State v. Franqui

── State v. Franqui ── Court: Supreme Court of Connecticut Date: April 21, 2026 Author: Mullins Category: General ************************************************ The “officially released” date that appears near the beginning of an opinion is the date the opinion will be published in the Connecticut Law Journal or the date it is released as a slip opinion. The operative date for the beginning of all time periods for the filing of postopinion motions and petitions for certification is the “officially released” date appearing in the opinion. All opinions are subject to modification and technical correction prior to official publication in the Connecti- cut Law Journal and subsequently in the Connecticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports. In the event of discrepancies between the advance release version of an opinion and the version appearing in the Connecticut Law Journal and subsequently in the Connecticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports, the latest version is to be considered authoritative. The syllabus and procedural history accompanying an opinion that appear in the Connecticut Law Journal and subsequently in the Connecticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports are copyrighted by the Secretary of the State, State of Connecticut, and may not be reproduced or distributed without the express written permission of the Commission on Official Legal Publications, Judicial Branch, State of Connecticut. ************************************************  State v. Franqui STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. EDWIN FRANQUI (SC 21073) Mullins, C. J., and McDonald, D’Auria, Ecker, Alexander, Dannehy and Bright, Js. Syllabus Convicted of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, assault in the first degree with a firearm, and criminal possession of a firearm in connection with a drive-by shooting, the defendant appealed to this court. The defendant’s younger brother, Y, had been driving a vehicle from which the defendant fired gunshots toward another vehicle, killing its driver and wounding a passenger. The victim’s girlfriend, O, who was a passenger in the victim’s vehicle at the time of the shooting, identified the defendant as the shooter in statements to the police and at trial. On appeal, the defendant claimed, inter alia, that the trial court had committed plain error by failing to instruct the jury on eyewitness identification testimony in accordance with State v. Ledbetter (275 Conn. 534). Held: The trial court’s failure to instruct the jury on eyewitness identification testimony in accordance with Ledbetter was not an obvious and readily discernable error requiring reversal under the plain error doctrine because there was no significant risk of misidentification by the primary eyewitness, O, insofar as O was familiar with the defendant, Y, and the vehicle that they occupied at the time of the shooting. This court declined to exercise its supervisory authority over the adminis- tration of justice to require trial courts to provide juries with the relevant portion of the specific eyewitness identification instruction (instruction 2.6- 4) in the Connecticut model criminal jury instructions in any case in which good faith misidentification is at issue, as the defendant’s theory of defense concerned O’s untruthfulness rather than a good faith misidentification, and mandating such an instruction in all cases in which identification might conceivably be at issue could cause confusion among jurors. For the reasons set forth in State v. Franqui (354 Conn. 400), the compan- ion decision resolving the same claim in Y’s appeal, this court declined to exercise its supervisory authority to abrogate the hearsay exception for spontaneous utterances. Argued December 4, 2025—officially released April 21, 2026 Procedural History Substitute information charging the defendant with the crimes of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, assault in the first degree with a firearm, and criminal posse