DNA profile

The defendant was charged in a substitute information with eight counts of sexual assault in the second degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-71 (a) (1), eight counts of risk of injury to a child in violation of General Statutes § 53-21, and one count of assault in the third degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-61 (a) (1). Following a jury trial, he was found guilty on all counts of sexual assault in the second degree and risk of injury to a child but was acquitted of the assault charge. The trial court sentenced the defendant to a term of imprisonment of twenty-four years, execution suspended after twelve years, followed by five years probation. The defendant appealed to the Appellate Court, and the appeal was transferred to the Supreme Court of Connecticut pursuant to Practice Book § 4023 and General Statutes § 51-199 (c). The victim was the daughter of a neighbor and a friend of the defendant's daughter. Beginning sometime in 1982, when the victim was approximately eight years old and in the third grade, the defendant began making sexual overtures to her. In response to her protests, the defendant told her he would leave her alone if she allowed him to take topless photographs of her. After she complied, he persisted in his contact, threatening to show the photographs to her friends if she refused to see him. By the time the victim was in the fourth grade, the defendant had begun to molest her physically. At some point while she was still in the fourth or fifth grade, he began to have sexual intercourse with her on a regular basis, continuing even after she moved out of the neighborhood, often in his van at various locations. When the victim was in the tenth grade, she told the defendant she wanted him to leave her alone and no longer cared what he did with the photographs. At that time her parents were attempting to adopt a little girl, and the defendant intimated that the adoption would not go through if authorities were notified of their relationship. The sexual relationship continued until March 1989, when the defendant, in an attempt to end a platonic friendship between the victim and a classmate named Marvin, told her to advise Marvin that she was pregnant and provided her with a falsified home pregnancy test that displayed a positive result. Marvin promptly informed the victim's parents, and when confronted by her mother the victim disclosed the nature of her relationship with the defendant. On March 9, 1989, the victim gave a statement to the police. The next day her mother took her for a medical examination that revealed she was in fact pregnant, and on March 22, 1989, the victim had an abortion. DNA testing was performed by Lifecodes Corporation on blood samples from the defendant and the victim and on tissue from the aborted fetus. This produced a paternity index of 3496. At trial the state's expert witness Kevin McElfresh, director of Identity Testing Laboratories of Lifecodes, testified that this converted to a 99.97 percent probability of paternity using Bayes' Theorem with an assumed 50 percent prior probability. The victim testified that the defendant's penis had white, pimple-like bumps underneath the head. The defense presented physician Harry Anderson who examined the defendant and found no such bumps. Over the defendant's objection, the trial court ordered a visual inspection of the defendant's penis by Richard Godwin, the victim's advocate in the Fairfield state's attorney's office, who testified that he observed three small white bumps resembling pimples under the head after pulling back the foreskin of the uncircumcised penis. During voir dire the state questioned venirepersons about their general feelings concerning abortion. It asked each venireperson if evidence that the victim had had an abortion would affect his or her ability to return a guilty verdict if the defendant's guilt was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.