Brown v. Commissioner of Correction

── Brown v. Commissioner of Correction ── Court: Connecticut Appellate Court Date: June 09, 2026 Author: Cradle 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. ************************************************  Brown v. Commissioner of Correction CLEVELAND BROWN v. COMMISSIONER OF CORRECTION (AC 47568) Cradle, C. J., and Westbrook and Wilson, Js. Syllabus The petitioner, who previously had been convicted, after a jury trial, of mur- der and carrying a pistol without a permit, appealed following the granting of his petition for certification to appeal from the habeas court’s judgment denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. He claimed, inter alia, that his criminal trial counsel, F, rendered ineffective assistance by failing to offer as substantive evidence, pursuant to State v. Whelan (200 Conn. 743), the prior written statement of a state’s witness, P, that she had provided to the police, that contradicted her testimony that she had seen the petitioner shoot the victim. Held: The habeas court incorrectly concluded that the petitioner did not provide any legal basis for the admission into evidence of P’s written statement under Whelan at the criminal trial, as the transcript of that trial showed that the statement was inconsistent with P’s testimony in significant ways, P admitted during her testimony that her written statement, in which she did not state that she saw the petitioner shoot the victim, contradicted her testimony at trial, and the statement met the Whelan requirements for admissibility. The habeas court correctly concluded that the petitioner failed to prove that F rendered deficient performance by not offering P’s written statement into evidence pursuant to Whelan, as F had made an objectively reasonable, strategic decision not to offer the statement in light of his concern about exposing the jury to portions of the statement that corroborated the state’s case, which would have undermined his defense strategy of relying on his cross-examination of P to highlight the inconsistencies between her trial testimony and her prior statement. The petitioner did not establish that F rendered deficient performance in failing to demonstrate that it was not possible for P to have witnessed the shooting, contrary to her testimony at the criminal trial, as F’s conduct fell within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance because it was objectively reasonable for him to conclude that the jury had before it ample evidence from which to determine whether P was able to observe the petitioner at the time of the shooting, and it was reasonable trial strategy for F to impeach P by focusing on compelling evidence that she did not witness the shooting rather