Background
The defendant, Raeon A., was convicted by a jury of sexual assault in the first degree and risk of injury to a child based on repeated sexual abuse of his biological daughter, R, during the years they lived together in Derby, Connecticut. The abuse began when R was approximately five or six years old and continued until she was nearly ten. R disclosed the abuse to a friend in May 2016, leading to investigations by the Department of Children and Families and the Derby Police Department. Trial commenced in February 2024, nearly eight years after R’s initial disclosure.
At trial, the court gave a jury instruction consistent with State v. Daniel W. E., 322 Conn. 593 (2016), directing jurors that they could not consider R’s delay in reporting the abuse when evaluating her credibility. The defendant did not object to this instruction at trial. An expert witness testified that delayed disclosure is common among child sexual abuse victims. The jury convicted the defendant on one count each of sexual assault in the first degree and risk of injury to a child, and the trial court sentenced him to twenty years of imprisonment—fifteen of which were a mandatory minimum—followed by ten years of special parole and lifetime sex offender registration.
On direct appeal, the defendant argued that the delayed-reporting instruction violated his federal constitutional rights to due process and a fair trial by usurping the jury’s fact-finding role and diluting the state’s burden of proof. Because the claim was unpreserved, he sought review under State v. Golding, 213 Conn. 233 (1989), and alternatively argued the instruction constituted plain error. A secondary claim regarding admission of uncharged misconduct evidence was rendered moot when the trial record was rectified to show that evidence had not in fact been admitted as uncharged misconduct.
The Court’s Holding
The Connecticut Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the conviction. The court declined to review the defendant’s instructional claim under the second prong of Golding, which requires that the unpreserved claim be of constitutional magnitude. Relying on its recent decision in State v. Adam P., 351 Conn. 213 (2025), the court reaffirmed that challenges to constancy of accusation instructions—including instructions directing jurors not to consider a victim’s reporting delay when assessing credibility—do not implicate a defendant’s constitutional rights because neither delay nor credibility is an element of the charged offense, and the instruction neither shifts the burden of proof nor implicates the presumption of innocence.
The court also rejected the defendant’s request to reconsider Adam P. The court noted that Adam P. had been decided only approximately one year earlier, that the defendant offered no sound basis for reconsideration, and that Adam P. was consistent with a long line of appellate decisions holding that errors in constancy of accusation instructions are nonconstitutional in nature. Although Adam P. itself had ultimately abandoned the Daniel W. E. instruction as confusing, it had expressly held the instruction did not rise to constitutional error.
The court further rejected the plain error argument. Because the Daniel W. E. instruction was the governing law at the time of the defendant’s trial, the trial court’s faithful application of that precedent could not constitute reversible plain error. The court also declined to exercise its supervisory authority to review the unpreserved claim, reiterating that supervisory authority is not a substitute for Golding or plain error review when those doctrines do not provide relief.
Key Takeaways
- An unpreserved challenge to a constancy of accusation jury instruction fails at the second prong of Golding because such instructions are nonconstitutional in nature—they do not go to the elements of the offense, the burden of proof, or the presumption of innocence.
- A trial court’s correct application of existing precedent at the time of trial cannot constitute plain error, even if that precedent is later overruled or modified.
- The Connecticut Supreme Court reaffirmed State v. Adam P. (2025), which abandoned the Daniel W. E. delayed-reporting instruction prospectively but declined to treat it as constitutional error in cases tried under it.
- Appellate supervisory authority will not serve as a vehicle to review unpreserved instructional claims that are not otherwise cognizable under Golding or the plain error doctrine.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the boundary between constitutional and nonconstitutional instructional error in Connecticut criminal appeals. Defense counsel who fail to object to constancy of accusation instructions at trial will face a near-insurmountable barrier on appeal: because such claims are categorically nonconstitutional, they cannot receive Golding review, and because trial courts applying then-current law commit no plain error, reversal is unavailable through that route either. The ruling also signals the court’s reluctance to revisit Adam P. so soon after it was decided, lending stability to the post-Daniel W. E. framework for child sexual abuse prosecutions.
For practitioners, the case underscores the critical importance of preserving objections to jury instructions at the trial level. It also illustrates the limits of supervisory authority as an appellate safety valve: where established bypass doctrines like Golding and plain error are inadequate to afford relief, Connecticut’s appellate courts will not manufacture an alternative route to review through their general supervisory powers.