State v. Juan F.

• Decision Date: 12 July 2022
• Docket Number: SC 20385
• Citation: 344 Conn. 33,277 A.3d 126
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. JUAN F.
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court

344 Conn. 33

277 A.3d 126

STATE of Connecticut

v.JUAN F.^*

SC 20385

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued February 24, 2022

Officially released July 12, 2022

Robert L. O'Brien, assigned counsel, with whom, on the brief, was Christopher Y. Duby, assigned counsel, for the appellant (defendant).

Thadius L. Bochain, deputy assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Sharmese L. Walcott, state's attorney, and Debra A. Collins, senior assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).

Robinson, C.J., and McDonald, D'Auria, Mullins, Kahn, Ecker and Keller, Js.

MULLINS, J.

The defendant, Juan F., was convicted, after a jury trial, of three counts of sexual assault in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-70 (a) (2), and one count of risk of injury to a child in violation of General Statutes (Rev. to 2001) § 53-21 (a) (2). On appeal,¹ the defendant claims that the trial court improperly denied his pretrial motion to dismiss for failure to prosecute him within the five year limitation period set forth in General Statutes (Rev. to 2001) § 54-193a.² Specifically, the defendant asserts that, although the court issued a warrant for his arrest within the statute of limitations, the police did not execute the warrant until nearly sixteen years after its issuance. As a result, the defendant argues, the warrant was not executed without unreasonable delay. See, e.g., State v. Crawford , 202 Conn. 443, 450–51, 521 A.2d 1034 (1987) ("an arrest warrant, when issued within the time limitations ... must be executed without unreasonable delay"). Therefore, the defendant asserts, the statute of limitations was not tolled, and the trial court should have granted his pretrial motion to dismiss the charges against him. We disagree and, accordingly, affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The following facts and procedural history are relevant to the resolution of this appeal. In early 2001, the defendant moved from Puerto Rico to Hartford. Prior to moving to Hartford, the defendant had been living with his mother in Puerto Rico. When he arrived in Connecticut, he moved into a home with his maternal uncle, R, his uncle's girlfriend, B, and B's six year old daughter, P. The defendant was approximately twenty-one years old.

Around midnight on October 19, 2001, P reported to R and B that the defendant had sexually assaulted her. Upon hearing this allegation, R and B immediately went into the living room of the residence and confronted the defendant with the allegations. In the defendant's presence, P repeated the allegations. The defendant denied the allegations. P responded, "[y]es, you did." B became visibly upset and informed the defendant that he was no longer welcome in their home. After learning of the allegations, B's brothers assaulted the defendant. By November, 2001, the defendant returned to his mother's home in Puerto Rico.

The Hartford police were contacted, and, within days of the disclosure, the police began an investigation. Shortly thereafter, on November 19, 2001, Mark Fowler, a detective with the Hartford Police Department, obtained a warrant for the defendant's arrest. When Fowler attempted to execute the warrant, he was informed by R and B that the defendant had left Connecticut and was living in Puerto Rico. Although Fowler attempted to get the defendant's address in Puerto Rico, neither R nor B was willing or able to provide him with the defendant's address or the name of the town in which he was residing. They did not share with Fowler that the defendant was residing with his mother in Puerto Rico.

Nevertheless, the trial court expressly found that Fowler prepared and disseminated a poster, indicating that the defendant was wanted by the Hartford Police Department. In addition, Fowler searched the state motor vehicle records, looking for any information related to the defendant's whereabouts. Fowler also conducted an electronic search for the defendant in the Hartford Police Department's local, in-house computer database. The searches yielded no results. Thereafter, Fowler entered the defendant's arrest warrant into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database, a national database administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and utilized by law enforcement, so that other law enforcement agencies would become aware that the defendant was subject to an outstanding warrant.

The defendant continued to reside in Puerto Rico from 2001 until 2017, with the exception of eight months, during 2010, when he lived in California. During that entire approximately sixteen year period, the defendant did not have a driver's license, did not pay any type of taxes, did not have a job for which taxes were withheld, and did not appear on any lease or other rental agreement. The trial court found that the defendant did not present any evidence to demonstrate that he was "a registered voter, a bank customer, a recipient of public benefits, an account holder with any utility company, or anything else of a similar nature."

While living in Puerto Rico, the defendant was arrested and eventually convicted on two separate occasions. Once, in 2003, he was arrested and convicted of stealing a car. As a result, he was incarcerated from 2003 through 2005. Thereafter, in 2006, the defendant was arrested and convicted of a home burglary. As a result of that conviction, he was incarcerated from 2006 through 2009. For reasons that are not clear, the Hartford police were never notified of the defendant's arrests or convictions despite having entered the defendant's arrest warrant into the NCIC database.

In May, 2017, the defendant moved from Puerto Rico to Rochester, New York. Within one month, the defendant was arrested in Rochester on charges unrelated to the present case. Presumably after finding the defendant's outstanding warrant in the NCIC database, Rochester police also charged the defendant with being a fugitive from justice. The defendant ultimately was returned to Connecticut, and the Hartford police served him with the arrest warrant on June 5, 2017.

Upon his return to Connecticut, the state charged the defendant with three counts of sexual assault in the first degree and one count of risk of injury to a child. The case was tried to a jury, which found the defendant guilty on all counts. The trial court rendered a judgment of conviction in accordance with the jury's verdict and sentenced the defendant to a total effective sentence of thirty years of incarceration, execution suspended after seventeen years, ten years mandatory minimum, followed by twenty years of probation. This direct appeal followed. Additional relevant facts and procedural history will be set forth as necessary.

We begin by setting forth the applicable standard of review and certain legal principles that govern a statute of limitations defense. "Statutes of limitation[s] are generally considered an affirmative defense which must be proved by [a criminal] defendant by a preponderance of the evidence. ... An affirmative defense is presented in the orderly course of a criminal trial after the prosecution has presented its case-in-chief. ... Practice Book § 41-8 (3)³ provides, however, that a defendant may also raise the statute of limitations defense in a pretrial motion to dismiss." (Citation omitted; footnote altered; internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Ward , 306 Conn. 698, 706–707, 52 A.3d 591 (2012).

This court previously has concluded that, "[w]hen an arrest warrant has been issued, and the prosecutorial official has promptly delivered it to a proper officer for service, he has done all he can under our existing law to initiate prosecution and to set in motion the machinery that will provide notice to the accused of the charges against him. When the prosecutorial authority has done everything possible within the period of limitation to evidence and effectuate an intent to prosecute, the statute of limitations is tolled. ... We also recognized, however, that some limit as to when an arrest warrant must be executed after its issuance is necessary in order to prevent the disadvantages to an accused attending stale prosecutions, a primary purpose of statutes of limitation[s]. ... Accordingly, we determined that, in order to toll the statute of limitations, an arrest warrant, when issued within the time limitations [specified by statute], must be executed without unreasonable delay. ... In reaching that determination, we expressly declined [to] adopt a per se approach as to what period of time to execute an arrest warrant is reasonable. A reasonable period of time is a question of fact that will depend on the circumstances of each case. If the facts indicate that an accused consciously eluded the authorities, or for other reasons was difficult to apprehend, these factors will be considered in determining what time is reasonable. If, on the other hand, the accused did not relocate or take evasive action to avoid apprehension, failure to execute an arrest warrant for even a short period of time might be unreasonable and fail to toll the statute of limitations." (Citations omitted; emphasis omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Swebilius , 325 Conn. 793, 802–803, 159 A.3d 1099 (2017), quoting State v. Crawford , supra, 202 Conn. at 450–51, 521 A.2d 1034.

We have adopted a two step test to determine whether an arrest warrant was executed without unreasonable delay. Specifically, in Swebilius , we held that, "once [a] defendant has demonstrated his availability for arrest, he has done all that is required to carry his burden; the burden then shifts to the state to demonstrate that any period of delay in executing the warrant was not unreasonable." State v. Swebilius , supra, 325 Conn. at 804, 159 A.3d 1099. "When a defendant presents evidence that [he] was not elusive, was available and was readily approachable ... [he] has discharged [his] burden under Crawford ." (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks...