State v. Buonomo

• Decision Date: 16 April 1914
• Citation: 88 Conn. 177,90 A. 225
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. BUONOMO.

90 A. 225

88 Conn. 177

STATE

v. BUONOMO.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

April 16, 1914.

Appeal from Superior Court, Fairfield County; Joel H. Reed, Judge.

Joseph Buonomo was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death, and he appeals. Affirmed.

See, also, 87 Conn. 285, 87 Atl. 977.

John J. Cullinan, Jr., of Bridgeport, for appellant. Stiles Judson, State's Atty., of Bridgeport, for the State.

RORABACK, J. On the night of October 22, 1912, the accused, as he admits, shot and killed Jennie Cavaliero, in the town of Stratford, in Fairfield county. Upon an indictment charging Buonomo with murder in the first degree for this offense, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Upon an appeal to this court, the judgment of conviction was reversed, and a new trial ordered. State v. Buonomo, 87 Conn. 285, 87 Atl. 977. A second trial has taken place, and the accused has again been convicted and sentenced to death.

The state claimed and offered evidence to prove the following facts: Prior to the homicide, the accused and the deceased woman although not man and wife, had been living together in Chicago. She was and had been a woman of loose character. After some disagreement with the accused, she ran away from him in Chicago, and came to Bridgeport Buonomo soon followed, and found her in Bridgeport, when he reproached her for deserting him in Chicago. On the evening of the day after he arrived at Bridgeport, he planned an automobile ride with her. An automobile with a chauffeur was secured, and, after the accused had picked up four men of his own nationality, the party started for a ride over a country road in the town of Stratford. During the ride from Bridgeport, the members of the party were apparently pleasant and in a friendly mood. When they had reached a lonely place on the highway, the chauffeur was directed to stop, and all of the occupants except the chauffeur left the car. He was directed to go up the road and turn around. While he was turning the car a short distance away, Buonomo fired five shots from his revolver into the face, head, and body of the woman, causing almost immediate death. Several of these shots were fired when the deceased lay prostrate upon the ground. As soon as the chauffeur saw the body of the woman upon the ground, he gave information of the murder. Buonomo, after discharging the shots into the woman's body ejected the five empty shells from his revolver on the ground near her body, reloaded his revolver, which was found on his person fully loaded when he was arrested later in the night at some distance from the spot where the killing occurred.

The defendant took the witness stand in his own defense, and, in the course of his testimony, admitted that he remembered almost everything up to the moment when the shots were fired by him, but declared that he did not remember any more. Evidence was also introduced by the defense which it was claimed tended to prove that Buonomo killed the woman under a sudden impulse of passion, aroused because she called him a vile name, struck him across the eyes, and pushed him over on the ground, and that he was so much under the influence of liquor at this time that he did not have any realizing sense of what was taking place. The accused also introduced evidence tending to prove that he was of unsound mind at and before the time the homicide was committed.

These claims of the defense were denied by the state, which offered evidence to prove that Buonomo was of sound mind; that he was sober in Bridgeport on the night of the murder; that he fully realized what he was doing when the woman was shot and killed, as shown by the accuracy of his marksmanship in firing the shots at the woman, his ejecting the empty shells from the pistol, and reloading it, and his subsequent flight. The state also offered in evidence certain statements made by the defendant after his arrest, which, it was claimed, established a motive for the killing.

The errors assigned relate to the charge as given, refusals to charge as requested, and rulings made as to the admission of evidence. The accused complains of the charge, because the jury were told that: "If the only provocation that this accused had for shooting Jennie Cavaliero five times and to her death was, as he says, that she called him a dirty name, and pushed him over, and poked her fingers into his eyes, then I say to you that you should consider carefully whether such a provocation would be sufficient to reduce the crime from murder to manslaughter; and, if the claims of the accused are true that on previous days the woman had deprived him of his money or his clothes, or had otherwise treated him slightingly, all these would furnish no provocation sufficient to reduce the crime to manslaughter." Apparently this portion of the charge contains two separate propositions; the first one being that, under certain circumstances, the jury should carefully consider whether the provocation was sufficient to reduce the crime from murder to manslaughter. The jury were then informed that, assuming certain claims of fact made by the accused to be true, they would not be sufficient to reduce the crime to manslaughter.

We do not understand that counsel for the defendant insists that the charge, when so interpreted, is erroneous. The contention is that the expression "all these would furnish no provocation sufficient to reduce the crime to manslaughter" might have been misunderstood by the jury as applying to all the acts of provocation commented upon by the court in this portion of its charge. On the contrary, this applied...