State v. Crafts, 13886

• Decision Date: 06 July 1993
• Docket Number: No. 13886,13886
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Richard B. CRAFTS.

Page 877

627 A.2d 877

226 Conn. 237

STATE of Connecticut v. Richard B. CRAFTS.

No. 13886.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued March 26, 1993.

Decided July 6, 1993.

Eugene J. Riccio, Special Public Defender, with whom was Peter J. McGuinness, Special Public Defender, for appellant (defendant).

Julia DiCocco Dewey, Asst. State's Atty., with whom were Walter D. Flanagan, State's Atty., and Brian Cotter, Asst. State's Atty., for appellee (state).

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

PETERS, Chief Justice.

The principal issue in this criminal appeal is the sufficiency of largely circumstantial evidence to support a conviction for the crime of murder. The state charged the defendant, Richard B. Crafts, with having committed the crime of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a, ¹ by killing his wife, Helle Crafts. After an earlier trial resulted in a mistrial because of the jury's inability to arrive at a verdict, the state retried the defendant and a jury found him guilty of murder. The trial court then rendered a judgment sentencing the defendant to a term of fifty years imprisonment. The defendant appeals his conviction to this court pursuant to General Statutes § 51-199(b)(3). We affirm.

At the trial, the state's theory of the offense was that the defendant had intentionally killed the victim as a result of the deterioration of their marriage. To conceal detection of the crime, the defendant had allegedly devised and executed an elaborate plan to destroy the victim's body. In support of this proposition, the state presented extensive, but primarily circumstantial, evidence describing the couple's marital troubles as well as the defendant's actions during the fall and winter of 1986-1987 to establish that the defendant, with the requisite intent, had murdered the victim. The defendant maintained, to the contrary, that he had not killed his wife, but that he nonetheless did not know her present whereabouts.

The jury could reasonably have found the following facts. Because of the defendant's continued extramarital affairs, the victim contacted an attorney and began divorce proceedings against him. She hired a private detective, who carried out surveillance of the defendant. The detective confirmed that the defendant was involved with another woman, and presented the victim with photographs of the defendant's activities. Not only was the defendant himself aware of the victim's intention to divorce him, but she also had told a number of people of her plans.

The victim's marital troubles would not, however, have led to her voluntary departure from her home and family. The victim was extremely devoted to her children, was planning to seek their custody in the divorce proceedings, and would not under any circumstances have left them voluntarily. Furthermore, the victim warned several people that, if anything unusual were to happen to her, they should not believe that such an event was of her own making.

The victim was last seen or heard from on November 18, 1986, as she was dropped off at her home by a coworker. On the morning of November 19, 1986, the defendant ushered the children and the family's live-in au pair helper from the home at 6 a.m. to leave for his sister's house in Westport purportedly, according to what the defendant told the au pair helper at the time, because of the lack of heat due to a power failure during a snowstorm the night before. The defendant's home, however, had alternative sources of heat, including kerosene heaters, a fireplace and a generator. The victim was not present, and at that time the defendant explained that she had left earlier, probably to go to his sister's house. In his rush to leave the house, the defendant made no attempt to dress the children for the severe weather and drove through difficult conditions to leave the children with his sister in Westport. Although the victim was not at the sister's house, the defendant neither mentioned her absence nor inquired regarding her whereabouts. The jury could reasonably have inferred that, in light of all of the evidence, the defendant had already killed the victim during the night and was proceeding with the execution of his plan to conceal the crime.

As part of the defendant's plan, prior to the events of November 18 and 19, 1986, he had arranged for the rental of a woodchipper, the purchase of a truck with which to haul the woodchipper, and the purchase of a large freezer. He picked up the freezer on November 17. ² Although the defendant had wanted to pick up the woodchipper on November 18, he was not able to do so until November 20, when he was able to obtain access to a rental truck as a replacement for the new truck, delivery of which had been delayed. The defendant returned the woodchipper and the rental truck on November 21, 1986. He therefore had the woodchipper, with the rental truck as a towing vehicle, overnight.

On the evening of November 20, 1986, and into the early morning of November 21, several witnesses observed a woodchipper being pulled by a rental truck at various locations in the general area of the defendant's home and, additionally, near the offices of his part-time employer, the town of Southbury. At 6:30 p.m. the woodchipper, being operated by a single individual, was observed near a steel bridge in Newtown. Between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m., the woodchipper was observed at various locations in the vicinity of the same steel bridge, again being operated by a lone individual. At approximately 4 a.m. the defendant, along with the truck and woodchipper, was parked in a Southbury school parking lot. There, a coworker talked to the defendant, who, in response to the coworker's inquiry regarding the woodchipper, replied that he was cleaning up limbs downed in the November 18 storm. Other evidence, however, indicated that no limbs had been downed during that storm and that there was no other existing need for a woodchipper.

State police officers subsequently searched the area near the steel bridge and discovered a number of items relating to the victim. Their initial search uncovered, among piles of woodchips, an envelope bearing the victim's name and blue fabric of a type similar to clothing formerly worn by the victim. Upon a more detailed search of areas containing the woodchip debris, the police found pieces of bone and tissue, a human fingernail and crowns to the victim's teeth. The police also recovered, underwater near the steel bridge, a chain saw that belonged to the defendant. From the chain saw and the separately recovered saw blade they recovered blood, tissue, hair fragments and cotton fibers. Some of these remains partially matched the material discovered at the riverside. Furthermore, the blood, tissue and hair fragments were of categories matching those of the victim.

Thereafter, the defendant offered to different parties various stories regarding his wife's whereabouts, all of which were demonstrated to be incorrect. In addition to the explanation for the victim's absence on the morning of November 19 offered as he brought his children to his sister's house, he initially told several of the victim's friends that in fact she had gone to Denmark to be with her ill mother. He later began to tell acquaintances that the victim might be visiting her friends overseas. In an interview with the police on December 4, 1986, the defendant indicated that he had last seen the victim on November 19, 1986, but that, at the time of the interview, she might be visiting a friend in the Canary Islands. Besides numerous inaccurate and contradictory statements regarding the victim's whereabouts, the defendant also made several incriminating remarks to acquaintances regarding the police investigation, which the jury could reasonably have found to indicate further a consciousness of guilt. For instance, when advised by his brother-in-law of the state police diving efforts, the defendant replied, "Let them dive. There's no body. It's gone."

Relying on this evidentiary showing, the jury hearing the defendant's case found him guilty of murder as charged. The defendant's appeal challenges his conviction on five grounds. He claims that the trial court improperly: (1) denied his motion for acquittal because his conviction, resting primarily on circumstantial evidence, was the result of impermissible inferences that were not supported by proof beyond a reasonable doubt, thereby denying his right to due process; (2) instructed the jury that it might infer specific intent to commit murder from the mere fact of the death of the victim, thus denying his right to due process; (3) refused to instruct the jury on three lesser included homicides not requiring a finding of intent to kill; (4) admitted into evidence out-of-court statements made by the victim to others; and (5) denied him a fair trial because of extensive pretrial publicity implicating, again, his right to due process. We are unpersuaded.

I

The defendant claims that his conviction violated the due process provision of the United States constitution ³ because the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. We review such a claim in accordance with a well established two part test. We first construe the evidence presented at trial in a manner favorable to sustaining the verdict, and then determine whether the jury could reasonably have found, upon the facts established and the inferences reasonably drawn therefrom, that the cumulative effect of the evidence established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Gomez, 225 Conn. 347, 350, 622 A.2d 1014 (1993); State v. Jarrett, 218 Conn. 766, 770-71, 591 A.2d 1225 (1991).

In light of the state's presentation of extensive circumstantial evidence, the principal issue raised by this claim is whether special procedural rules govern the validity of the jury's ultimate findings regarding each element of the crime of...