Turner v. Commissioner of Correction

Summary

The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed the habeas court's judgment ordering a new criminal trial for the petitioner, who claimed his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to challenge the state's cell site location information (CSLI) evidence, particularly a GeoTime time-lapse video depicting his cell phone as a human silhouette moving in straight lines between incriminating locations. The court held that counsel's failure to challenge or respond in any way to the misleading video — which would have been excluded had counsel objected — fell below an objective standard of reasonableness, even though counsel's stated strategy of downplaying the CSLI evidence and attacking the eyewitness identifications was itself reasonable. The court further held that the petitioner was prejudiced because the state's case was not overwhelming, relied primarily on the CSLI evidence, and rested on weak eyewitness identifications, and that prejudice was not defeated by the petitioner's failure to call the state's expert or present new CSLI evidence at the habeas trial.