State v. Best
| Decision Date | 29 February 2000 |
| Docket Number | (AC 18895) |
| Citation | 56 Conn. App. 742,745 A.2d 223 |
| Court | Connecticut Court of Appeals |
| Parties | STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. KENYA L. BEST |
Raymond J. Rigat, for the appellant (defendant).
Lisa Riggione, senior assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were John A. Connelly, state's attorney, and Maureen M. Keegan, supervisory assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).
The defendant, Kenya L. Best, appeals from the judgment of conviction of manslaughter in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-55 (a) (3).1 The defendant had been charged with the crimes of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a (a)2 and one count of capital felony for the murder of a person under sixteen years of age in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54b (9).3 The defendant had pleaded not guilty and elected a trial by a three judge court, which found the defendant not guilty of the charges of murder and capital felony, but did find her guilty of the lesser included offense of manslaughter in the first degree. The court denied the defendant's motions for judgment of acquittal at the close of the state's evidence and at the time of sentencing. Thereafter, the court sentenced the defendant to twenty years incarceration. This appeal followed. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
On appeal, the defendant claims that the trial court acted improperly in denying her motions for judgment of acquittal because there was insufficient evidence to sustain the conviction of manslaughter in the first degree. In doing so, she asserts that the evidence adduced at trial was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she acted either "under circumstances evincing an extreme indifference to human life" or "recklessly engage[d] in conduct which create[d] a grave risk of death to another person...." General Statutes § 53a-55 (a) (3). Although she does not challenge the state's contention that the evidence established a homicide, she claims that the evidence established only her culpability of the lesser included offense of manslaughter in the second degree4 in that she "recklessly"5 caused the death of another person. We disagree.
The trial court reasonably could have found the following facts. The victim, Mahkeva Best, was born on February 23, 1995, and was approximately twenty months old at the time of her death on October 31, 1996. At that time, she weighed twenty-two pounds and measured two feet, eight inches in height. On October 30, 1996, the defendant, who was Mahkeva's mother, was twenty-four years of age and resided with her boyfriend, Daryl Walker,6 and the victim in an apartment in Waterbury. The defendant had worked as a certified nurse's aide since 1992. She had recently lost her job as a result of the loss of her car, however, and was very frustrated over that, as she had been unable to find another job.
From October 31 to November 2, 1996, the defendant gave four separate written statements to the Waterbury police.7 According to the relevant portions of the fourth statement on November 2, 1996, the defendant stated
Later that evening, Walker called a cab because he thought that Mahkeva did not look well and thought that she needed to go to the hospital. While waiting for the cab, the defendant changed Mahkeva's diaper and clothing, at which point Walker pointed out some bruising on Mahkeva's stomach area and asked the defendant what had happened. The defendant responded that she did not know what had happened, but that maybe the bruising was due to the child's diaper being too tight.
When Mahkeva was brought to the emergency room of Waterbury Hospital at about 3:15 a.m. the next morning, October 31, 1996, by the defendant and Walker, she was examined by Genevieve O'Connell, an attending physician. Mahkeva's heart had a very slow agonal beat.8 O'Connell observed two bruises on Mahkeva's forehead, a relatively "fresh" bruise on the left forehead temple area and an older one on the right forehead side "about a week old"—all of which were "very visible" to the naked eye. There were four separate bruises in her abdominal area.9 O'Connell's opinion was that the four injuries to the abdominal area were due to blunt trauma with the force applied "multiple times."10 The blunt force was of a size "about four inches in diameter" and was "consistent with a fist punch." A cardiac arrest team became involved, but was unsuccessful. None of the injuries about which O'Connell testified could have been caused by the medical intervention at the hospital on October 31, 1996. Mahkeva was pronounced dead at 5:15 a.m. O'Connell opined that the cause of Mahkeva's death was blunt trauma.
Later that day, Malka Shah, the associate medical examiner at the office of the chief medical examiner, performed the autopsy11 in Farmington. She specializes in forensic pathology, which deals mostly with sudden death caused by trauma, why the trauma took place, what inflicted it and the extent of the trauma. Shah noted external injuries on Mahkeva's face, abdomen, left lower arm and left upper leg. Internally, the eighth and ninth ribs were fractured. There was extensive hemorrhaging throughout her entire abdominal area. The hemorrhaging extended to the entire abdominal wall at the right and left side. The cause of the injuries on this abdominal wall, opined Shah, was due to blunt force applied to the anterior abdominal wall causing ruptures of the capillaries and vessels and hemorrhage into the posterior wall itself. At least three blows were administered, as the abdomen was injured not only in the center, but also on the right and left sides. The injuries for the abdominal area were all inflicted at the same time. The blunt trauma also injured major organs. Blunt trauma to Mahkeva's abdomen caused a laceration in her right renal vein, hemorrhage in her pancreas, liver and lungs, extensive hemorrhages in the large intestine and ascending colon, and a macerating12 injury to her spleen. There was also bleeding on her posterior abdominal wall that came from the force applied to the anterior abdominal wall, which then passed through the organs to the posterior abdominal wall. The bleeding in her abdominal area was extensive. The cause of her bleeding13 was the blunt trauma, which, according to Shah, "led her to bleed to death."
The injuries to Mahkeva's forehead were older than the injuries to her abdominal area. The one on the right side of her head was older than the one on the left. Both, however, were older than the abdominal injuries. According to Shah, the blunt force trauma to the abdomen and the bite mark were "of the same duration" or were inflicted on Mahkeva at about the same time.
Ira Titunik, a forensic odontologist,14 became involved as a result of being contacted by Harold Wayne Carver, the state's chief medical examiner. Upon arriving in Waterbury in the evening of October 31, 1996, he met separately with the defendant and Walker, explained to them what he proposed to do in taking dental impressions of their upper and lower teeth as well as photographing that area. Thereafter, he went to the chief state medical examiner's office in Farmington, where he examined and photographed the tissue of the bite area excised from Mahkeva's left thigh. At the trial, after explaining in detail how he had proceeded, Titunik gave his opinion that the bite mark had been made by the defendant.
At the time of her fourth statement, in telling Neil O'Leary, a detective lieutenant with the Waterbury police,15 about Mahkeva's abdominal injuries, she demonstrated by pounding on his desk how she had struck the victim with both fists together. She could not remember how many times she had struck her daughter, but O'Leary said he counted her pounding five times on the desk. When O'Leary asked her to hit the desk as hard as she had hit Mahkeva, she looked at him and said, "What do you want me to do, break my hands?"
The defendant claims on appeal that the trial court improperly denied her motions for judgment of acquittal because there was insufficient evidence to sustain the conviction of manslaughter in the first degree. W...
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