State v. Anderson

• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: PALMER, J.
• Citation: State v. Anderson, 318 Conn. 680, 122 A.3d 254 (Conn. 2015)
• Decision Date: 15 September 2015
• Docket Number: No. 19024.,19024.
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Dickie E. ANDERSON, Jr.

318 Conn. 680

122 A.3d 254

STATE of Connecticut

v.Dickie E. ANDERSON, Jr.

No. 19024.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued April 30, 2015.

Decided Sept. 15, 2015.

Christopher Y. Duby, assigned counsel, with whom, on the brief, was William A. Adsit, North Haven, assigned counsel, for the appellant (defendant).

Marissa Goldberg, deputy assistant state's attorney, with whom were Stephen M. Carney, senior assistant state's attorney, and, on the brief, Michael L. Regan, state's attorney, for the appellee (state).

ROGERS, C.J., and PALMER, ZARELLA, McDONALD, ESPINOSA, ROBINSON and VERTEFEUILLE, Js.

Opinion

PALMER, J.

The defendant, Dickie E. Anderson, Jr., was charged in separate informations with the murders of Rene Pellegrino and Michelle Comeau in violation of General Statutes § 53a–54a (a). After the trial court granted the state's motion to consolidate the cases based on the cross admissibility of the evidence, the jury found the defendant guilty of the murder of Pellegrino but was unable to reach a verdict in the Comeau case. The trial court therefore declared a mistrial in that case and subsequently sentenced the defendant to sixty years imprisonment for the murder of Pellegrino. On appeal from the judgment of conviction in the Pellegrino case,¹ the defendant claims that the trial court abused its discretion in consolidating the cases for trial because the state had failed to meet its burden of establishing either that the evidence was cross admissible or that the defendant would not be substantially prejudiced by the joinder. We disagree and, accordingly, affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The following facts, which the jury reasonably could have found, and procedural history are relevant to our analysis of the defendant's claims. On June 25, 1997, the police discovered the naked body of an adult Caucasian female in the travel portion of a rural roadway in the town of Waterford. The body had been posed, with knees bent, feet together and arms outstretched. No clothing or jewelry was found in the vicinity of the body. The victim was later identified as Pellegrino, a known prostitute from the New London area who recently had been released from prison. Pellegrino's body was transported to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, where the medical examiner performing the autopsy determined her cause of death to be “asphyxia by neck compression,” with evidence of both manual and ligature strangulation. Pellegrino, who was seventeen weeks pregnant at the time of her death, also had sustained occipital trauma, and her blood tested positive for cocaine. A vaginal swab taken from Pellegrino contained DNA from an unknown male, which was subsequently entered into a national DNA database (DNA database). After several months, the investigation into the Pellegrino murder went cold.

On May 1, 1998, the police located the naked body of another adult Caucasian female in the travel portion of a rural roadway in the town of Franklin, close to the Norwich line. The victim's body was found with her arms and legs outstretched. The first witnesses to discover the body reported seeing a vehicle parked next to the victim that sped off as the witnesses approached. No clothing or jewelry was found in the vicinity of the body. The decedent was later identified as Michelle Comeau, a convicted prostitute from the Norwich area who recently had been released from prison. The medical examiner determined Comeau's cause of death to be “asphyxia by neck compression,” with evidence of both manual and ligature strangulation. Comeau's blood also tested positive for cocaine, and, like Pellegrino, she had sustained occipital trauma. As with the Pellegrino murder investigation, the investigation into Comeau's murder went cold after several months.

In 2008, authorities, through the DNA database, matched the unknown DNA from Pellegrino's vaginal swab to the defendant, who subsequently was interviewed by the police. At first, the defendant denied knowing Pellegrino. After he was informed of the DNA match, however, the defendant admitted to having had sexual intercourse with Pellegrino the evening before and the morning of her death. According to the defendant, he gave Pellegrino crack cocaine in exchange for sex. Two witnesses, Arthur Moore and Toni Wilson, implicated the defendant in Pellegrino's death. Moore, who was the defendant's cellmate at Osborne Correctional Institution, reported to the police that the defendant told him that he had strangled a woman named Rene at his sister's house after having sex with her because the woman was being loud and demanding money. According to Moore, the defendant told him that he left the woman's body on a road in Waterford and that he would not have killed her if he had known that she was pregnant. Wilson, the defendant's former girlfriend and the mother of two of his children, informed the police that, in 1998, in a very emotional state, the defendant had confessed to killing a woman after having sex with her. According to Wilson, the woman had demanded payment for the sexual encounter, and the defendant did not want to pay, so they fought, and he killed her.

When questioned about the Comeau murder, the defendant initially denied knowing Comeau but eventually admitted that she had been a frequent visitor at the home of his father, Dickie Anderson, Sr., in the city of Norwich, and that, on the day of her death, he had exposed his penis to her in a bathroom at his father's house. The defendant described himself to the police as a “trick artist” who traded crack cocaine for sex with prostitutes. The defendant denied killing Comeau, however, or ever having had sexual intercourse with her. Two witnesses, Tanya Anderson, the defendant's sister, and Moore, the defendant's former cellmate, implicated the defendant in Comeau's murder. Moore reported to the police that the defendant had told him that a woman with whom he was having sexual relations overdosed on drugs while they were together and that he disposed of her body in Franklin. Tayna Anderson reported to the police that, after Comeau's murder, the defendant told her that he had been sexually intimate with a woman whose body was found on a road in Norwich and that he had met the woman at their father's house.

On June 1, 2010, the defendant was arrested and charged in an information with the murder of Pellegrino. On September 1, 2010, the defendant was charged in a separate information with the murder of Comeau. On November 21, 2011, the defendant filed a motion for a speedy trial in the Comeau case, and, shortly thereafter, on December 3, 2011, the state filed a motion to consolidate the cases based, in part, on the cross admissibility of the evidence. In a memorandum of law in support of its motion, the state argued, inter alia, that the evidence would be cross admissible to prove the identity of the killer based on the signature nature of the crimes and to show a common scheme or plan. Specifically, the state maintained that the murders shared a sufficient number of unique characteristics to support an inference that the same person had committed both crimes in furtherance of an overall plan, namely, “to murder prostitutes and display their dead bodies for others to find.”

With respect to the signature nature of the crimes, the state's memorandum of law set forth twenty-nine similarities between the murders, which may be summarized as follows: the crimes took place ten months apart in New London County during warm weather months; the victims' naked bodies were found in the travel portion of a rural roadway approximately fifteen miles apart; the victims knew each other; there was evidence of posing in both cases; both victims were Caucasian and had dark hair; both victims were prostitutes who had recently been released from prison; no clothing or jewelry was found in the vicinity of either body; both victims were known to use crack cocaine and had cocaine in their blood at the time of death; both victims resided in New London County; both victims knew the defendant; both victims were killed on a week night; both victims were killed in a location other than where their bodies were discovered; both victims were strangled with a ligature; both victims sustained occipital trauma ; and the defendant admitted to having sexual encounters with both victims on the day of their murders.

In an oral ruling following a hearing on the state's motion for consolidation, the trial court granted the motion. Thereafter, the court granted the defendant's motion for articulation of the ruling and issued a memorandum of decision explaining its reasons for consolidating the cases. In its memorandum of decision, the court stated that joinder was appropriate under the factors set forth in State v. Boscarino, 204 Conn. 714, 720–24, 529 A.2d 1260 (1987),² because the cases involved easily distinguishable factual scenarios, the trial would not be long or overly complex, and the allegations in both cases, although serious, were not so shocking or brutal that there was any risk that one case would be tainted by the shocking or brutal nature of the other. The court further concluded that joinder was also appropriate because the evidence was cross admissible to prove the defendant's identity based on the signature nature of the crimes. In support of this conclusion, the court explained that “[e]ach of the characteristics of the crimes, when viewed in isolation, [was] not necessarily distinctive. When viewed as a whole, however, the characteristics reveal[ed] a distinctive combination of factors, one that strongly suggest[ed] a modus operandi inherent in the activities of but one perpetrator.”

On January 16, 2012, the defendant filed a motion to sever the trials in light of this court's then recent decision in State v. Payne, 303 Conn. 538, 34 A.3d 370 (2012),³ in which we overruled our prior case law adopting a presumption in favor of joinder in criminal cases and imposed on the state the burden of...