Opinion ID: 2273504
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 16

Heading: state's case against the petitioner

Text: Because the petitioner did not raise a sufficiency of the evidence claim in his direct appeal to this court following his criminal conviction, this is the first time that this court has had occasion to consider the strength of the state's case. [85] See generally State v. Skakel, supra, 276 Conn. at 639-40, 888 A.2d 985. On the basis of my review of the state's evidence, I conclude that it was not strong and required the jury to draw every possible inference in favor of the state's theory of the case. [86] Although at least four witnesses placed the petitioner twenty minutes away from the scene of the murder when it occurred, the state argued that each and every one of those witnesses was lying. The evidence to support this argument, however, was weak at best, especially when viewed in light of the testimony that was used to convict the petitioner, which consisted almost entirely of equivocal admissions by the petitioner and one dubious confession that he allegedly had made while he was a student at Elan School, an alcohol and drug rehabilitation facility for troubled adolescents located in Poland, Maine. Moreover, there was no physical evidence connecting the petitioner to the crime and no eyewitnesses. In light of the relatively weak evidence adduced by the state and the comparative strength of the newly discovered third party culpability evidence, I am convinced that that new evidence, at an absolute minimum, gives rise to a reasonable doubt about whether the petitioner had murdered the victim. I therefore am persuaded that, if the jury had considered the Bryant evidence together with the original trial evidence that it did consider, it is very likely that the verdict would have been different.