Opinion ID: 1551205
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: whether the trial court should have ordered the state to grant immunity to buck or granted the defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal

Text: The defendant next claims that the trial court should have ordered the state to grant immunity, pursuant to § 54-47a, [24] to Buck, who invoked his privilege against self-incrimination pursuant to the fifth amendment to the United States constitution; see footnote 5 of this opinion; or have granted the defendant's motions for judgment of acquittal or a new trial. As a threshold matter, we must first determine the applicable standard of review that governs our examination of the defendant's claims. The issue of whether a defendant's rights to due process and compulsory process require that a defense witness be granted immunity is a question of law and, thus, is subject to de novo review. . . . [A] defendant has a right under the compulsory process and due process clauses to present [his] version of the facts as well as the prosecution's to the jury so [that] it may decide where the truth lies. . . . The compulsory process clause of the sixth amendment generally affords an accused the right to call witnesses whose testimony is material and favorable to his defense. . . . We begin our analysis with the statutory provision concerning prosecutorial immunity for witnesses. [Section] 54-47a authorizes the prosecution to grant immunity to state witnesses under certain circumstances. We explicitly have held that § 54-47a confers no such authority upon the courts with regard to defense witnesses. . . . Indeed, this court has held repeatedly that there is no authority, statutory or otherwise, enabling a trial court to grant immunity to defense witnesses. . . . We have no occasion to revisit those holdings today. We recognize that other courts have held that under certain compelling circumstances the rights to due process and compulsory process under the federal constitution require the granting of immunity to a defense witness. The federal Circuit Courts of Appeals have developed two theories pursuant to which the due process and compulsory process clauses entitle defense witnesses to a grant of immunity. They are the effective defense theory, and the prosecutorial misconduct theory. . . . Because such circumstances are not presented in this case, however, we need not decide whether either theory is a correct application of the due process or compulsory process clause. Under the effective defense theory . . . the trial court has the authority to grant immunity to a defense witness when it is found that a potential defense witness can offer testimony which is clearly exculpatory and essential to the defense case and when the government has no strong interest in withholding . . . immunity. . . . The Third Circuit [Court of Appeals] has held explicitly that under the effective defense theory [i]mmunity will be denied if the proffered testimony is found to be ambiguous [or] not clearly exculpatory. . . . (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Holmes, 257 Conn. 248, 252-55, 777 A.2d 627 (2001), cert. denied, 535 U.S. 939, 122 S. Ct. 1321, 152 L. Ed. 2d 229 (2002). The prosecutorial misconduct theory of immunity is based on the notion that the due process clause [constrains] the prosecutor to a certain extent in [its] decision to grant or not to grant immunity. . . . Under this theory, however, the constraint imposed by the due process clause is operative only when the prosecution engages in certain types of misconduct, which include forcing the witness to invoke the fifth amendment or engaging in discriminatory grants of immunity to gain a tactical advantage, and the testimony must be material, exculpatory and not cumulative, and the defendant must have no other source to get the evidence. (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 256-57. The present case again provides us with no occasion to reach either of these immunity theories. The defendant has not pointed to anything that Buck might testify to as clearly exculpatory, and cites as misconduct only the state's use of hearsay testimony of an unavailable complainant who may have had some prior animosity against the defendant, an act that has some confrontation clause implications, but does not rise to the level of prosecutorial gamesmanship or misconduct. Thus, we again leave to another day consideration of either theory of immunity under the due process clause. The judgment is reversed and the case is remanded for a new trial.