Opinion
(SC 18147)
Argued April 28, 2009
officially released May 26, 2009
Substitute information charging the defendant with the crimes of possession of narcotics, possession of drug paraphernalia and interfering with an officer, brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of New London, geographical area number ten, and tried to the jury before Strackbein, J.; verdict and judgment of guilty of possession of narcotics, from which the defendant appealed to the Appellate Court, Bishop, Lavine and Pellegrino, Js., which affirmed the judgment of the trial court, and the defendant, on the granting of certification, appealed to this court. Appeal dismissed.
Auden Grogins, special public defender, for the appellant (defendant).
Timothy F. Costello, deputy assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Michael L. Regan, state's attorney, and Lonnie Braxton II, senior assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).
Opinion
The defendant, Eugene Alphonzo Bryant, appeals, upon our grant of his petition for certification, from the judgment of the Appellate Court affirming his conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of possession of narcotics in violation of General Statutes § 21a-279 (a). State v. Bryant, 106 Conn. App. 97, 98, 940 A.2d 858 (2008). The Appellate Court rejected the defendant's claims that: (1) the trial court had improperly admitted evidence of his prior misconduct; id., 106; and (2) the assistant state's attorney had committed two instances of prosecutorial impropriety that deprived the defendant of his right to a fair trial. Id., 110, 114. In his certified appeal to this court, the defendant claims that the Appellate Court improperly upheld the decision of the trial court to admit into evidence testimony about police investigations into narcotics activity at a nearby house, to which the defendant had fled, and then subsequently failed to give an adequate curative and limiting instruction to the jury.
We granted the defendant's petition for certification to appeal limited to the following issue: "Did the Appellate Court properly conclude that the trial court properly ruled on and instructed the jury with regard to certain evidence of prior misconduct by the defendant?" State v. Bryant, 287 Conn. 905, 950 A.2d 1282 (2008).
After examining the entire record on appeal and considering the briefs and oral arguments of the parties, we have determined that the appeal in this case should be dismissed on the ground that certification was improvidently granted.