State v. Canales

• Decision Date: 13 March 2007
• Docket Number: No. 17102.,17102.
• Citation: 281 Conn. 572,916 A.2d 767
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Flora CANALES.

916 A.2d 767

281 Conn. 572

STATE of Connecticut v. Flora CANALES.

No. 17102.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued October 26, 2006.

Decided March 13, 2007.

Raymond L. Durelli, special public defender, for the appellant (defendant).

Margaret Gaffney Radionovas, senior assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were David I. Cohen, state's attorney, and Paul Ferencek and Maureen Ornousky, senior assistant state's attorneys, for the appellee (state).

BORDEN, NORCOTT, KATZ, PALMER and VERTEFEUILLE, Js.

NORCOTT, J.

The defendant, Flora Canales, directly appeals¹ from the judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a.² On appeal, the defendant claims that (1) the admission into evidence at trial of statements that she had made to police officers violated her constitutional right against self-incrimination because they were the product of an illegal arrest, or a custodial interrogation in violation of her Miranda rights,³ and (2) her due process rights under the state and federal constitutions and her state constitutional right to a probable cause hearing, as required by article first, § 8, of the constitution of Connecticut, were violated when the judge who had issued search and arrest warrants against her failed to disqualify himself from presiding over her probable cause hearing. We reject these claims and affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The record reveals the following facts, which the jury reasonably could have found, and procedural history. On December 3, 2001, the defendant entered the offices of the job placement agency in Greenwich owned by Alicia Mota-Kirkel and shot Mota-Kirkel three times, killing her. Evidence gathered by the police that day led them to conclude that they had probable cause to believe that the defendant had committed the crime. Consequently, on the evening of the murder, police officers detained the defendant in the lobby of her apartment building for approximately three hours while they prepared search and arrest warrants against her. The warrants were presented to a judge of the Superior Court, Comerford, J., and were issued by him on that date.⁴ The police then arrested the defendant and transported her to the Greenwich police station.

The defendant later filed a motion requesting that Judge Comerford disqualify himself from the constitutionally mandated probable cause hearing because he had issued the arrest warrant. After hearing argument Judge Comerford denied the motion, proceeded with the probable cause hearing, and subsequently found probable cause to believe that the defendant had committed murder. The defendant also filed a pretrial motion to suppress statements that she had made to the police officers in the lobby of her apartment building and in the police station, which the trial court denied by oral decision after a suppression hearing. The statements later were admitted into evidence at trial.

After the case was tried to the jury, the trial court rendered judgment of conviction in accordance with the verdict of guilty on the charge of murder and sentenced the defendant to fifty years imprisonment. This appeal followed.

I WHETHER THE LOBBY STATEMENTS WERE THE PRODUCT OF AN ILLEGAL ARREST

The defendant first challenges the admissibility of the statements she made in the lobby of her apartment building on the ground that they were the product of an illegal arrest. Specifically, she argues that she was seized by the police from the moment that she exited her apartment and that the police officers who seized her lacked probable cause to justify her arrest at that time. The state responds that this claim should not be reviewed because it was not distinctly raised at trial and the record fails to satisfy the requirements for review of unpreserved claims pursuant to State v. Golding, 213 Conn. 233, 239-40, 567 A.2d 823 (1989). The state also argues that, even if the defendant had been under arrest when she made the statements in the lobby, her arrest was not illegal because the police possessed probable cause to arrest her at that time. We agree with the state that the defendant failed to preserve her claim that the statements she had made in the lobby were the product of an illegal arrest, and also conclude that the unpreserved claim is unreviewable under the first prong of Golding because the record is inadequate.

The record reveals the following additional relevant facts and procedural history. On the evening of the murder, two Greenwich police officers and two Stamford police officers went to the apartment building where the defendant lived in order to detain her. Two officers waited at the end of the hallway into which the defendant's apartment door opened, while two other officers waited in the lobby of the building. When the defendant emerged from her apartment into the hallway, the officers at the end of the hallway began to move toward her, and followed her as she walked into the lobby. One of the officers informed the defendant that they were police officers and asked if she was Flora Canales. The defendant answered in the affirmative and then asked the officers, "Why are you bothering me, because I'm a suspect in the Alicia [Mota-Kirkel]?" At that time, the victim's name had not been released publicly.

After the defendant made this statement, the officers patted her down and detained her in the lobby of the building for approximately three hours while arrest and search warrants were being prepared. During that time, the defendant was not handcuffed and she moved freely about the lobby, occasionally speaking to the officers or to people coming in and out of the building. The police officers did not interrogate the defendant during this time. While detained in the lobby, however, the defendant made several statements to the officers. She spontaneously informed them that she knew that they were investigating a shooting, that they were searching for a gun, and that she was a suspect. At one point during this detention, the defendant looked in a flower planter, which caused the officers to look in the planter. In response to the officers' action, the defendant told the officers that she knew they were looking for a gun and that they would not find it there. She stated: "[K]eep looking and I will tell you when you get hot." During her detention in the lobby, the defendant also informed the officers that she knew the victim and that the victim was her enemy.

The defendant filed a pretrial motion seeking to suppress, inter alia, the statements that she had made in the lobby. She argued that, when she made those statements, she was in police custody and had not received Miranda warnings and, therefore, the statements were not a voluntary, knowing and intelligent waiver of her fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. The motion claimed that "evidence of these oral declarations . . . should be suppressed since it was taken in violation of the defendant's rights under [a]rticle [f]irst, [§] 8, of the Connecticut . . . constitution, and under the fourth, fifth, sixth and fourteenth amendments to the United States [c]onstitution." Despite the general reference to the fourth amendment to the United States constitution, the motion to suppress failed to raise any specific claim based on that amendment, including a claim that the lobby statements were the product of an illegal arrest.

At the suppression hearing, the state presented witnesses whose testimony focused on the interactions between the defendant and the police officers and the circumstances under which she had made the statements at issue. The state did not present evidence concerning whether the police had evidence sufficient to establish probable cause for the defendant's arrest at the time of her detention in the lobby. Defense counsel also focused his cross-examination and argument on the circumstances surrounding the statements. He focused particularly on factors relevant to the Miranda claims, namely, whether the defendant was in custody, whether she had been informed of her Miranda rights, whether she had been interrogated, and whether the circumstances indicated that she had made a voluntary, knowing, and intelligent waiver of her rights.⁵

Similarly, both the oral argument made by the state and the trial court's oral decision focused on whether the defendant's Miranda rights had been violated. Although the parties and the court indicated an interest in whether the defendant was in police custody during her detention in the lobby, neither the parties nor the court focused on whether the information available to the police when the defendant made the statements constituted probable cause to support an arrest.

Our case law and rules of practice generally limit this court's review to issues that are distinctly raised at trial. See, e.g., Ajadi v. Commissioner of Correction, 280 Conn. 514, 550, 911 A.2d 712 (2006) (declining to consider claim not raised before habeas court); State v. Fagan, 280 Conn. 69, 85-89, 905 A.2d 1101 (2006) (declining to review claim not preserved at trial); Practice Book § 60-5 (court not bound to consider claim unless distinctly raised at trial). "Only in [the] most exceptional circumstances can and will this court consider a claim, constitutional or otherwise, that has not been raised and decided in the trial court." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) River Bend Associates, Inc. v. Conservation & Inland Wetlands Commission, 269 Conn. 57, 82, 848 A.2d 395 (2004). Thus, because the defendant's motion to suppress failed to claim specifically that the statements she had made in the lobby were the product of an arrest for which the police lacked probable cause, and neither probable cause nor the legality of the arrest were the subject of any meaningful discussion at the suppression hearing; see footnote 5 of this opinion; we decline to review this issue unless it satisfies the requirements...