State v. Wright, No. 28498.

• Decision Date: 19 May 2009
• Docket Number: No. 28498.
• Citation: 969 A.2d 827,114 Conn.App. 448
• Court: Connecticut Court of Appeals
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Nicketa WRIGHT.

969 A.2d 827

114 Conn.App. 448

STATE of Connecticut v. Nicketa WRIGHT.

No. 28498.

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued October 14, 2008.

Decided May 19, 2009.

Richard S. Cramer, Hartford, for the appellant (defendant).

Raheem L. Mullins, deputy assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, was Scott J. Murphy, state's attorney, for the appellee (state).

DiPENTIMA, McLACHLAN and DUPONT, Js.

DUPONT, J.

The defendant, Nicketa Wright, appeals from the judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of three crimes: sexual assault in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-70(a)(1); sexual assault in the second degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-71(a)(1); and risk of injury to a child in violation of General Statutes § 53-21(a)(2).¹ On appeal, the defendant claims that the trial court improperly refused to disclose information contained in the victim's Juvenile Court file after its in camera inspection of the file and, therefore, denied him his right to confront and to cross-examine witnesses under the sixth amendment to the United States constitution² and his due process right to obtain exculpatory evidence under the fourteenth amendment to the United States constitution.³ The defendant requests that this court review the victim's Juvenile Court file to determine whether the trial court properly concluded that it did not contain exculpatory information and, if we disagree with the court's conclusion, that we remand the case for a new trial and issue an order releasing the file to him. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The jury reasonably could have found the following facts. On September 19, 2005, the victim, who was fourteen years old, was living with her mother on the second floor of a two-family house in New Britain. That morning, after her mother left for work, the victim missed her bus to school and subsequently decided to stay home. She proceeded to call a man named Lee, whom she had met through a telephone chat line, and invited him to her house. The victim was under the impression that Lee was eighteen years old and lived in Hartford. She had never seen him but had spoken to him approximately ten times over the telephone.

Shortly thereafter, Lee arrived at her house with two other males — the defendant, who identified himself as Duane, and another male, who identified himself as Ryan. The four watched a movie together, during which the victim and Lee went into her bedroom. Lee kissed the victim on her neck, biting her in the process, and touched her buttocks. He tried to convince her to have further sexual contact with him, but the victim refused, telling him to let her go, which he did. The two rejoined the defendant and Ryan, who were still watching the movie in the living room. The defendant then told the victim that he wanted to talk to her, and they both went into her bedroom. Once inside her bedroom, the defendant pushed the victim onto her bed and took off her pants and underwear. He then put a condom on and proceeded to have sexual intercourse with the victim, despite her asking him to stop. Approximately three minutes later, the defendant put his clothes back on, and he and the victim returned to the living room.

Lee then took the victim back into her bedroom and attempted to have sexual contact with her for a second time by opening her legs with his hands. The victim rebuffed Lee's advances, which prompted the three men to leave the victim's house. Within five minutes of their departure, the victim left her home and went across the street to her neighbor's house. The victim told her neighbor that she had been raped. The neighbor called the victim's mother, who immediately left work and took the victim to New Britain General Hospital. At the hospital, Ann Alexander, an emergency room staff nurse, examined the victim, using a sexual assault kit in the course of the examination. She observed bite marks on the left and right side of the victim's neck. She was unable to determine from the examination whether the victim had been sexually assaulted.⁴

Upon returning home from the hospital, the victim spoke with Marcin Ratajczak, an officer with the New Britain police department. She told Ratajczak how she came to know Lee and related the sexual assault by the defendant. She described the defendant as a black male with a Jamaican accent, six feet tall and weighing 170 pounds. She described Lee as wearing a blue MECCA⁵ shirt and provided Ratajczak with Lee's telephone number. Ratajczak performed a reverse listing inquiry for the telephone number, which produced the address of 203 Sargeant Street, Hartford.

Ratajczak went to the residence, where he located a man who identified himself as Lloyd Aldridge, Sr. Aldridge told Ratajczak that Lee was his son and that Lee's real name was Lloyd Aldridge, Jr. Lee subsequently came out of the house. Ratajczak immediately noticed that Lee's clothing matched the description given by the victim, as he was wearing a blue MECCA shirt. Ratajczak then arrested Lee but was unable at that time to locate the defendant.

Two to three days after the alleged sexual assault of the victim and the arrest of Lee, Michael Steele, a detective with the New Britain police department, was assigned the task of finding the defendant. On October 11, 2005, he discovered that the defendant's real name was Nicketa Wright. A department of motor vehicles record check revealed that the defendant lived at 205 Sargeant Street in Hartford, which was located in the same multifamily house in which Lee lived. Steele then compiled a photographic array that included the defendant's photograph and asked the victim to come to the police station to view it. The victim immediately, and with certainty, identified the defendant as the man who had sexually assaulted her.

Subsequently, on December 16, 2005, Matthew Kelly, an officer with the New Britain police department, arrested the defendant in connection with the sexual assault of the victim. During the booking process, Kelly learned that the defendant was twenty-four years of age,⁶ six feet, one inch tall, weighed 170 pounds and spoke with a Jamaican accent.

On the first day of the evidentiary portion of the defendant's trial, the court, D'Addabbo, J., informed defense counsel that the state had issued a subpoena for the victim's Juvenile Court file so that the court could review it in camera to determine whether it contained any exculpatory information.⁷ Judge D'Addabbo further stated to defense counsel that the Juvenile Court, Quinn, J., had held a hearing earlier that morning on the victim's motion to quash the state's subpoena⁸ and, at the conclusion of the hearing, had issued an order for the release of the file to the trial court for an in camera review, absent all mental health screening and assessment information.⁹ The state then represented to Judge D'Addabbo that the victim and her mother, after consultation with an attorney, had no objection to the court performing an in camera review of the victim's confidential Juvenile Court file.

After a short recess, Judge D'Addabbo announced that he had reviewed the victim's Juvenile Court file, as redacted, and found that it contained no exculpatory information. Judge D'Addabbo explained that he had reviewed similar files in the past and that he looked at the file with an eye toward "anything that could affect the cross-examination needs of the defense attorney, including the ability [of a witness] to perceive, to recollect, to testify, tell the truth, veracity." Judge D'Addabbo, therefore, did not disclose the contents of the file to the parties and had the file sealed and marked for appellate review, to the extent that there was such appellate review. Judge D'Addabbo next asked the parties if they wanted to say anything. Defense counsel replied: "Nothing to add, Your Honor." Judge D'Addabbo further asked defense counsel: "All right. Any requests that you have at this point?" Defense counsel replied: "No, Your Honor." The court then swore in the jury and commenced the evidentiary portion of the trial.

After the victim and two other witnesses had testified, the court and the parties met in chambers to discuss the victim's status as a juvenile in a juvenile probation matter. The state represented to the court that it had advised defense counsel during jury selection that the victim was on probation and had informed defense counsel of the general nature of the probation. Defense counsel agreed that the substance of the information was given to him. The court then stated: "And so you're aware of it, then. You made some tactical decisions during the cross-examination concerning that information." Defense counsel replied: "That's correct, yes."

I

The defendant claims that the court denied him his sixth amendment right to confrontation and fourteenth amendment right to exculpatory evidence when it refused to disclose the information contained in the victim's Juvenile Court file after the court's in camera inspection. A close review of the defendant's brief and oral argument to this court, however, reveals that he also claims that the Juvenile Court improperly redacted the victim's mental health screening and assessment information from the victim's Juvenile Court file, thereby excluding it from the trial court's in camera review.¹⁰ We will first dispose of this second claim.

The state argues that this claim is "wholly unreviewable" because the defendant did not object to Judge Quinn's order removing the mental health information and did not request that Judge D'Addabbo review that information or that it be made part of the record for appellate review. We agree. Although the record reveals that defense counsel was not present at the hearing in front of Judge Quinn, Judge D'Addabbo made counsel aware, on the record, that the hearing had taken place and that at the hearing, Judge Quinn had issued an order that included the redaction of any...