From legal questions on criminal matters to what constitutes “fighting words” with regard to racial slurs, the Connecticut Supreme Court will weigh at least 20 cases, beginning next month.

The court's sixth of eight terms runs from Feb. 19 through March 1, when the justices will hear oral arguments in all of the cases in the court's chambers in Hartford.

Here are some of the more notable cases.

State v. Lazale Ashby

The state's high court will decide whether the trial court properly excluded evidence that police conducted an allegedly inadequate investigation in the case of Lazale Ashby, who was convicted of felony murder. The court will also decide whether testimony from a jailhouse informant violated Ashby's right to confront an expert.

Ashby was convicted of a slew of charges, including capital felony, felony murder, first-degree sexual assault, first-degree kidnapping and burglary. He appealed, claiming the trial court wrongly denied his request to instruct the jury on third-party culpability. He claimed at trial that he had consensual sex with the victim on the night of the murder and that another man's DNA was allegedly found on the victim's body. Ashby also claims the trial court wrongly excluded evidence that police had not adequately investigated other suspects in the crimes.

Among other claims on appeal, Ashby says a jailhouse informant was wrongly allowed to testify at trial, and that a handwriting expert's testimony that corroborated the jailhouse informant's testimony violated his right to confront that expert.

Ashby is asking the high court to reverse his convictions.

Joshua Clark v. Middlesex Corp.

The high court will determine whether a child conceived after a worker's injury and born after that worker's death is eligible for survivors' benefits.

It will weigh the case involving Joshua Clark, who was seriously injured while working for Middlesex Corp. and died 14 months after the incident. At the time of his death, Clark's girlfriend was pregnant with his child, who was born several months after Clark died.

The girlfriend sought workers' compensation survivor's benefits on behalf of herself and the child. Pursuant to Connecticut General Statutes, benefits “shall be paid to dependents on account of death resulting from an accident arising out of and in the course of employment … [to] those wholly dependent upon the deceased employee at the date of the deceased employee's injury.”

The trial commissioner ruled that while the girlfriend was entitled to survivor's benefits, the child was not because the child did not exist at the time of the injury. The girlfriend appealed to the Compensation Review Board, arguing the trial commissioner's ruling was inconsistent with the humanitarian purpose of the Workers' Compensation Act. The review board, however, sided with the trial commissioner, prompting the claimant's appeal to the Supreme Court.

State v. David G. Liebenguth

The state's high court will rule on a free speech matter, and whether the Connecticut Appellate Court properly concluded that, under the circumstances in which they were uttered, racial slurs directed at a black parking officer were not so-called fighting words.

Under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, “fighting words” are not constitutionally protected as free speech, as they are likely to provoke the target, cause injury or incite a reaction.

In this case, following a bench trial, David Liebenguth was convicted of second-degree breach of peace in violation of the state's General Statutes, which prohibit the use in public places of abusive or obscene language intended to cause annoyance or alarm.

Liebenguth's conviction stemmed from an incident in which he twice directed racial slurs at a black parking officer who had just issued him a $15 ticket. He made several vulgar and racially charged remarks during the incident, culminating in angrily shouting a racial slur at the parking officer while driving past him, according to the Supreme Court's write-up of the case.

The trial court found that Liebenguth speech, taken in context, amounted to “fighting words,” but Liebenguth countered it was protected speech under the U.S. Constitution.

The Connecticut Appellate Court agreed with Liebenguth and reversed the conviction. It found that while the words used were vulgar, they were not likely to provoke a reasonable person into taking violent action. The state then raised a challenge before the Connecticut Supreme Court.