State of Connecticut v. Dante Smith.

Summary

Justice McDonald concurred in the judgment but concluded that the defendant's response to the open-ended question "What happened?" should have been suppressed because the public safety exception did not extend to that investigatory question under the circumstances. He nevertheless determined that admitting the statement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because the statement was largely cumulative and the defendant's credibility was undermined by other evidence. The concurrence also concluded that the defendant's unpreserved claim concerning the later police-station statement could not be reviewed.