1. Parties and nature of trial court proceedings

2. Final appeal at the Connecticut Supreme Court

3. Published opinion
     I    II  

4. Golding-Evans review

5. References

State of Connecticut v. Monica Golding, more commonly known simply as State v. Golding, is a Connecticut Supreme Court case decided Dec 19, 1989. The case is precedential and resulted in the common law Golding-Evans review standard being established in Connecticut jurisprudence.

Parties and nature of trial court proceedings

Like most cases heard by the Connecticut Supreme Court, their venue of origin is the lower or trial court, in Connecticut called the Superior Court, then the Connecticut Appellate Court in Hartford, Connecticut, before possibly being certified for review by the Supreme Court of the State.

The suspect, charged by the State with four courts burglary in the second degree, connivance to submit robbery in the second degree, general help misrepresentation and conspiracy to aid extortion. At the end of the state's case the preliminary court dismissed the two counts of conspiracy. The respondent was from that point indicted by a jury for burglary in the second degree and of general help extortion. The Superior Court condemned the respondent to simultaneous suspended sentences on the two counts, set her on post trial supervision on the two counts and requested states of probation that the litigant make compensation of the entirety of $877.90 and perform two hundred hours of community service.

The defendant appealed the judgement and sentence to the Connecticut State Court of Appeals on the following grounds:

Firstly, her rights not to be placed in jeopardy twice under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution were undermined and breached by trying her for violation of two separate statutes which constitute a single offense.

Second, Public Acts 1984, No. 84-471, one of the statutes under which she was charged, was unconstitutionally vague.

Thirdly, the court failed to give proper jury instructions regarding general assistance fraud, as the given instructions did not include essential elements of the crime.

Fourthly, defendant claimed she was deprived of her right to a unanimous jury verdict.

Finally, defendant claimed her Due Process Clause rights were violated by being ordered to pay restitution moneys as a condition of her probation. The essential argument being, one's freedom should not be at stake in the case they cannot afford to pay restitution.

Nevertheless, after hearing oral argument, deliberating upon the briefs submitted, the Court of Appeals of the State of Connecticut upheld the lower court's decision.^[1]

Final appeal at the Connecticut Supreme Court

The defendant requested certification to have hear case heard in the Connecticut Supreme Court. The court agreed to hear the case, limiting the issues to whether the Appellate Court had erred when it refused to reverse the defendant's conviction of general assistance fraud because of the lack of jury instruction by the trial court concerning the amount involved in the fraud and whether the Appellate Court had erred by refusing to review the defendant's claim that under the federal and state constitutions the amount involved in the fraud was an essential element of the offense and was therefore required to be charged by the trial court. The defendant was seeking review by the Supreme Court of Connecticut under previous case: State v. Evans, 165 Conn. 61, 327 A.2d 576 (1973).

Oral argument began in May of 1989. The Connecticut Supreme Court reversed the Appellate Court's decision.^[2]

Published opinion

Following is a slightly redacted final opinion of the Supreme Court of Connecticut with long fields of citing cases removed and replaced with '...':^[2]

"We now reverse the Appellate Court on the merits and in this opinion adhere to Evans."

I

Prior to July 1, 1984, the maximum penalty for general assistance fraud was a fine of $1000, imprisonment for one year, or both. General Statutes (Rev. to 1983) 17-282. The penalty in the statute bore no relation to the amount fraudulently obtained. Effective July 1, 1984, however, the statute was amended by No. 84-471 of the 1984 Public Acts, to subject a person convicted of general assistance fraud to the penalties for larceny under General Statutes 53a-122 through 53a-125b. Those statutes grade the degree of the crime and the consequent severity of the penalties according to the amount obtained as a result of the defendant's illegal conduct. Those grades range from larceny in the first degree, a class B felony carrying a maximum possible penalty of twenty years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine, to larceny in the sixth degree, a class C misdemeanor carrying a maximum possible penalty of three months imprisonment and a fine of $250.

Although No. 84-471 of the 1984 Public Acts was not effective until July 1, 1984, and some of the defendant's fraudulent conduct occurred prior to that date, apparently the trial court and certainly the parties and the Appellate Court treated the defendant's sentence as having been imposed under the amended statute. See State v. Allen, 12 Conn. App. 403, 406, 530 A.2d 670, cert. denied, 205 Conn. 809, 532 A.2d 76 (1987).

The trial court in its charge, however, failed to inform the jury that it must find proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, the amount the defendant obtained by fraud. See In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970). The trial court further did not request the jury to make a specific finding as to that amount. Under the circumstances revealed by the evidence, however, the jury could have determined that the defendant obtained varied amounts depending upon the conduct of the defendant the jury found proven to have been fraudulent. The first question to be addressed, therefore, is whether the amount obtained by the defendant is an essential element of the crime of general assistance fraud.

The Appellate Court applied its Thurman test for Evans review and under the second prerequisite of that test found that the amount obtained by fraud was not an essential element of the crime. It, therefore, concluded that the trial court's failure to charge the jury concerning it was not constitutional error reviewable under Evans. See State v. Thurman, 10 Conn. App. 302, 306-307, 523 A.2d 891, cert. denied, 204 Conn. 805, 528 A.2d 1152 (1987).

The overwhelming weight of authority is that the value of property stolen or obtained by fraud is an essential element of the crime when the value is used to differentiate between a felony and a misdemeanor or to determine the severity of the offense and the consequent punishment for a convicted offender. ... We conclude therefore that under the present statutory scheme embodied in 17-282 for determining the degree of the offense and the severity of the permissible punishment the amount obtained by general assistance fraud is an essential element of that crime. Because the amount the defendant obtained by fraud is an essential element of the crime under the applicable statutory scheme, the trial court was obligated to instruct the jury concerning it. ... Failure to do so was constitutional error; State v. Williamson, supra; and requires reversal because the jury reached its decision without any instruction on, or consideration of, an essential element of the crime charged.

II

Further, the Appellate Court erred by refusing to review the defendant's claim since she proffered a constitutional claim and the record was clearly adequate to review that claim. State v. Hill, 201 Conn. 505, 512-13, 523 A.2d 1252 (1986); State v. Kurvin, supra, 558. We have for many years held that claims not raised in the trial court "can and will be considered" on appeal in two "exceptional circumstances." State v. Evans, supra, 70. One of those circumstances "may arise where the record adequately supports a claim that a litigant has clearly been deprived of a fundamental constitutional right and a fair trial." (Emphasis added.) Id.

The other exceptional circumstance is "where a new constitutional right not readily foreseeable has arisen between the time of trial and appeal." State v. Evans, 165 Conn. 61, 70, 327 A.2d 576 (1973). That circumstance is not at issue in this case.

The state urges us to revise the Evans standard of review for errors not preserved at trial because the words used by the standard though easily said lend themselves to inconsistent application. We have reviewed our own cases and those of the Appellate Court, and we agree with the state that they demonstrate disparate approaches to the Evans criteria. Upon reflection, we have decided neither to adopt a pure plain error standard for alleged constitutional violations, nor to attempt to reconcile past Evans decisions. Instead, we articulate guidelines designed to facilitate a less burdensome, more uniform application of the present Evans standard in future cases involving alleged constitutional violations that are raised for the first time on appeal.

Relying on the methodology of State v. Whistnant, 179 Conn. 576, 427 A.2d 414 (1980), we hold that a defendant can prevail on a claim of constitutional error not preserved at trial only if all of the following conditions are met: (1) the record is adequate to review the alleged claim of error; (2) the claim is of constitutional magnitude alleging the violation of a fundamental right; (3) the alleged constitutional violation clearly exists and clearly deprived the defendant of a fair trial; and (4) if subject to harmless error analysis, the state has failed to demonstrate harmlessness of the alleged constitutional violation beyond a reasonable doubt. In the absence of any one of these conditions, the defendant's claim will fail. The appellate tribunal is free, therefore, to respond to the defendant's claim by focusing on whichever condition is most relevant in the particular circumstances.

A review of our cases reveals that the words "adequately supports" in State v. Evans, 165 Conn. 61, 70, 327 A.2d 576 (1973), may be translated to read "is adequate to review." See, e.g., State v. Mercer, 208 Conn. 52, 57, 544 A.2d 611 (1988); State v. Torrence, 196 Conn. 430, 435, 493 A.2d 865 (1985).

The defendant bears the responsibility for providing a record that is adequate for review of his claim of constitutional error. If the facts revealed by the record are insufficient, unclear or ambiguous as to whether a constitutional violation has occurred, we will not attempt to supplement or reconstruct the record, or to make factual determinations, in order to decide the defendant's claim. ...

An adequate factual record is especially crucial when dealing with a claim that was not preserved at trial, since consideration is being sought for review of a claim for which we lack a trial court ruling.

The defendant also bears the responsibility of demonstrating that his claim is indeed a violation of a fundamental constitutional right. Patently nonconstitutional claims that are unpreserved at trial do not warrant special consideration simply because they bear a constitutional label. ...

Finally, if we are persuaded that the merits of the defendant's claim should be addressed, we will review it and arrive at a conclusion as to whether the alleged constitutional violation clearly exists and whether it clearly deprived the defendant of a fair trial. State v. Torrence, 196 Conn. 430, 435, 493 A.2d 865 (1985); State v. Evans, supra, 71-73. In the present case, for example, it was clear constitutional error for the trial court to fail to instruct the jury concerning an essential element of the crime with which the defendant was charged, and the defendant was therefore clearly deprived of a fair trial.

In many cases of an alleged constitutional violation, however, the state is able to demonstrate the harmlessness of such alleged violation beyond a reasonable doubt. ... Under such circumstances, it would be a waste of judicial resources, and a pedantic exercise, to delve deeply into the constitutional merits of a claim that can appropriately be resolved in accordance with the relevant harmless error analysis. For example, in a case where, on the whole record, there is overwhelming evidence of guilt and a constitutional claim is raised under Evans concerning the admission of inconsequential tangible evidence that was allegedly illegally seized, there is no reason that we cannot assume the constitutional violation and first address the fair trial issue and, if the alleged violation is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, not engage in all in-depth discussion of the substantive constitutional claim.

Such an approach would be in keeping with the spirit of what the United States Supreme Court said in United States v. Hasting, supra, 509: "Since [Chapman v. California, supra,] the Court has consistently made clear that it is the duty of a reviewing court to consider the trial record as a whole and to ignore errors that are harmless, including most constitutional violations, see, e.g., [Brown v. United States, 411 U.S. 223, 230-32, 93 S.Ct. 1565, 36 L.Ed.2d 208 (1973)]; Harrington v. California, 395 U.S. 250, [ 89 S.Ct. 1726, 23 L.Ed.2d 284] (1969); Milton v. Wainwright, 407 U.S. 371, [92 S.Ct. 2174, 33 L.Ed.2d 1] (1972). The goal . . . is 'to conserve judicial resources by enabling appellate courts to cleanse the judicial process of prejudicial error without becoming mired in harmless error.'"

Golding-Evans review

Judicial review standards are often established under common law because of stare decisis. The Golding-Evans review was established by this case.

The review states:^[3] Unpreserved claims of constitutional error may be reviewed when they allege the violation of a fundamental right. State v. Golding, 213 Conn. 233, 239-40, 567 A.2d 823 (1989); State v. Evans, 165 Conn. 61, 70, 327 A.2d 576 (1973). The issue often depends on whether the asserted error has been deemed by the appellate courts to be of constitutional magnitude. Note, that evidentiary errors are not constitutional errors [see, e.g., State v. Toccaline, 258 Conn. 542, 550, 783 A.2d 450 (2001); State v. Dearing, 133 Conn.App. 332, 343-45, 34 A.3d 1031, cert. denied, 304 Conn. 913, 40 A.3d 319 (2012); State v. Richard W., 115 Conn.App. 124, 136-37, 971 A.2d 810, cert. denied, 293 Conn. 917, 979 A.2d 493 (2009)] and that arguing that an evidentiary error denied the appellant a fair trial will not necessarily raise the error to constitutional dimensions. "[W]e observe that one does not change the true nature of an evidentiary claim merely by referring to it in constitutional terms." State v. Adams, 139 Conn.App. 540, 56 A.3d 747, 751 (2012), citing State v. Vilalastra, 207 Conn. 35, 46, 540 A.2d 42 (1988).

"In State v. Golding, supra, 213 Conn. At 239-40, 567 A.2d 823, our Supreme Court stated that 'a defendant can prevail on a claim of constitutional error not preserved at trial only if all of the following conditions are met: (1) the record is adequate to review the alleged claim of error; (2) the claim is of constitutional magnitude alleging the violation of a fundamental right; (3) the alleged constitutional violation clearly exists and clearly deprived the defendant of a fair trial; and (4) if subject to harmless error analysis, the state has failed to demonstrate harmlessness of the alleged constitutional violation beyond a reasonable doubt. In the absence of any one of these conditions, the defendant's claim will fail. The appellate tribunal is free, therefore, to respond to the defendant's claim by focusing on whichever condition is most relevant in the particular circumstances.' (Emphasis in original; footnote omitted.) Golding applies in civil cases as well as criminal cases. In re Yasiel R., 151 Conn.App. 710, 720, 94 A.3d 1278, cert. granted on other grounds, 314 Conn. 907, 99 A.3d 1169 (2014); Bruno v. Bruno, 132 ConnApp. 339, 348-49; 31 A.3d 860 (2011); Lohnes v. Hospitalof Saint Raphael, 132 Conn.App. 68, 79-80, 31 A.3d 810 (2011), cert. denied, 303 Conn. 921, 34 A.3d 397 (2012)." Delahunty v. Targonski, 158 Conn.App.741, 121 A.3d 727, 730-31 (2015).

References

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