State v. Chyung, 325 Conn. 236

Background

Defendant Chihan Eric Chyung was convicted of killing his wife; the convictions were later found legally inconsistent and vacated.
On cross-examination the prosecutor questioned Chyung about a prior uncharged incident (14 years earlier) in which he allegedly produced a gun during an argument with a former girlfriend, Pamela Febles; Chyung denied recollection.
The state sought to use that prior misconduct to rebut Chyung’s claim that the shooting was accidental and to prove intent to kill.
The trial court allowed the questioning and, without objection, instructed the jury on limited use of prior misconduct evidence (but did not tell the jury that counsel’s questions are not evidence).
Justice McDonald concurred in the judgment vacating the verdicts but would have held that admitting the prior misconduct (effectively presented by questioning) was an abuse of discretion because of remoteness and dissimilarity.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility of remote prior misconduct to prove intent and absence of accident	Prior gun-related misconduct, though 14 years earlier, shows pattern and bears on intent — admissible	Fourteen-year gap plus differences in conduct and victim make probative value low and unfairly prejudicial — should be excluded	Concurrence: would exclude as abuse of discretion; majority treated the question as properly considered under §4-5(c) but vacated verdicts on inconsistency
Whether prosecutor’s cross-examination about uncharged act constituted admissible evidence	Questioning elicited defendant’s denial but, combined with limiting instruction, allowed jury to treat prior act as substantive evidence	Defense: counsel’s questions are not evidence and jury should not infer substantive truth from them	Court (concurrence): technically no direct evidence was introduced; giving limiting instruction without clarifying that questions are not evidence risked misleading jury
Effect of victim dissimilarity on probative value of prior misconduct	Prior threat to someone else still shows propensity to use a gun and thus intent	Prior threat against a different victim tends to show “special malice” toward that third person and is of limited relevance to intent toward the charged victim	Concurrence: dissimilarity to a different victim significantly reduces relevance and supports exclusion given remoteness
How remoteness interacts with similarity in Rule 404(b)/§4-5(c) analysis	Similarity can overcome temporal gap; a gun in a domestic dispute is sufficiently similar	Here the prior incident lacked discharge and involved a different victim, so remoteness matters	Concurrence: remoteness plus material dissimilarities outweigh probative value and render admission an abuse of discretion

Key Cases Cited

United States v. Cuch, 842 F.2d 1173 (10th Cir. 1988) (remoteness of prior acts evaluated under a reasonableness standard)
United States v. Franklin, 250 F.3d 653 (8th Cir.) (same principle on temporal remoteness)
United States v. Fields, 871 F.2d 188 (1st Cir.) (remoteness factors differ depending whether evidence bears on intent or knowledge)
United States v. Rubio-Gonzalez, 674 F.2d 1067 (5th Cir.) (passage of time more likely to erode intent inferences than knowledge)
United States v. Terebecki, 692 F.2d 1345 (11th Cir.) (remoteness must be assessed in light of similarity between offenses)
Robertson v. State, 829 So.2d 901 (Fla. 2002) (threats against different victims, different weapons, or different crimes reduce admissibility)
State v. Snelgrove, 288 Conn. 742 (Conn. 2008) (fourteen-year gap ordinarily raises serious remoteness questions)
State v. Beavers, 290 Conn. 386 (Conn. 2009) (prior similar completed violent acts against same victim admissible to show intent)
State v. Kalil, 314 Conn. 529 (Conn. 2014) (uncharged misconduct need not be "remarkably similar" but temporal proximity matters)
Walker v. State, 116 Nev. 442 (Nev. 2000) (prior pointing of a gun at victim years earlier was remote and not strongly probative of intent to kill)