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 21014) Mullins, C. J., and McDonald, D’Auria, Ecker, Alexander, Dannehy and Bright, Js. Syllabus Convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, and accessory to assault in the first degree in connection with the shooting of the victim and another person, the defendant appealed to this court. Two individuals in an Infiniti had approached the vehicle that the victim was driving, and the passenger in the Infiniti shot and killed the victim, which caused the victim’s vehicle to crash. At the scene of the crash, O, who was the victim’s girlfriend and one of the passengers in his vehicle, immediately identified the perpetrators to a responding police officer as the defendant and his elder brother, E. Later that day, O submitted a signed, written statement to the police in which she identified the defendant as the driver of the Infiniti and E as the passenger who fired the shots that caused the victim’s death. The following day, E admitted to J, his other brother, that E had killed the victim. At trial, O identified E as the shooter sitting in the passenger seat of the Infiniti but testified that she was not sure that the defendant was the driver. The prosecutor then introduced O’s written statement that the defendant was the driver as a prior inconsistent statement for substantive purposes under State v. Whelan (200 Conn. 743) and the Connecticut Code of Evidence (§ 8-5 (1)). On appeal, the defendant claimed, inter alia, that his conviction violated his constitutional right to due process because it was based solely on O’s uncorroborated, prior inconsistent statement identifying him as the driver of the Infiniti from which E shot and killed the victim. Held: The defendant could not prevail on his unpreserved claim that this court should overrule Whelan on the ground that the admission of prior inconsis- tent statements for substantive purposes violates principles of due process because of the unreliability of such statements. The defendant’s conclusory legal arguments were insufficient to establish that Whelan’s rejection of arguments challenging the ability of jurors to assess the truthfulness of a prior inconsistent out-of-court statement was incorrect when that case was decided or that Whelan should otherwise be overruled on constitutional grounds, and, accordingly, the defendant’s claim failed under the third prong of State v. Golding (213 Conn. 233). This court declined the defen