State v. O'brien-Veader
| Decision Date | 08 September 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. 19038.,19038. |
| Citation | 122 A.3d 555,318 Conn. 514 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE of Connecticut v. Matthew O'BRIEN–VEADER. |
James B. Streeto, assistant public defender, for the appellant (defendant).
James A. Killen, senior assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Maureen Platt, state's attorney, and Terrence Mariani and Amy L. Sedensky, senior assistant state's attorneys, for the appellee (state).
ROGERS, C.J., and PALMER, ZARELLA, McDONALD, ESPINOSA, ROBINSON and VERTEFEUILLE, Js.
The principal issue in this appeal requires us to determine when a prosecutor's apparent breach of a trial court ruling becomes prosecutorial impropriety implicating a defendant's due process right to a fair trial, rather than an evidentiary matter without constitutional import. The defendant, Matthew O'Brien–Veader, appeals1 from the judgment of the trial court, rendered after a jury trial, convicting him of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a–54a (a),2 kidnapping in the second degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a–94 (a), and felony murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a–54c. On appeal, the defendant claims that he is entitled to a new trial because: (1) numerous instances of prosecutorial impropriety during the cross-examination of the defendant's expert witness and closing arguments deprived him of his right to a fair trial; (2) the trial court improperly denied his motions for a mistrial; (3) the evidence is insufficient to support his kidnapping conviction under State v. Salamon, 287 Conn. 509, 949 A.2d 1092 (2008) ; and (4) the trial court improperly precluded the testimony of two witnesses who would have corroborated his defense of extreme emotional disturbance. We disagree with all of these claims and, accordingly, affirm the judgment of the trial court.
The record reveals the following facts, which the jury reasonably could have found, and procedural history. In the spring of 2009, the defendant was twenty-one years old and working for a residential construction company. He shared an apartment in Waterbury with several friends and coworkers in a multifamily house on East Liberty Street. In June, 2009, the defendant quit his job and moved out of the apartment, despite being invited to remain there. The defendant then moved into an abandoned factory building in Waterbury where the victim, Joed Olivera, lived. The two men, who had been friendly since the defendant was fourteen years old, lived on the building's third floor, which was full of garbage and lacked power and water. They shared a large mattress in that makeshift living space.
The relationship between the defendant and the victim rapidly deteriorated. The defendant stated that the victim “had been making some comments” that “made [him] feel uncomfortable.” After the defendant confronted the victim about a perceived sexual advance, the victim told the defendant that he had ejaculated on him one night. Because of his increasing anger over what the victim had told him, on June 8, 2009, the defendant checked into a motel with his girlfriend, Samantha O'Connor. At the motel, the defendant told O'Connor about his discomfort with the victim, and his intention to kill him.
The following day, June 9, 2009, the defendant returned to the factory. In a statement to police, the defendant recounted the events of that day as follows: “I just hung out with [the victim] all day at the factory.
[The victim] said it was safe and he wasn't going to do anything to me. I told [the victim] that if he had some kind of crush on me then he had to tell me so I could leave. I told [the victim] again that I had a girlfriend and I am not a fag. I asked him if I could trust him and he said ‘yes.’ Eventually I went to sleep ... in the corner of the bed. But before I went to sleep I had a knife on me.... I went to sleep with the knife because if [the victim] tried any of the faggot shit with me I was going to kill him. If I felt a hand in the wrong place I probably would have cut his hand off.... I fell asleep and nothing happened that night.”
The defendant's statement continued:
The defendant then went upstairs to the third floor to see the victim, who asked why he had not purchased any beer. Following an angry exchange, in which the defendant asked the victim why he had ejaculated on him and the victim accused the defendant of being “selfish and ... trying to screw him over” because of the beer money, the confrontation turned physical. The defendant believed that the victim saw his knife, which the defendant had hidden in the sleeve of his sweatshirt, and the victim started moving toward a second knife that was sticking out of a nearby wall. At that point, the defendant took the second knife out of the wall, grabbed the victim by the shoulder, and tried to throw him down a flight of stairs that led to the second floor. When the victim caught himself in the middle of the staircase, the defendant began to beat him repeatedly with a pair of crutches that the victim used because he had a foot injury.
The defendant then tried to push the victim through a hole in the floor at the bottom of the stairs so that the victim would fall down to the first floor. When the victim's leg and part of his body were in the hole, he pleaded and apologized to the defendant, who continued to yell at him, “[w]hy did you do this to me ... I trusted you, you were like a father to me.” After the victim climbed out of the hole, the defendant hit him with a metal rod and his fists. The defendant subsequently forced the victim at knifepoint to go back up the stairs, so he could push him down a larger hole between the third and second floors. The defendant stated that he wanted the victim “to suffer and be tortured.” The defendant then pushed the victim through that hole, causing him to land on wood and debris on the second floor below. As the victim continued to plead with the defendant, the defendant hit him with a fluorescent light tube, and then stabbed him in the neck, chest, shoulder, and head with the dagger more than thirty times until the victim appeared dead.3 The defendant then covered the victim's body with debris, and gathered his belongings from the third floor.
After cleaning himself up and burying his blood covered knife and sweatshirt nearby, the defendant purchased a forty ounce container of Natural Light beer, returned to the factory, and poured some of it on the victim's body “because ... it was his favorite.” While sitting on the third floor, the defendant saw a note inviting him and the victim to come to the East Liberty Street house to meet some friends, among whom were Jason Benoit and Gary Peden. The defendant visited his friends at their house, and when Benoit asked the defendant where the victim was, the defendant—with no change in his ordinary demeanor—confessed what he had done. Benoit did not believe the defendant, so the defendant brought him to the factory and showed him the victim's body. Benoit and the defendant then went to pick up O'Connor at her grandmother's house in Naugatuck. The defendant also sought to retrieve his tools so that Benoit and Corey Bosse, another friend, could pawn them for him.
After he confessed to her, O'Connor did not believe what the defendant had done and wanted to see the body, so the defendant again returned to the factory with her, Benoit, and another friend, Dominic Wells. O'Connor and the defendant then went to Saint Mary's Hospital in Waterbury where the defendant received treatment for cuts to his hand sustained during his attack on the victim.
The defendant and O'Connor spent that night at his friends' house on East Liberty Street. The following day, the defendant decided to leave Connecticut, and he and O'Connor began to walk to her grandmother's home in Naugatuck. In the meantime, Bosse reported the defendant's actions to the Waterbury police, who, with the subsequent assistance of Benoit, located the victim's body on June 11, 2009. Waterbury police officers subsequently apprehended the defendant on his walk to Naugatuck, and he later confessed to Detectives Michael Slavin and Orlando Rivera.
The state charged the defendant with murder in violation of § 53a–54a (a), felony murder in violation of § 53a–54c, and kidnapping in the second degree in violation of § 53a–94 (a). The case was tried to a jury, and the defendant did not contest having killed the victim, but asserted a defense of extreme emotional disturbance, which, under § 53a–54a, would reduce his murder conviction to manslaughter in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a–55 (a). The defendant presented this case primarily through the expert testimony of Seth Feuerstein, a psychiatrist, who opined that, because of the defendant's severe homophobia, his actions at the time of the attack constituted an emotional “reaction,” albeit one without a “formal psychiatric diagnosis ....”4
Subsequently, the jury returned a verdict finding the defendant guilty on all counts, and that he had not proven the affirmative defense of extreme emotional distress by a preponderance of the evidence. The trial court rendered a judgment of conviction in accordance with the jury's verdict, and sentenced the defendant to a total effective sentence of forty-seven years imprisonment.5 This direct appeal followed.
On appeal,...
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