State v. Cots
| Decision Date | 08 November 1939 |
| Citation | 9 A.2d 138,126 Conn. 48 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE v. COTS. |
Appeal from Superior Court, Middlesex County; Alfred C. Baldwin Patrick B. O'Sullivan, and Edward J. Daly, Judges.
Indictment charging Vincent Cots with the crime of murder, brought to the superior court in Middlesex County and tried to the court. From a judgment finding defendant guilty, defendant appeals.
No error.
M. Eugene Culver, Public Defender, of Middletown, David A Carlson, of Portland, and Irwin Isaacs, of New York City, for appellant (defendant).
Bertrand E. Spencer, State's Atty., of Middletown, for appellee (the State).
Argued Before MALTBIE, C.J., and HINMAN, AVERY, BROWN, and JENNINGS, JJ.
The indictment charged Ira Allen Weaver and this accused with murder in the first degree in having shot to death Joseph G. Dripps at Middletown on January 21, 1939, while engaged in the armed robbery of his store, the shooting having been done by Weaver, and Cots having aided and abetted the same. Upon Weaver's plea of guilty the court determined the degree of his crime to be murder in the first degree. Cots having pleaded not guilty, and so elected, was tried by the court, and was adjudged guilty of murder in the first degree as charged in the indictment. He has appealed from this judgment.
These facts material to the issues upon this appeal, summarized in part for the sake of brevity, are found by the court upon sufficient evidence. Cots and Weaver were co-employees of a traveling show from August 1, 1938, to sometime in September, 1938, and thereafter Weaver lived with Cots and his wife in a tenement in Middletown. From October 1, 1938, to January 21, 1939, they did such odd jobs together as cutting wood and selling Christmas trees. Sometime Before August 1, 1938, Weaver had purchased a twenty-two calibre automatic Colt Woodman's Target Pistol. In December 1938 Weaver and Cots perpetrated an armed robbery of a store in Meriden in which this gun was used, and in which Cots aided and abetted by furnishing all the information as to the circumstances concerning the store, and by furnishing transportation to Weaver to Meriden in the Cots car. In January prior to the 21st, Weaver broke and entered a store at Higganum for which crime Cots drove him to Higganum, and later furnished transportation of the loot to Middletown.
On January 21, 1939, and for some time prior thereto, Cots was the registered owner of a 1929 Auburn sedan which was used in the instant crime and those committed at Meriden and Higganum. In all instances it was operated by Cots, Weaver having neither an operator's license nor ability to operate that type of car. The gun with ammunition was commonly left with Edward Renca, and was used from time to time by him and both accused for target practice and shooting small game in the woods. On Thursday, January 19, 1939, Renca delivered the gun loaded with ten cartridges to Weaver at his request. The next day Weaver, Cots and Renca were in the woods, when the gun was displayed but not used. On January 21, 1939, Weaver and Cots were in financial straits, with payments due for room rent, on the car, and for groceries, and no income available.
On that evening of Saturday, January 21st, being unable to raise any money, Weaver and Cots decided to rob Fladd's store in Middletown, and drove to the vicinity of the store, having the gun with them. They had some talk that Cots was to rob this store. After arriving in the vicinity Cots lost his nerve and would not undertake this robbery. Weaver thereupon took the gun to accomplish it but desisted because the storekeeper was a woman. They then abandoned this robbery. They thereupon agreed to hold up the store of Joseph Dripps and proceeded there with the gun between them on the front seat of the automobile.
Arriving in the vicinity of the Dripps store at about 9:30 in the evening, Cots parked the car on Russell Street one hundred or two hundred yards from it. Weaver got out and proceeded in the direction of the store, taking the gun with him. Thereupon, using the gun as a means of intimidation, Weaver held up and robbed Dripps in his store and in the course of the robbery shot him through the stomach. As a result of the wound so inflicted Dripps died on January 24, 1939. After the robbery, Weaver returned to the car and told Cots that he had shot a man in the course of the hold-up. Cots thereupon drove the car, with lights extinguished, away from the scene of the crime to a point near Renca's store, where Weaver left the car taking the gun with him. The gun remained concealed during that night and was returned to Renca by Cots. Medical Examiner Harvey operated on Dripps and removed from his body a twenty-two calibre long rifle bullet fired through this gun.
In unsworn statements made both on January 21st and 24th as to his whereabouts and doings on the evening of Saturday, January 21st, Cots admitted driving to the scene of the crime with Weaver and denied any further knowledge of it. He did not testify in his own behalf at the trial. On other occasions between the night of January 21st and the morning of January 23d in unsworn statements to the police, both Cots and Weaver claimed they were both at home on Saturday evening, January 21st, after approximately 9 o'clock. Both subsequently admitted these statements were false.
The robbery was accomplished under and pursuant to plans made by Weaver and Cots to commit it. Cots had knowledge that it was to be committed, and he drove Weaver there for that purpose, and he also knew that the gun was to be used for that purpose and that it was loaded. The court concluded that Cots was an accessory to the murder of Joseph Dripps and was guilty of murder in the first degree as charged in the indictment. Error is assigned in the court's refusal to find certain facts and in finding some of the subordinate facts and this conclusion without evidence. There is no need to consider the claimed corrections in the finding. The final assignment of error is the action of the court in finding upon all the evidence that the accused Cots is guilty of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt. The ultimate question is " whether, on all the evidence, the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crime charged" . State v. Frost, 105 Conn. 326, 332, 135 A. 446, 448; State v. Guilfoyle, 109 Conn. 124, 138, 145 A. 761; State v. Simborski, 120 Conn. 624, 626, 182 A. 221. Our discussion of this phase of the appeal is confined to this inquiry.
The accused Cots claims that the evidence is insufficient to support a finding that in whatever he did, he possessed that guilty knowledge which is essential to the conclusion that he is guilty as an accessory. While he expressly concedes that he ‘ drove with Weaver to the scene of the shooting,’ he contends that he neither agreed to nor had any knowledge of the contemplated commission of any criminal act by Weaver. He further claims that the only evidence to support the court's finding that there was such an agreement and knowledge on his part is the testimony of Weaver and that this upon this record is legally insufficient to sustain it. This testimony is attacked as entirely unworthy of belief because of the flat contradictions in other statements made by Weaver which appear in the record. This shows that Weaver in reenacting the crime on January 24th told the police that Cots drove him to the vicinity of the Dripps store, waited while he went in and robbed and shot Dripps, and then drove him away, but that Cots had no knowledge at all that Weaver was going to commit the robbery or shooting. It also appears that in his statement to the police of March 6th, Weaver told the radically different story that Cots planned the crime, drove the car to the locus, and was the one who went into the store and did the shooting. At the trial, after pleading guilty to the indictment charging him with the actual shooting, Weaver testified that he and Cots agreed to rob Dripps, that the gun, as Cots knew, was loaded and on the seat of the car, and that Cots was the one who got out and robbed and shot Dripps.
Cots' contention comes down to this, that since the sole testimony of his guilty connection with the crime is that of Weaver, the version of the offense in Weaver's statement of January 24th, and that in his statement of March 6th and in his testimony, are so inconsistent and mutually exclusive that the court's conclusion that Weaver was guilty as principal and Cots as accessory cannot be sustained. Cots argues that this is necessarily so since if the former is accepted as true he is clearly innocent, while if the latter is accepted he can be guilty only as principal and Weaver as accessory. There are two fallacies in this argument. First, although it is true that Weaver's testimony is the only direct evidence of Cots' guilty knowledge,...
To continue reading
Request your trial