State v. Raynor, SC 20183

• Court: Supreme Court of Connecticut
• Writing for the Court: KAHN, J.
• Docket Number: SC 20183
• Parties: STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. DONALD RAYNOR
• Decision Date: 04 December 2020

STATE OF CONNECTICUT
v.
DONALD RAYNOR

No. SC 20183

Supreme Court of Connecticut

December 4, 2020 ^[**]

Argued February 21, 2020

Procedural History

Substitute information charging the defendant with the crime of murder, brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of Hartford and tried to the jury before the court, Kwak, J.; verdict and judgment of guilty, from which the defendant appealed to this court, which transferred the appeal to the Appellate Court, Keller, Elgo and Eveleigh, Js., which affirmed the judgment of the trial court, and the defendant, on the granting of certification, appealed to this court. Reversed; new trial.

Andrew P. O'Shea, with whom was Damon A. R. Kirschbaum, for the appellant (defendant).

James A. Killen, senior assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Gail P. Hardy, former state's attorney, and Patrick J. Griffin, state's attorney, for the appellee (state).

Maura Barry Grinalds and Darcy McGraw filed a brief for the Connecticut Innocence Project et al. as amici curiae.

Lisa J. Steele, assigned counsel, filed a brief for the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association as amicus curiae.

Charles D. Ray, Angela M. Healey, and M. Chris Fabricant, pro hac vice, filed a brief for the Innocence Project, Inc., as amicus curiae.

Robinson, C. J., and Palmer, McDonald, D'Auria, Mullins and Kahn, Js. ^[*]

OPINION

KAHN, J.

The defendant, Donald Raynor, appeals from the judgment of the Appellate Court, which affirmed the judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of the crime of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a (a).^[1] State v. Raynor, 181 Conn.App. 760, 778, 189 A.3d 652 (2018). The defendant claims that the Appellate Court incorrectly concluded that the trial court had properly (1) denied his motion for a Porter^[2] hearing on the reliability of ballistics evidence, (2) denied his motion in limine seeking to limit the scope of testimony from the state's firearm and toolmark examiner, and (3) denied the defendant's motion to exclude uncharged misconduct evidence related to a subsequent shooting. As to the first issue, the defendant claims that reports authored by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)^[3] call into question the reliability of methodologies employed in firearm and toolmark examinations and that, as a result, a Porter hearing was necessary to determine if such evidence is admissible. Furthermore, the defendant argues that both the trial court and the Appellate Court construed State v. Legnani, 109 Conn.App. 399, 421, 951 A.2d 674, cert. denied, 289 Conn. 940, 959 A.2d 1007 (2008), too broadly by concluding that a Porter hearing on the reliability of firearm and toolmark examinations is never necessary because it is a well established and admissible science. As to the second issue, the defendant argues that, even if the firearm and toolmark examination evidence was admissible without a Porter hearing, the trial court improperly denied his motion in limine, which would have required the state's expert, James Stephenson, to clarify that his conclusions that certain bullet casings were fired from a specific firearm were not certainties but merely ‘‘more likely than not'' to be correct. As to the third issue, the defendant claims that the probative value of evidence related to a subsequent shooting, which was admitted to establish the defendant's identity and to show that he had access to the firearm used in the present case, was outweighed by its prejudicial effect. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the Appellate Court (1) improperly upheld the trial court's denial of the defendant's motion for a Porter hearing on the reliability of ballistics evidence based solely on the holding in Legnani, (2) properly upheld the trial court's denial of the defendant's motionin limine, which sought to limit the scope of Stephenson's conclusions, and (3) improperly upheld the trial court's denial of the motion to exclude evidence of uncharged misconduct. We therefore conclude that the defendant is entitled to a new trial and, accordingly, reverse the judgment of the Appellate Court.

The record reveals the following relevant facts and procedural history. The defendant was a member of the Money Green Bedrock (Bedrock) street gang in Hartford, and the victim, Delano Gray, was a member of a rival street gang, The Avenue, also known as The Ave. Prior to the events giving rise to the present case, the defendant and the victim were involved in two incidents stemming from the rivalry between their gangs. The first incident, which occurred at an unspecified date prior to 2006, involved the victim's firing shots at the defendant and another Bedrock member. The second incident, which occurred approximately one week prior to the events giving rise to the present case, occurred when the victim saw the defendant and another Bedrock member, Jose Rivera, at a restaurant in The Avenue's territory. As the defendant and Rivera were leaving the restaurant, Rivera noticed that the victim was taking a photograph of the defendant's car. Rivera relayed this to the defendant, who responded that ‘‘[the victim] had to go, '' which Rivera understood to mean that ‘‘[the victim] had to get killed for what he did.''

During the early morning hours of June 18, 2007, the defendant called Rivera and told him that he wanted to ‘‘test out [a] .223 [caliber] assault rifle and that [the defendant] wanted to go see if [they] could find any Avenue guys, '' which Rivera understood to mean they were ‘‘gonna go look for some Avenue guys to kill.'' The defendant had owned that assault rifle for approximately one month, and Rivera had been with the defendant when he purchased it. The defendant picked up Rivera and drove to the back of the defendant's apartment building on Bedford Street, parking next to a non-functioning vehicle that belonged to Rivera and was used for ‘‘stashing drugs [and] guns . . . .'' The defendant put on latex gloves, removed the .223 caliber assault rifle from a bag stored in the trunk of the non-functioning vehicle, and loaded the assault rifle with ‘‘a big magazine clip.'' The defendant and Rivera then got back into the functioning vehicle; Rivera drove, and the defendant sat in the backseat with the assault rifle.

Rivera drove the vehicle around certain areas in the north end of Hartford frequented by members of The Avenue. While Rivera was driving on Enfield Street, he told the defendant that he saw the victim standing on the sidewalk engaged in conversation with a woman. At the defendant's instruction, Rivera drove back around the block. As Rivera drove down Enfield Street for the second time, he rolled down the rear driver's side window and slowed the vehicle down to a roll. The defendant hung out of the window and started shooting the assault rifle at the victim. The victim and his female companion attempted to flee, running in different directions, but the victim fell to the ground after taking only about three steps. The defendant kept shooting after the victim fell to the ground, firing at least ten to fifteen times, and then Rivera and the defendant drove away. The victim died as a result of gunshot wounds to his chest and neck.

On July 16, 2008, thirteen months after the Enfield Street murder, the police recovered a .223 caliber Kel-Tec assault rifle in an unrelated investigation after receiving a tip from a confidential informant. In August, 2011, after being arrested for an unrelated homicide, Rivera gave a statement to the police in which he confessed to his involvement in the victim's murder, implicated the defendant as the shooter, and he identified the .223 caliber Kel-Tec assault rifle recovered by the police in July, 2008, as the weapon that the defendant used to shoot the victim. Simultaneously, in August, 2011, the police met with and obtained a written statement from the victim of a shooting on Baltimore Street that occurred on February 16, 2008-a shooting at which Rivera was not present. That individual identified the defendant as the shooter in that crime and stated that he had fired a rifle at her and her partner. Stephen-son testified that casings recovered from the crime scenes of the victim's murder on Enfield Street and the subsequent shooting on Baltimore Street were positively identified as having been fired from the .223 caliber Kel-Tec assault rifle that had been recovered by the police.

In 2013, the defendant was charged with murder in violation of § 53a-54a (a), conspiracy to commit murder in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a-48 and 53a-54a (a), and criminal use of a firearm in violation of General Statutes § 53a-216 (a). The defendant's first jury trial, conducted in 2014, ended in a mistrial after the jury was unable to agree on a verdict. At the second trial, conducted in 2015, the state charged the defendant with only one count of murder in violation of § 53a-54a (a). The second jury returned a guilty verdict, and the court sentenced the defendant to sixty years of incarceration with a twenty-five year mandatory minimum.

The defendant subsequently appealed, claiming ‘‘that the trial court (1) improperly denied [his] motion in limine to exclude or limit the scope of the testimony of the state's expert witness on firearm and toolmark identification, and (2) abused its discretion by granting the state's motion for uncharged misconduct related to a shooting that occurred approximately eight months after the events of [the present] case.'' State v. Raynor, supra, 181 Conn.App. 762. The Appellate Court concluded that the trial court ‘‘properly relied upon Legnani, and did not abuse its discretion by denying the defendant's motion in limine to exclude or limit Stephenson's testimony.'' Id., 771. Furthermore, the Appellate Court concluded that the trial court ‘‘did not abuse its discretion by admitting the uncharged misconduct evidence related to [a...