We granted the defendant's petition for certification to appeal, limited to the following issue: "Did the Appellate Court properly conclude that the record's failure to indicate the racial composition of the venire or the empaneled jury rendered the record inadequate for review of the defendant's claim under Batson v. Kentucky , 476 U.S. 79, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69 (1986) ?" State v. Raynor , 327 Conn. 969, 173 A.3d 952 (2017).We note that the state asks us to rephrase the certified question because it does not accurately reflect the holding of the Appellate Court, the analysis of which focused only on the jurors that had been empaneled and did not discuss the venire as a whole.

Although accessorial liability for an assault cannot be based solely on a person's presence at the scene, if there is evidence that the person was not merely a witness but also participated in the assault, a reasonable inference may be drawn that the participation aided the principal assailant by, for example, preventing the victim from more easily escaping the fight or by making the victim more vulnerable to the principal assailant's assault. See State v. Raynor , 175 Conn. App. 409, 431, 167 A.3d 1076 (in challenge by defendant to sufficiency of evidence supporting conviction of first degree assault as accessory, court concluded jury reasonably could have inferred from evidence of defendant's presence at brawl with gun and participation in physical beating of victim prior to his shooting that defendant aided principal by preventing victim from leaving area and helping immobile victim before he was shot), cert. granted on other grounds, 327 Conn. 969, 173 A.3d 952 (2017). Although it is indisputable that a defendant could not be punished for acting as both a principal and accessory in the commission of a single criminal act, the prohibition against double jeopardy is not always automatically violated simply because of contemporaneous convictions of the same offense as both a principal and as an accessory. If, for example, a jury reasonably could find on the basis of the evidence presented that each charged offense was the result of a distinct act of independent legal significance—one committed as a principal and another as an accessory—double jeopardy is not implicated.