State v. Beckerman
| Decision Date | 24 September 2013 |
| Docket Number | AC 34670 |
| Court | Connecticut Court of Appeals |
| Parties | STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. WILLIAM BECKERMAN |
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All opinions are subject to modification and technical correction prior to official publication in the Connecticut Reports and Connecticut Appellate Reports. In the event of discrepancies between the electronic version of an opinion and the print version appearing in the Connecticut Law Journal and subsequently in the Connecticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports, the latest print version is to be considered authoritative.
The syllabus and procedural history accompanying the opinion as it appears on the Commission on Official Legal Publications Electronic Bulletin Board Service and in the Connecticut Law Journal and bound volumes of official reports are copyrighted by the Secretary of the State, State of Connecticut, and may not be reproduced and distributed without the express written permission of the Commission on Official Legal Publications, Judicial Branch, State of Connecticut.Gruendel, Alvord and Flynn, Js.
(Appeal from Superior Court, judicial district of
Richard Emanuel, for the appellant (defendant).
Rocco A. Chiarenza, assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Gail P. Hardy, state's attorney, and Donna Mambrino, senior assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).
The defendant, William Beckerman, appeals from the judgment of conviction, rendered after a bench trial, of arson in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-111 (a) (2) and arson in the first degree in violation of § 53a-111 (a) (4).1 The defendant claims that the trial court erred by (1) denying his motion in limine to preclude the state from presenting scientific evidence in violation of his due process rights under the United States constitution and the Connecticut constitution, (2) allowing the state to present rebuttal evidence in excess of the proper scope and purpose of such evidence, (3) accepting his invalid waiver of his right to a jury trial, and (4) intervening during trial, thereby depriving him of his right to a fair trial as guaranteed by the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the United States constitution and article first, § 8, of the Connecticut constitution. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
The following facts are relevant to the defendant's claims on appeal. On February 11, 2009, the defendant returned from a trip to Florida. His business associate and neighbor, Leonard Udolf, picked him up from Bradley Airport to take him to a business meeting the two were planning to attend together. On the way to Udolf's office, where the meeting was to be held, the two men stopped at the defendant's home in West Hartford so that he could turn on the heat. When they arrived at the defendant's home, he entered it through the garage while Udolf waited in the car. According to Udolf, the defendant was in the home for approximately five minutes before returning to the car. When the defendant got back into Udolf's car, he remarked that the house felt cold, so he had turned up the heat and heard the boiler begin running. The men left the defendant's home at approximately 2:45 p.m. and, from there, went to a Subway restaurant to have lunch. Following lunch, the two men attended their scheduled meeting at Udolf's office from approximately 3 p.m. until 3:30 p.m.
Meanwhile, at 2:53 p.m., fire station four in West Hartford received a report of a home on fire at 27 The Crossways, the defendant's home address. Upon arriving at the scene of the fire, firefighters concluded, based on observing that the smoke was emanating from the foundation of the house and basement windows, that the fire was located in the basement. The first crew to enter the home encountered an entirely smoke filled first floor, forcing them to crawl on their hands and knees to search for potential victims trapped inside the home. After ventilating the house, firefighters were able to observe that flames engulfed with "significant force" the entire doorway leading to the basement staircase. Following his determination that the structural integrity of the stairs to the basement had been compromised, Christopher Gordon, a lieutenant with the West Hart-ford Fire Department, concluded that it would be unsafe for his crew to attempt to descend the stairs to the basement in order to fight the fire at its source. Gordon and his crew then exited the residence to replace the cylinders of their air packs and a second crew entered the building.
Having replaced his air pack, Gordon, then aided by firefighter David Quick, attempted to prevent the fire from spreading to the first floor by applying water to the area around the doorway. While manning the hose during this operation, Gordon and Quick experienced an explosion that knocked Quick backward from the doorway and burned his face. At that point, Gordon decided to change their approach and attempt to fight the fire from outside the home. The crew outside the residence experienced the explosion as well. They observed, following the explosion, a fireball burst out of the basement window and burn firefighter Gregory Hill.
After fighting the fire for more than one hour to no avail, Michael Sinsigalli, assistant fire chief, ordered the crews to suspend their firefighting efforts until the first floor of the home collapsed into the basement, a common strategy employed when firefighters, as here, were without direct access to the source of the fire. Approximately ninety minutes later, the first floor collapsed and firefighters were able to gain control over the fire shortly thereafter. In the end, five firefighters sustained injuries while attempting to extinguish the fire. Despite being notified that his house was on fire, the defendant declined to go to the scene.
The following day, February 12, 2009, John Sawyer, a detective with the state fire marshal's office, initiated his investigation of the fire. Sawyer began by interviewing the defendant at the West Hartford police station, where the defendant provided him with a sketch of his home and an account of his activities before and during the fire. The defendant indicated that he believed the fire was caused by a furnace malfunction and that he had experienced problems with the furnace in the past. While interviewing him, Sawyer also obtained the defendant's written consent to search the home.
After having an excavator remove the debris remaining from the first floor collapse, Sawyer accessed the home in order to uncover the cause and origin of the fire. Having determined from the pattern of fire damage that the source of the fire was in the basement, he undertook a thorough examination of that area. He determined that the furnace could not have been the origin of the fire because it appeared to be relatively unharmed: the paint and labels on the exterior of the furnace, along with the plastic emergency switch were intact and there was little damage to its wiring or insulation. He discovered, moreover, that the flue pipe appeared to lack defects or abnormalities.
While inspecting the basement, Sawyer found a dresser in the furnace room. He noticed that the dresser drawers had been removed and that brown paper filled the cavities where the drawers formerly sat. The paper weaved inside the openings of the dresser, extended to a nearby couch and extended further still to the top of a lawn mower. Sawyer determined that the paper had been arranged in this way to act as a "trailer" to aid in spreading the fire.
Having failed to determine with any certainty the cause of the fire, on February 13, 2009, Sawyer brought to the home his canine trained in detecting the presence of accelerants. Lily, Sawyer's canine, alerted to the presence of petroleum distillate in four locations in the basement: the wall and floor of the "bar room," on the couch, the second step of the staircase leading from the basement to the first floor and the area in front of the furnace. Sawyer took samples from all of these locations except for the area in front of the furnace, as he expected to find traces of home heating oil there. Sawyer later sent the samples for testing to Jack Hubball, a chemist at the state police forensic laboratory, who determined that all of the samples substantiated the presence of a cocktail of gasoline and kerosene. Sawyer, having eliminated all natural or accidental causes of the fire, including electrical or furnace malfunction, concluded that the cause of the fire was "intentional of human design" and that the origin of the fire was at the bottom of the stairs leading to the basement.
After Lily indicated that several areas in the basement had traces of accelerants, Sawyer met with the defendant at a local Dunkin' Donuts in order to glean more information about his home and his activities leading up to the fire. The defendant, during this meeting, provided Sawyer with a written statement detailing his arrival at Bradley Airport, his short visit to his home to turn on the heat, his observations that there did not appear to have been any person in or near the home and his subsequent lunch and meeting at Udolf's office. In the written statement, he also described the history of furnace repairs and an alleged leak in the furnace that caused an oil spill that he cleaned up with paper towels.
Thereafter, the defendant was arrested and charged with one count of first degree arson. The state, at...
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