State v. Rodriguez

Citation337 Conn. 175,252 A.3d 811
Decision Date24 September 2020
Docket NumberSC 20372
CourtSupreme Court of Connecticut
Parties STATE of Connecticut v. Luis M. RODRIGUEZ

Mark Rademacher, assistant public defender, for the appellant (defendant).

Timothy J. Sugrue, assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Brian W. Preleski, state's attorney, and Brett J. Salafia, senior assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).

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

McDONALD, J.

The defendant, Luis M. Rodriguez, appeals from the judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of two counts of sexual assault in the first degree and one count of criminal attempt to commit sexual assault in the first degree. The defendant claims that (1) the trial court violated his right to confrontation, as articulated in Crawford v. Washington , 541 U.S. 36, 124 S. Ct. 1354, 158 L. Ed. 2d 177 (2004), by allowing a laboratory analyst to testify about the results of a DNA identification analysis without requiring testimony from the individual who generated the DNA profiles, (2) his due process right was violated by the introduction of DNA identification evidence that was unreliable under Manson v. Brathwaite , 432 U.S. 98, 97 S. Ct. 2243, 53 L. Ed. 2d 140 (1977), because of the danger that the jury would not understand the meaning of random match probability, and (3) the evidence is insufficient to sustain his conviction. We disagree and, accordingly, affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The record reveals the following facts, which the jury reasonably could have found, and procedural history. In the early morning, the victim1 was walking from her residence on Martin Luther King Drive in New Britain to a nearby convenience store. Near Lafayette and Beaver Streets, a gold, four door sedan with two male occupants stopped and asked the victim if she knew where they could buy cocaine. The victim told the men that she did not know, and they drove away. Less than five minutes later, the men returned, and one of them pulled the victim into the backseat with him. After driving for between ten and fifteen minutes, the vehicle stopped at an abandoned housing complex. The driver got into the backseat, and the victim sat between the two men. The victim testified that both men were Hispanic, one man "was kind of thin and the other one was kind of heavy," and both spoke Spanish to each other during the attack.

After the men removed, or had the victim remove, her clothing, "[t]hey started putting their fingers ... [i]nto [her] vagina" against her will. The thin man engaged in forcible penile-vaginal intercourse with the victim, made her perform oral sex on him, and "was pretty much done with [her] within probably about five minutes ...." The heavier man could not maintain an erection, and he forced the victim to perform oral sex and forcibly digitally penetrated her vagina. Thereafter, the heavier man pulled the victim out of the car by her hair and ejaculated while "rubbing his penis up against the inside of [the victim's] thigh."

After the assault, the two men drove away, and the victim "walked quite a ways" and came upon a house. The occupant of the house, Juanita Isaacs, testified that the victim banged on her door and asked Isaacs for help, telling her that she had been raped. Isaacs called the police, Officer Alan Vincent Raynis, Jr., of the New Britain Police Department responded, and the victim told him what happened. Raynis took the victim back to the scene of the crime, where he took several photographs and seized a pair of jeans, a sports brassiere, and panties.

The victim was transported to New Britain General Hospital, where she was examined, and a sexual assault evidence kit was processed. The examining nurse swabbed the victim's vaginal and oral cavities, the exterior surface of her genitalia, and her inner thigh to collect any biological material that could be used to identify the perpetrators. Raynis collected the kit and submitted it to the state forensic laboratory for analysis. Thereafter, the victim provided the police with a sworn, written statement regarding the incident.

The laboratory staff found sperm in the vaginal smear

and genital swabs. The staff did not find sperm on the oral sample, but other tests revealed the presence of human seminal fluid protein. The laboratory staff extracted DNA from the evidentiary materials and searched it against DNA contained in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).2 No matching profiles were found.

Approximately ten years later, the defendant became a person of interest in the sexual assault based on a CODIS match between the evidentiary DNA sample that had been extracted from the victim's sexual assault evidence kit and a sample of the defendant's DNA that had been placed into CODIS at some point after the victim's assault. In August, 2016, a detective from the New Britain Police Department interviewed the defendant. The detective informed the defendant that he was a suspect in a sexual assault involving two men and a woman. The defendant denied having had sex in a threesome, which he described as disgusting, and said he did not allow women in his car. The defendant also described to the police vehicles that he previously owned, which did not include a gold, four door sedan, and informed the police that he currently did not have any car registered in his name. The defendant then consented to the taking of a buccal swab, which the police submitted to the laboratory for analysis.

Several months later, the laboratory reported a match between the DNA from the defendant's buccal swab and that taken from the victim's sexual assault evidence kit. In December, 2016, the police again spoke with the defendant. The detective informed the defendant that his DNA was found in the vaginal sample from the victim. Contrary to his previous statement to the police, the defendant admitted that he did have a threesome on two occasions in hotels in Plainville and on the Berlin Turnpike. He stated that one incident involved a "skinny, Puerto Rican" girl and occurred when he picked up a man and a woman near an AutoZone store and dropped them off at a store on Broad Street in New Britain. The detective also informed the defendant that, in addition to the assault, the victim complained of being robbed of several hundred dollars, and the defendant replied with words to the effect of: "That's not me. It's the other guy."

The defendant was arrested and charged in the operative information with two counts of sexual assault in the first degree and one count of criminal attempt to commit sexual assault in the first degree. The trial commenced in March, 2018. At trial, three laboratory reports analyzing the DNA samples were introduced into evidence through the testimony of Angela Przech, a forensic science examiner with the laboratory, whose testimony and related evidence are the subject of the defendant's confrontation and due process claims. First, the state introduced a laboratory report dated November 26, 2007, that describes the results of the sexual assault evidence kit. The report indicates that the laboratory tested the vaginal, oral, and genital swabs, and it states that the material on the swabs was divided into sperm-rich and epithelial-rich fractions, all of which yielded DNA.3 The report further states that item number 1E, the oral swabs, and item number 1I, the genital swabs, "were consumed in testing," and that the balance of item number 1C, the vaginal swabs, "was retained in the laboratory." The report notes that the extracted DNA profiles of item numbers 1I and 1C were entered into CODIS for comparison and no matches were reported at the time the report was issued. The report was signed by Przech and Melanie G. Ktorides, a forensic science examiner.

Second, over the state's relevance objection, the defendant introduced into evidence an unofficial laboratory report dated September 12, 2016, which was marked "DNR" for "do not report" and was never officially released. It indicates that the laboratory tested the sperm-rich and epithelial-rich fractions of the vaginal, oral and genital swabs, as well as the defendant's 2016 buccal swab. The unofficial report concluded that the defendant "is included as a potential contributor to the DNA profile" from the sperm-rich fraction of the vaginal swabs. It states that the "expected frequency of individuals who could be a contributor to the DNA profile ... from [the sperm-rich fraction of the vaginal swabs] is ... approximately 1 in 4.9 in the Hispanic population."4 The report was signed by Przech, as the analyst, and a technical reviewer.

Finally, the state introduced a laboratory report dated December 16, 2016. Similar to the September, 2016 report, the December report analyzed the sperm-rich and epithelial-rich fractions of the vaginal, oral and genital swabs, as well as the defendant's 2016 buccal swab. It also added three new items of evidence to the list, including "[item number] 1C [v]aginal [s]wabs," and noted that this item had been separated into sperm-rich and epithelial-rich fractions. The report concluded that the sperm-rich fraction of the vaginal swabs was a mixture, and the defendant "is included as a potential contributor to the DNA profile ...." Unlike the September, 2016 report, however, the December, 2016 report concluded that the "expected frequency of individuals who could be a contributor to the DNA profile ... from [the sperm-rich fraction of the vaginal swabs] is ... approximately 1 in 230,000 in the Hispanic population."5 The report was again signed by Przech, as the analyst, and a technical reviewer.

At trial, Przech testified regarding the procedures used to test the DNA evidence and the results contained in her three reports. Specifically, she testified that, in 2007, the laboratory used a DNA testing kit called Identifiler to develop the DNA profiles from the sexual...

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