Seebeck v. State

• Decision Date: 25 August 1998
• Docket Number: No. 15822,15822
• Citation: Seebeck v. State, 246 Conn. 514, 717 A.2d 1161 (Conn. 1998)
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: Erich SEEBECK v. STATE of Connecticut.

Page 1161

717 A.2d 1161

246 Conn. 514

Erich SEEBECK v. STATE of Connecticut.

No. 15822.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued April 30, 1998.

Decided Aug. 25, 1998.

Martin Zeldis, Senior Assistant Public Defender, for appellant (petitioner).

Kevin T. Kane, State's Attorney, for appellee (State).

Before CALLAHAN, C.J., and BORDEN, BERDON, PALMER and McDONALD, JJ.

BORDEN, Associate Justice.

This appeal raises three principal issues: (1) When a trial court has denied a petitioner's request for certification to appeal, pursuant to General Statutes § 54-95(a), ¹ from its denial of a petition for a new trial, does this court have subject matter jurisdiction to consider the petitioner's appeal? (2) If this court has subject matter jurisdiction to consider such an appeal, what is the proper scope of review of the trial court's denial of certification to appeal? (3) Pursuant to that scope of review, did the trial court improperly deny the petitioner's request for certification to appeal? The petitioner, Erich Seebeck, appeals ² from the trial court's judgment denying his petition for a new trial pursuant to General Statutes § 52-270 (a), ³ and denying his request for certification to appeal from that judgment. ⁴ The petitioner claims that the trial court improperly: (1) denied his petition for a new trial; and (2) denied his request for certification to appeal. The respondent state of Connecticut claims that: (1) in the absence of a grant of certification to appeal, this court has no subject matter jurisdiction over the petitioner's appeal; and (2) even if we do have jurisdiction, the trial court properly denied the petition for a new trial and the request for certification to appeal. We conclude that we have subject matter jurisdiction to consider an appeal from a denial of a petition for a new trial filed pursuant to § 52-270(a), even when the trial court has denied certification to appeal pursuant to § 54-95(a). Applying the appropriate scope of review to such a denial of certification to appeal, however, we conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the petitioner's request for certification to appeal. Accordingly, we dismiss the appeal.

On August 26, 1986, the petitioner and a codefendant, Adam John, were convicted of felony murder ⁵ and larceny in the second degree. Both the petitioner and John appealed from the judgment of conviction to this court, and in State v. John, 210 Conn. 652, 557 A.2d 93, cert. denied, 493 U.S. 824, 110 S.Ct. 84, 107 L.Ed.2d 50 (1989), we affirmed the judgment.

In that initial appeal, we stated that "[t]he jury reasonably could have found the following facts. During the late morning of Wednesday, June 18, 1980, the defendants visited the home of Morris Frost, an acquaintance. While the three were sitting at Frost's kitchen table, [the petitioner] stated that he had been arrested that morning and that he was going to leave the state. [The petitioner] told Frost that he knew where he could 'get a car from a seventy year old queer in Waterford.'

"On Thursday, June 19, 1980, Ponte Patterson, the victim, picked up his dog from a veterinarian clinic. The next morning, on Friday, June 20, 1980, at about 10 a.m., [the victim] phoned the veterinarian to discuss the condition and treatment of his dog. At noon on that Friday, M, [the victim's] friend, phoned [the victim] at [the victim's] home in Waterford. The two spoke briefly, at which time [the victim] told M that he could not speak with him at that time, and that he would call back M in one half hour. When [the victim] did not return the phone call, M phoned [the victim] at 12:30 p.m. and again at 12:45 p.m., getting no answer each time. M phoned [the victim] on Saturday and Sunday as well, still getting no answer. ⁶

"Early Friday afternoon, on June 20, 1980, the defendants arrived at the home of [the petitioner's] parents in Oakdale. Prior to this visit, [the petitioner], who did not live with his parents, had seen his parents infrequently. [The petitioner] informed his parents that he was leaving the state to 'get his head on straight.' The defendants left the house, crossed the street, and drove away in an old green automobile.

"At 5:15 p.m. on that Friday, a green 1965 Buick was found abandoned and out of gas on the shoulder of the westbound lane of Interstate 84 in Brewster, New York. Brewster is a two and one-half hour drive from Waterford. The car was registered to [the victim]; it had not been reported stolen. The defendants' fingerprints were found inside the car, [the petitioner's] on the driver's side and John's on the front passenger's side.

"After abandoning the car in Brewster, the defendants continued westward. On June 21, 1980, John called his mother from Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, and on June 22, 1980, he called his father from the same location. On Tuesday, June 24, 1980, between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., Michael Adams, who was traveling on the Ohio Turnpike, picked up the defendants, who were hitchhiking, in Sandusky, Ohio, and drove them to Andalusia, Illinois. The defendants had no money and had with them only the clothes that they were wearing and two or three blankets. The defendants rode with Adams for seven hours, during which time [the petitioner] sat in the front passenger seat and John sat in the middle of the back seat.

"During the course of the trip, Adams asked the defendants how they had gotten as far as Ohio. One of the defendants responded that they had gotten a car from an old man who lived out in the woods, that they had run out of gas in New York, and that they had hitchhiked from New York to Ohio. When asked by Adams whether the car had been stolen, John responded that the car was not stolen, because 'the guy that owned it was dead.' [The petitioner] did not respond to this statement. Adams then asked them how the owner of the car had died. [The petitioner] answered that he had died 'of old age or something.' Adams asked the defendants whether anyone else knew that the owner of the car was dead, to which question neither defendant responded.

"On the same Tuesday morning, June 24, 1980, the body of [the victim], a seventy year old man, was found by two of his cousins in the backyard of his house, located in a wooded area in Waterford. One of them contacted the police, who arrived at [the victim's] house at about 10 a.m.

"Examination of the area in front of the victim's house revealed that a struggle apparently had taken place there, because the victim's hat, bow tie and camera were strewn about. Near the front door, the police found an area of matted down grass on which there was a bloodstained brick, and from that area, there were drag marks along the right side of the house to the rear corner where the body was found. The victim's body and his clothing were in a position that indicated that he had been dragged by his feet. The victim's right front pants pocket, in which he ordinarily kept his keys, was inside out and empty. No keys to his car or house were found at the scene, inside the house, or on his person, and the victim's car was missing. Several bloodstained bricks were found on the ground near the victim's head.

"In the front yard, in the area where the struggle had occurred, the police found a bent copper bracelet, which looked 'just like' a copper bracelet that a friend of [the petitioner's] had given back to [him] several weeks earlier. In the victim's mailbox, across the street from his house, the police found mail that had been delivered on Friday, June 20, between 2 and 2:30 p.m., and was still in the box on June 24, even though [the victim] usually picked up his mail from the box every day.

"An autopsy revealed that the victim had suffered extensive injuries to the head, a fractured skull, a broken right arm, a dislocated wrist, four stab wounds in the back, and six fractured ribs. The cause of death was a depressed skull fracture with laceration of the brain, caused by an object such as the corner of a brick. There was considerable maggot activity on the victim's head and body.

"Stephen Adams, an assistant medical examiner, went to the scene to investigate the circumstances of the victim's death. On the basis of his observations of the victim's body, the yard, and surrounding locations, Adams concluded that [the victim] had died two to four days before his body was discovered on June 24. Catherine Galvin, the acting chief medical examiner, who had performed the autopsy, examined photographs of the victim's body taken at the scene, inspected temperature records and viewed the actual scene. She concluded that within reasonable medical probability, the time span between the victim's death and the delivery of his body to the medical examiner's office on June 24 was between two and four days. Wayne Lord, a forensic entomologist who had been consulted by the office of the chief medical examiner, concluded that the victim's death occurred sometime between the late afternoon of June 19 and the early afternoon of June 21." Id., at 656-59, 557 A.2d 93.

On appeal to this court, the defendants claimed, inter alia, that the trial court improperly had denied their motions for acquittal based on an alleged insufficiency of the evidence. Id., at 655, 557 A.2d 93. They claimed that "the 'uncontradicted evidence' indicated that the victim was alive at a time after they had left Connecticut, and that a rational jury, having viewed this evidence, could not have concluded that they were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." Id., at 660, 557 A.2d 93.

We rejected that claim. Although the defendants had presented witnesses to establish that the victim was alive after Friday, June 20, 1980, the state demonstrated inconsistencies in that testimony. Id., at 661, 557 A.2d 93. In addition, the state "presented considerable evidence" that the victim died some time during the afternoon of June 20. Id. That evidence included the following: "M said that he had spoken with...