garg, assigned counsel, for the appellant (petitioner).

Nancy L. Chupak, senior assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Michael A. Gailor, state's attorney, Tamara A. Grosso, former senior assistant state's attorney, and Samantha L. Oden, former deputy assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (respondent).

Prescott, Moll and Bishop, Js.

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OPINION

BISHOP, J.

The petitioner, Antonio Inglis, appeals following the denial of his petition for certification to appeal from the judgment of the habeas court denying his third amended petition for a writ of habeas corpus. On appeal, the petitioner claims that the habeas court abused its discretion in denying his petition for certification to appeal and improperly rejected his claims that (1) his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance in his underlying criminal trial, and (2) his right to due process under the Connecticut constitution was violated by the admission of both out-of-court and in-court eyewitness identifications of him that were obtained through unnecessarily suggestive identification procedures. We conclude that the court did not abuse its discretion in denying the petition for certification to appeal and, accordingly, dismiss the petitioner's appeal.

The following facts and procedural history are relevant to our resolution of this appeal. After a jury trial, the petitioner was convicted of two counts of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a (a), one count of capital felony murder in violation of General Statutes (Rev. to 2007) § 53a-54b (7), one count of assault in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-59 (a) (5), and one count of carrying a pistol without a permit in violation of General Statutes § 29-35 (a). The petitioner received a total effective sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of release, plus twenty-five years.

This court's opinion in the petitioner's direct appeal; see State v. Inglis, 151 Conn.App. 283, 94 A.3d 1204, cert, denied, 314 Conn. 920, 100 A.3d 851 (2014), cert, denied, 575 U.S. 918, 135 S.Ct. 1559, 191 L.Ed.2d 647 (2015); sets forth the following facts: "[I]n the early hours of February 10, 2008, an altercation ensued at the Cocktails on the Green nightclub (club) in Cromwell that left two men dead and another wounded. The altercation began when the [petitioner] repeatedly antagonized one of the victims, Tyrese Lockhart, a patron seated at the bar with friends. Lockhart and his friends eventually confronted the [petitioner] and asked him to leave Lockhart alone. A group of the [petitioner's] friends that included his brother, Daren Walls, likewise encouraged the [petitioner] to leave Lockhart alone. When Israel Dandrade, a disc jockey who was performing at the club that evening, announced 'last call' soon thereafter, Lockhart headed toward an exit with friends. At that moment, the [petitioner] brandished a chrome revolver and fired several shots in Lockhart's direction. One shot struck Lockhart in the head, another struck Dandrade in the eye, and a...