State v. Blades

• Decision Date: 01 June 1993
• Docket Number: No. 14383,14383
• Citation: 225 Conn. 609,626 A.2d 273
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Ivan J. BLADES.

Page 273

626 A.2d 273

225 Conn. 609

STATE of Connecticut v. Ivan J. BLADES.

No. 14383.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Jan. 8, 1993.

Decided June 1, 1993.

Susan M. Hankins, Asst. Public Defender, with whom, on the brief, was G. Douglas Nash, Public Defender, for appellant (defendant).

C. Robert Satti, Sr., State's Atty., with whom were Kevin T. Kane, Asst. State's Atty., and, on the brief, Shelley L. Graves, Legal Intern, for appellee (state).

Before PETERS, C.J., and CALLAHAN, BORDEN, BERDON and NORCOTT, JJ.

NORCOTT, Associate Justice.

The defendant appeals from a judgment of conviction of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a ¹ following a trial to a three judge panel. The defendant was sentenced to a term of incarceration of forty-five years. On appeal, he claims that the trial court improperly: (1) denied his motion to suppress evidence derived from a warrantless entry into his home, which the police had allegedly entered pursuant to the "emergency" exception to the warrant requirement; (2) concluded that the defendant had failed to prove the affirmative defense of extreme emotional disturbance by a preponderance of the evidence; and (3) admitted irrelevant and prejudicial evidence that the victim had feared the defendant. We affirm the judgment of conviction. ²

The trial court could reasonably have found the following facts. The defendant, Ivan Blades, and the victim, Dorothy Blades, had a marriage beset by troubles. At the time of the victim's death, the couple had two children, Carol, age thirteen, and LaMont, age nine. On May 1, 1987, Carol was severely burned in a fire at the home of a friend and suffered permanent injuries. She subsequently spent three months in a hospital burn center in Boston, Massachusetts. The defendant blamed Carol's misfortune on the victim, because she had given Carol permission to visit the friend's home where the fire took place.

The defendant had been a drug user even before Carol was burned in the fire. After the fire, however, his drug use increased and he became an abuser of "crack" cocaine. As a result of his depression over Carol's injury and his drug use, his work performance suffered and caused him often to be tardy and absent from work. The defendant also borrowed large sums of money from coworkers on paydays. Between June and August, 1988, the defendant was periodically suspended from work and was finally discharged on September 16, 1988.

Following Carol's accident, the defendant's home life also deteriorated. There were frequent domestic arguments between the defendant and the victim regarding Carol's injury, the defendant's drug use, his frequent absence from the home, and their failure to pay the rent and other bills. Within a short period of time before and after the accident, the defendant's grandparents, brother and uncle died. In September, 1988, after he had been discharged from his employment, the defendant abandoned the family home and went to New York, where he stayed until his unexpected return home in late October, 1988.

When the defendant returned home, the domestic tensions continued. The victim did not want the defendant back in the house. Carol testified that the victim in fact had told her that she was afraid of the defendant and that she wanted a divorce and a restraining order barring him from the house. Before the defendant had gone to New York, he had been violent toward the victim and had threatened to harm her if she ever left him. After his return, the defendant again threatened to harm the victim and told the victim's mother, Hattie Sanders, that if he was "going down," he was taking his family down with him.

The defendant's family had been evicted from its apartment for nonpayment of rent and was scheduled to move on November 30, 1988. That morning, the defendant and the victim consulted an attorney regarding their eviction and a lawsuit that they had brought related to the fire in which Carol had been injured. When they returned home, they had an argument. The defendant followed the victim into the bathroom, where he stabbed the victim repeatedly and left her body in the bathtub.

That afternoon, when the children returned home from school, the defendant met them outside the apartment and explained that he was taking them to a friend's house. He told them that their Uncle Donnie had been shot and that their mother had gone to New York. Later that evening, the defendant picked up the children and put them on a train to New York, where he had arranged for his sister, Diana Blades Coleman, to meet them.

When Coleman met the children at the railroad station, Carol informed her that she had been told that her uncle had been shot and, for that reason, her mother had come to New York earlier that day. Coleman said she knew nothing about it. Carol then called Sanders, her grandmother, and learned that her uncle was fine and that the victim had not arrived in New York. Carol also called friends of the victim and the victim's workplace in an attempt to locate her.

Both Sanders and Coleman repeatedly called the New London police department to relay their concern over the disappearance of the victim and to request a police investigation. After some investigation, Detective David Gigliotti determined that entry into the defendant's home was necessary to protect or preserve the victim's life and, without obtaining a search warrant, he gained entry into the apartment with a pass key obtained from the apartment manager. In the bathtub of the defendant's apartment, Gigliotti discovered the fully clothed body of the victim under a blood soaked blanket. The body had multiple stab wounds including defensive wounds on the hands and forearms.

The next morning, December 1, 1988, the defendant drove his car into the New London police parking lot and was arrested. He had bruises on his shoulders and arms and had multiple cuts on the fingers of his right hand and a bite mark near the thumb. The defendant appeared to be unemotional.

Without contesting that he had killed the victim, at trial the defendant asserted the affirmative defense of extreme emotional disturbance pursuant to General Statutes § 53a-54a(a). The defendant also moved to suppress all physical evidence that had been seized from his home, including all items seized pursuant to search warrants because, he claimed, all the seized evidence allegedly had been derived from an invalid warrantless entry. The trial court denied this motion concluding that the warrantless entry into the defendant's home had been justified under the emergency exception to the warrant requirement. The trial court also concluded that the defendant had failed to prove the defense of extreme emotional disturbance by a preponderance of the evidence and found him guilty of murder. The defendant appealed to this court pursuant to General Statutes § 51-199(b)(3).

I

The defendant first claims that the trial court improperly denied his motion to suppress the evidence that had been derived from a warrantless search of the defendant's apartment, in violation of the fourth amendment to the United States constitution ³ and article first, § 7, of the Connecticut constitution. ⁴ We disagree.

The trial court found the following facts regarding the defendant's motion to suppress. At 11:06 p.m. on November 30, 1988, Gigliotti received a telephone call from the victim's mother, Sanders. Concerned about the disappearance of her daughter, she informed Gigliotti about the defendant's and the victim's marital problems, the false story about the children's uncle having been shot, and the arrival of the couple's unattended children in New York. She then told the police officer that "I think something has been done to her." As a result of this conversation, at 11:17 p.m. Gigliotti dispatched Officer Dean Forier to the defendant's residence.

Approximately seven minutes later, Gigliotti received a call from Coleman, who reiterated the information given by Sanders. Forier arrived at the defendant's house and at 11:29 p.m. called Gigliotti to report his findings. Forier reported that he had gone to the defendant's door and that the defendant had asked: "Who is it?" When Forier identified himself as a police officer, the defendant responded, with no question from Forier: "My wife is in New York." Forier told the defendant that he was responding to a call from Sanders and recommended that he telephone his concerned relatives.

At approximately 12:29 a.m., Gigliotti called the victim's employer and learned that the victim's daughter had previously called looking for the victim. Gigliotti received calls between 11:58 p.m. and 12:41 a.m. from Sanders and Coleman repeatedly expressing concern about the victim's absence. At 12:41 a.m., Coleman asked the police to enter the Blades' apartment. Ten minutes later, Gigliotti and other officers involved in the case decided that there was reason to believe that someone was injured or in danger in the apartment and that it would be necessary to enter to protect or preserve life. Gigliotti then left for the defendant's apartment.

At 12:59 a.m., Gigliotti learned from Sergeant John Weinberg that a family friend had gone to the apartment and that the defendant had told her that everything was fine. Several moments later, however, when Weinberg went to the apartment, he heard music inside but received no response to his knock at the door. When he arrived at the apartment building, Gigliotti and three other officers entered the rear doorway of the building. Gigliotti noticed a blood smear on the interior side of the door, and then went upstairs to the defendant's apartment. Gigliotti received no response when he knocked and rang the doorbell at 1:09 a.m.

Gigliotti entered the apartment with a pass key that he had obtained from the apartment manager. He saw blood smears on the wall in the rear hallway and a large amount of blood in the bathroom. He then discovered the...