State v. Slimskey

• Decision Date: 04 September 2001
• Docket Number: (SC 16411)
• Citation: 257 Conn. 842,779 A.2d 723
• Parties: STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. CHARLES SLIMSKEY
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court

257 Conn. 842

779 A.2d 723

STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. CHARLES SLIMSKEY

(SC 16411)

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued April 25, 2001.

Officially released September 4, 2001.

Sullivan, C. J., and Borden, Norcott, Katz and Vertefeuille, JS. Donald G. Leis, Jr., for the appellant (defendant).

Timothy J. Sugrue, senior assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, was Scott J. Murphy, state's attorney, for the appellee (state).

Opinion

KATZ, J.

The defendant, Charles Slimskey, was convicted¹ after a jury trial of two counts of risk of injury to a child in violation of General Statutes (Rev. to 1995) § 53-21, one count of sexual assault in the second degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-71 (a) (1), and one count of possession of fireworks in violation of General Statutes (Rev. to 1995) § 29-357 (a).² The defendant appealed from the judgment of conviction to the Appellate Court, claiming that the trial court had abused its discretion by denying him access to certain school records, including any psychological and psychiatric records, of the victim, a teenaged boy. The Appellate Court affirmed the judgment of conviction. State v. Slimskey, 59 Conn. App. 341, 757 A.2d 621 (2000). We granted the defendant's petition for certification to appeal, limited to the following issue: "Whether the Appellate Court properly affirmed the trial court's refusal to permit the defendant to have access to certain school records of the teenaged complaining witness?" State v. Slimskey, 254 Conn. 938, 761 A.2d 764 (2000). We conclude that certain portions of the records should have been disclosed to the defendant. Accordingly, we reverse in part the judgment of the Appellate Court.

The record contains the following facts and procedural history. Prior to trial, the defendant had filed a motion seeking disclosure of certain of the victim's school records, including psychological and psychiatric records that may have been contained therein. In that motion, the defendant sought to have the court conduct an in camera inspection of the records to determine whether anything contained therein would bear on the credibility of the victim or his ability to testify truthfully.

The trial court, Scheinblum, J., after granting the pretrial motion and conducting an in camera inspection, determined that there was nothing in the records that would bear on the ability of the victim to testify truthfully. Accordingly, the court denied the defendant access to and use of the records. The case proceeded to trial and at the end of the defendant's case, he moved that the trial court, Cutsumpas, J., conduct an in camera review of the school records to determine if they contained information that would bear on the truthfulness of the victim's testimony. The trial court denied the motion on the ground that another court at an earlier stage in the same proceedings had reviewed the records and had denied the defendant access to them.³ In deciding whether the trial court improperly had denied the defendant access to the victim's school records, including any psychological or psychiatric records that may have been contained within such records, the Appellate Court inspected the records based upon its obligation "`to determine if the trial court abused its discretion in refusing to release those records to the defendant.'" State v. Slimskey, supra, 59 Conn. App. 345-46. Concluding that the trial court reasonably could have found that they contained no evidence that was probative of the victim's ability to be truthful, the Appellate Court determined that the trial court had not abused its discretion in denying the defendant's motion for disclosure of the victim's school and psychiatric records. Id., 346.⁴ Accordingly, the Appellate Court affirmed the judgment of the trial court. Id., 350. We disagree.

We have reviewed the records in connection with this appeal and conclude that the defendant should have been given access to portions of the records, and that the failure to afford him access at trial was not harmless. Accordingly, we reverse in part the judgment of the Appellate Court.

I

The following evidence adduced at trial is pertinent to the issue before this court. The victim, a male child between the ages of fourteen and fifteen at the time of the alleged occurrences involved herein, lived with his father, his father's girlfriend and a younger brother in New Britain. According to his father's testimony at trial, the victim loved motor vehicles, built model cars, read books about cars, helped his father work on cars, visited race tracks and talked constantly about cars. Additionally, the victim loved motorcycles and raced his own motorcycles in various events in the amateur class. According to his father, the victim first met the defendant in the summer of 1993, when he stopped at the defendant's automobile repair and restoration business, called Valley Enterprises, located in New Britain. He and the defendant began to spend time together, sharing what the victim's father believed was a love of cars.

In 1995, the victim stole his father's truck, which he drove to another location in New Britain, where he stole another vehicle and thereafter drove to Delaware. Following the receipt of a telephone call from the police in Wilmington, Delaware, the victim's father retrieved the victim and thereafter imposed certain restrictions on his freedom. As a further consequence of the victim's behavior, his father started recording his telephone conversations. After hearing conversations between the defendant and the victim containing abbreviations that he thought were spoken in some sort of code, the victim's father approached the victim in an effort to learn what the victim and the defendant had been saying to one another. Thereafter, during a counseling session with a psychologist that the victim and his father had started seeing sometime in late 1994 or early 1995, the victim's father first learned that the victim had been having sexual relations with the defendant. He also learned that the defendant had exhibited bizarre behavior involving the victim's hair and that, among other things, the defendant enjoyed giving the victim haircuts while engaging in sexual activity. The victim's father contacted an attorney, and thereafter brought the victim to the Berlin police department, where the victim was interviewed by the police. Sometime thereafter, the victim, through his father, commenced a civil action against the defendant based on the alleged conduct of the defendant involved herein. Although the victim's father testified that he had no prior knowledge of the sexual activities in which his son and the defendant had engaged, he had been aware, even before allowing his son to go on an unchaperoned trip with the defendant to Vermont, that the defendant was a forty-three year old male who liked to cut his son's hair and whom the father believed was a pedophile.

The victim testified at trial that soon after he had met the defendant, he began visiting him at work several times a week. The victim's father traveled frequently due to business and the victim enjoyed watching the defendant work on the cars. The victim related how the defendant took him to his home, ostensibly to show him model cars, and that while there, the defendant persuaded him to view the "Dirty Dozen," a pornographic videotape, and to masturbate. The victim testified that initially, he did not consider that he was doing anything improper. He described other videotapes the defendant had that depicted bestiality and children having sex with other children, and noted the defendant's obsession with cutting hair. The victim identified a written contract, which he and the defendant had executed, that allowed the defendant to have full control over the victim's hair in exchange for a promise by the defendant to sell the victim, at cost, a Ford Mustang when he turned sixteen years of age.⁵ According to the victim, they engaged in oral sex on several occasions, and frequently, the defendant gave the victim money and model cars in exchange for sex. On one occasion, the defendant's greyhound dog was involved. Although each time the defendant invited him to his home the victim expected that they would engage in sexual activity, he, nevertheless, accompanied the defendant because he felt that the defendant controlled him.

Thomas Hodolitz, the police officer to whom the victim first reported the events leading to the defendant's arrest, described the victim as reluctant. Additionally, the victim's first statement to police on April 18, 1995, although long, was incomplete. Consequently, the victim returned to the police station two days later to provide additional information. On the same evening that the first statement was given, the Berlin police executed a warrant to search the defendant's home, resulting in the seizure of, among other things, a pornographic videotape entitled the "Dirty Dozen," thirteen other videotapes, including tapes depicting child pornography, an adult magazine, several locks of hair, a memo book, some haircutting tools, pliers, tweezers and a bag of fireworks.

Bruce Freedman, a clinical psychologist, testified for the state at trial in general terms about children who have been victimized sexually. According to Freedman, most are reluctant to disclose the abuse, and such reticence is particularly prevalent when the abuser is an adult of the same sex as the child. He concluded that the detail provided by the victim in his statements to the police was "consistent with a true report of the child's sexual abuse."

Largely through cross-examination of the victim, his father and Hodolitz, the defendant painted a picture of the victim as a troubled young man, whose problems began long before his involvement with the defendant. The victim's parents had separated when he was just one year old, and he lived with his mother for twelve years. For a period of six years, the...