Last week, in State v. Belcher, an opinion authored by Justice Mullins, a unanimous Connecticut Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the trial court denying the defendant’s motion to correct an illegal sentence. The court held that the sentencing court had abused its discretion when it substantially relied on materially false information in imposing a 60-year sentence; specifically, that the defendant, a Black teenager, was a ‘‘charter member’’ of a mythical group of teenage ‘‘superpredators.’’ As the state’s Supreme Court noted, “[i]t was the prism through which the court viewed this defendant” in concluding that the sentence had been imposed in an illegal manner.

The court cited extensive research data and empirical analysis to articulate why the sentencing court’s reliance on the materially false superpredator myth was baseless and thus an inappropriate sentencing consideration, especially detrimental to the integrity of the sentencing procedure.