Posts tagged with "homicide crime"

Lengthy Sentence for Cooperative Defendant Convicted of Felony Murder was Proper

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In a criminal law matter, the Sentence Review Division (Division) of a Superior Court of Connecticut affirmed a petitioner’s sentence following her felony murder conviction.

The Case

In this case, the petitioner planned with S and V to rob the victim’s apartment, which contained a safe filled with cash. When they arrived, they broke their way in, overpowered the victim, and confiscated his handgun. They located the safe, but could neither open it nor remove it. At this point, an officer arrived on the scene in response to a citizen complaint, but as he approached the apartment, S shot him with the victim’s handgun. All robbery participants fled the scene, and the officer later died as a result of his wound.

The petitioner was arrested and fully cooperated with officers in the investigation. She pled guilty to felony murder, a violation of Connecticut General Statutes § 53a-54c, which is punishable by up to sixty years’ incarceration, twenty-five of which are mandatory. Upon accepting the plea agreement, the court imposed a total effective sentence of forty-two years.

The Cooperative Defendant’s Plea for a Sentence Modification

The petitioner sought modification of her sentence, arguing that it was disproportionate. Counsel highlighted that she was a “key cooperator” – in fact, the only cooperative defendant – so a sentence of thirty years was more appropriate. The petitioner apologized for her actions, admitting she would have to live with the officer’s death for the rest of her life. The State, however, countered that the petitioner was an active participant in the robbery, thus the sentence was fair.

The Division is strictly limited to modifying sentences that it determines are “inappropriate or disproportionate.” It will consider explicit statutory factors: “the nature of the offense, the character of the offender, the protection of the public interest, and the deterrent, rehabilitative, isolative and denunciatory purposes for which the sentence was intended.” As applied to this case, the Division noted the petitioner’s active participation in a robbery that resulted in the death of an on-duty police officer. If the petitioner did not cooperate with authorities, her conviction for felony murder could have carried substantially more time. Therefore, the Division affirmed the sentence.

Written by Lindsay E. Raber, Esq.

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When faced with a charge of robbery or a homicide crime, an individual is best served by consulting with an experienced criminal law practitioner. Should you have any questions regarding criminal defense, please do not hesitate to contact Attorney Joseph C. Maya in the firm’s Westport office in Fairfield County at 203-221-3100 or at JMaya@Mayalaw.com.

Felony Murder Conviction Affirmed in Light of Confession and Extrinsic Evidence

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In a criminal law matter, the Appellate Court of Connecticut affirmed a defendant’s conviction following the strangulation murder of a woman, despite the defendant’s argument that his conviction violated the rule of corpus delicti, because the defendant’s confession was sufficiently corroborated by evidence that a crime actually occurred.

Case Background

This case arose from an incident that occurred on January 2, 1998 in Hartford, CT. The defendant called an escort service to set up an arrangement before leaving his home in search of narcotics. He was stabbed multiple times following a failed robbery attempt, after which Good Samaritans treated his wounds and drove him home. The escort (the victim) arrived at the defendant’s residence and called her boss from inside, stating she was going to leave. When she stated her intention to the defendant, he blocked the entrance and a lengthy physical struggle ensued, during which he suffocated the victim.

The defendant transported the victim’s body in her own car to Suffield, where he disposed of it in a wooded area. Upon returning to Hartford, he traded the car to two drug dealers for $50 worth of cocaine and then saw various family members for treatment of his injuries and to request that his apartment be cleaned out. Afterwards, the defendant fled to Massachusetts.

A missing person’s report was filed by the victim’s daughters, and telephone records directed investigators to the victim’s boss, who told them the victim was with the defendant on the night she disappeared. Officers then went to the defendant’s apartment, where the front door was open, bloodstains were on multiple pieces of furniture, and a gold hoop earring similar to one owned by the victim was located underneath the bed.

Conviction based on Confessions

The defendant was tracked down in Massachusetts, where he was in prison for other offenses. On three occasions, he confessed to strangulating the victim and disposing of her body. He twice showed police to the wooded area in Suffield, and skeletal remains were recovered. The remains were identified as belonging to the victim, and a medical examiner cited “homicidal violence” as the cause of death. In addition, the medical examiner found that “the remains recovered were consistent with someone who had been killed by strangulation.”

The defendant was subsequently convicted of manslaughter in the first degree, felony murder, kidnapping in the first degree, and larceny in the third degree. On appeal, he challenged the sufficiency of the evidence to convict, in part [uniquely] because the state “failed to present substantial independent evidence that indicated that his confessions were true.” As such, the State’s case “based solely on his uncorroborated confessions… failed to comply with the rule of corpus delicti.”

Compliance with Corpus Delicti

Under the rule of corpus delicti, out-of-court confessions cannot be the sole basis for a conviction. Instead, the confession must be corroborated by proof that a crime in fact had occurred. However, many jurisdictions, including Connecticut, have moved away from this doctrine and adopted the trustworthiness doctrine. Direct corpus delicti proof is not required if there is “substantial independent evidence which would tend to establish the trustworthiness of the [defendant’s] statement.”

In this case, the Appellate Court found that there was sufficient independent evidence which established the trustworthiness of the defendant’s confessions. He led police to where the victim’s skeletal remains were located, and the medical examiner concluded death was not natural but the result of homicidal violence consistent with strangulation.

Additional support came from the discovery of the victim’s earring, as well as the boss’s testimony and telephone records. All of this taken together established that a crime did take place, and that the defendant was the perpetrator. Therefore, this aspect of the defendant’s insufficiency of the evidence claim failed, and after addressing additional matters on appeal, the judgment was affirmed.

Written by Lindsay E. Raber, Esq.

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When faced with a charge of a homicide crime, kidnapping, or larceny, an individual is best served by consulting with an experienced criminal law practitioner. Should you have any questions regarding criminal defense, please do not hesitate to contact Attorney Joseph C. Maya in the firm’s Westport office in Fairfield County at 203-221-3100 or at JMaya@Mayalaw.com.

Inflammatory Comments by Prosecutor Found Not Sufficiently Prejudicial to Warrant Reversal

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In a criminal law matter, the Supreme Court of Connecticut ruled that a prosecutor’s statements during closing arguments were improper because they appealed to the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the jurors. However, they did not deprive the defendant of a fair trial; thus, his due process claim was unpersuasive and the motion for impropriety was denied.

Case Background

This case arose from a quadruple homicide that occurred on September 25, 1996. The defendant and a coconspirator planned on robbing a man following a dispute about crack cocaine sales, but instead murdered him in his home. There were three other people at the house, including the man’s teenage daughter, and each was fatally shot to prevent witness identification. Nonetheless, the defendant was linked to the crime and subsequently faced a host of charges, including four counts each of murder and felony murder.

During closing arguments, the prosecutor talked of grieving relatives “clutching” to past memories of their lost loved ones and the victim’s silent voices crying out for justice. The trial started one day after the September 11th attacks, and the prosecutor equated the jury’s civic duty to that of American troops “defending American values abroad.” He played a 911 recording in which the daughter can be heard “gasping for breath, unable to talk” and made explicit references to the biblical story of Cain and Abel.

Defense counsel vehemently objected and moved for a mistrial, but the trial court denied the motion, instead electing to issue curative jury instructions. The defendant was convicted and given a total effective sentence of two hundred sixty (260) years of incarceration. On appeal, he argued in part that these statements improperly played on the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the jury. Therefore, the trial court erred in denying his motion for a mistrial.

Determining Impropriety

In deciding a claim of prosecutorial impropriety, a reviewing court must first determine whether an impropriety even occurred, and if so, whether it deprived a criminal defendant of his or her right to a fair trial. What is crucial is whether the improprieties, as a whole, caused the trial itself to be fundamentally unfair, thus depriving a defendant of the Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.

In this case, the Supreme Court determined that the use of the 911 recording was not improper. It was admitted as a full exhibit into evidence, as the defendant did not seek a limiting instruction on its use. “An exhibit offered and received as a full exhibit is in the case for all purposes.” Thus, because the prosecutor used the tape for a proper purpose, even though it “undoubtedly… had a great dramatic effect,” he was within his discretion to do so.

The Court, however, agreed with the defendant that the other comments overstepped the bounds of impropriety. These statements had “nothing to do with the evidence in the case or the defendant’s guilt or innocence.” Rather, they allowed the jury to decide the case “not according to a rational appraisal of the evidence, but on the basis of powerful and irrelevant factors which are likely to skew that appraisal.” It is notable that courts traditionally disapprove the use of religious imagery and references during criminal trials.

The Court’s Ruling

Even though the first prong of this analysis was answered in the affirmative, the Supreme Court determined that due process was not violated. It considered the following six factors, finding that only the first weighed in favor of the defendant:

[T]he extent to which the impropriety was invited by the defendant’s conduct or argument, the severity of the impropriety, the frequency of the impropriety, the centrality of the impropriety to the critical issues in the case, the strength of the curative measures adopted and the strength of the state’s case.

The defendant did nothing to provoke the comments. However, the statements were infrequent in light of the entire closing argument and not “grossly egregious.” The trial court took issue with the fact that the comments had nothing to do with the evidence. Finally, the prosecution’s case was strong, and the instructions telling the jury they had to decide the case on the evidence, not the statements, sympathy, or prejudice. Therefore, the Supreme Court, after addressing additional matters on appeal, affirmed the judgment.

Written by Lindsay E. Raber, Esq.

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When faced with a charge of a homicide crime, assault, or robbery, an individual is best served by consulting with an experienced criminal law practitioner. Should you have any questions regarding criminal defense, please do not hesitate to contact Attorney Joseph C. Maya in the firm’s Westport office in Fairfield County at 203-221-3100 or at JMaya@Mayalaw.com.

Because State Presented No Proof Defendant Knew of Victim’s Unique Habit, Felony Murder Charge Was Dismissed

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In a criminal law matter, a Superior Court of Connecticut concluded that the State did not establish probable cause to prosecute a defendant for felony murder, and as such dismissed the charge due to a lack of proof.

Case Background

In this case, the victim’s body was discovered in his apartment on August 25, 2005, and death was caused by blunt force trauma to the head. His leather pouch with money and personal identification were missing. The defendant admitted that she struck him several times in self-defense and took a fresh shirt from his closet because hers was covered with blood. Nonetheless, she was charged with murder, felony murder, robbery, and other violations of State law.

At trial, the victim’s daughter testified that she was at her father’s house on Father’s Day two months prior, at which point he gave her cash he retrieved from his freezer. She explained that her father “was in the habit of keeping cash in tin foil packets” in his refrigerator, freezer, sock drawer, and under the mattress. A neighbor confirmed the victim’s money-storing habits, but conceded she never actually saw the money. She also stated that prior to this incident she gave the victim $2,000. There was additional testimony that a thorough search of the victim’s apartment did not reveal any money in these secret locations.

However, the victim’s daughter found two envelopes located in a jacket inside the victim’s closet. One envelope was for the neighbor and contained $1,400, while the other had several thousand dollars in cash. Furthermore, a search warrant was validly executed on the defendant’s residence, but none of the missing items were found there.

The State’s Argument

The defendant was charged with felony murder, which under Connecticut General Statutes § 53a-54c reads as follows:

A person is guilty of murder when, acting either alone or with one or more persons, he commits or attempts to commit robbery [or another enumerated offense] … and, in the course of and in furtherance of such crime or of flight therefore, he … causes the death of a person other than one of the participants.

In this case, the State argued that the defendant killed the victim while attempting to rob him. Thus, in order to prosecute the defendant for felony murder, the State had to establish probable cause that “the defendant robbed [the victim], that is, that she stole his property through the use of force, and in the course of and in furtherance of the robbery, she caused his death.”

The State may introduce habit evidence “to prove that the conduct of that person… on a particular occasion was in conformity with that habit.” In this case, the habit in question was the storage of money by the victim in rather unorthodox locations, meant to prove that he “possessed money in such locations at the time of his death on or about August 24, 2005.”

In light of this evidence, along with the missing wallet, his violent death, and the absence of money in these locations, the State asserted that “there exists probable cause to believe that [the victim] was killed in the course of a robbery.”

Questions Raised

While the habit evidence in this case was admissible, the weight it would receive depended on two factors: “the invariability of the habit and… the timeliness of observations that the person was acting in accordance with that habit.” The Superior Court noted that the real question was whether the victim had money in his freezer on the day of the murder, not two months prior.

It set forth other possible explanations for its absence, including the simple one of needing money and spending it, an inference bolstered by the amount short of the $2,000 given to him earlier. Another explanation was consolidation into a single envelope, located in the jacket.

Court’s Conclusion

Particularly damaging to the State’s case was that they presented no evidence that the defendant knew of the victim’s money-keeping habits. As the Superior Court concluded:

To accept the state’s theory of the crime, one would have to conclude that the defendant, with no advance knowledge of money locations, so thoroughly searched [the victim’s] apartment so as to discover money secreted in foil packets in his freezer and an old leather pouch that resembled a cosmetic case, but did not discover several thousand dollars in the pocket of a coat hanging in a closet. Such a theory is not reasonable. Particularly since the defendant admitted taking a shirt from the closet after the attack. On the other hand, to conclude that the defendant took only the pouch and freezer money because she knew of Mr. Gordon’s habits would be based on speculation because there was no evidence offered to prove such knowledge.

Written by Lindsay E. Raber, Esq.

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When faced with any homicide crime, an individual is best served by consulting with an experienced criminal law practitioner. Should you have any questions regarding criminal defense, please do not hesitate to contact Attorney Joseph C. Maya in the firm’s Westport office in Fairfield County at 203-221-3100 or at JMaya@Mayalaw.com.