State v. Crowley

• Decision Date: 18 September 1990
• Docket Number: No. 8166,8166
• Citation: 578 A.2d 157,22 Conn.App. 557
• Court: Connecticut Court of Appeals
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Michael CROWLEY.

Page 157

578 A.2d 157

22 Conn.App. 557

STATE of Connecticut v. Michael CROWLEY.

No. 8166.

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued May 1, 1990.

Decided Aug. 7, 1990.

Certification Denied Sept. 18, 1990.

Craig A. Raabe, with whom, on the brief, was Sally S. King, Hartford, for appellant (defendant).

Rita M. Shair, Deputy Asst. State's Atty., with whom were Michael Dearington, State's Atty., and, on the brief, John Waddock, Asst. State's Atty., for appellee (State).

Before SPALLONE, LAVERY and CRETELLA, JJ.

CRETELLA, Judge.

The defendant appeals from a judgment of conviction rendered after a jury trial on the charge of selling narcotics in violation of General Statutes § 21a-277(a). He claims that the trial court should not have prohibited him from impeaching a state's witness for bias and lack of credibility and should not have admitted highly prejudicial hearsay statements of a third party into evidence.

The jury could reasonably have found the following facts from the testimony presented at trial. On the morning of July 29, 1987, the defendant was selling heroin on Asylum Street in New Haven. Two plain clothed undercover agents assigned to the Statewide Narcotics Task Force, Detective Vaughn Maher and Officer Mark Consorte, drove into the neighborhood in a red Camaro. They stopped on Sylvan Avenue alongside an Hispanic man on a bicycle. A brief conversation ensued in which the unidentified man on the bicycle informed the officers that if they drove down Asylum Street, they would find a black man named "Mike" who could sell them some heroin, or "power" in the idiom of the street. The officers followed these instructions and spotted the defendant. When the officers parked their vehicle next to the defendant, he approached, and one of the officers asked for some power. The defendant retrieved a brown bag containing several glassine bags of heroin from the back of a nearby street sign. He asked how many glassine bags the officers wanted, and Maher responded that they wanted one. The defendant tendered one bag and accepted $30 in unmarked Narcotics Task Force funds in exchange. He was then arrested.

I

The defendant claims that the trial court should not have prohibited him from impeaching Maher for bias or prejudice. He maintains that he did not sell heroin to the two officers in the Camaro because he recognized Maher and knew him to be a police officer. Both Maher and the defendant were members of the New Haven police force in 1972.

The defendant sought to testify that he is disliked by members of the New Haven police force. In an offer of proof, the defendant stated that ill feelings toward him were engendered when he was acquitted of the charge of receiving a bribe as a police officer. After severance from the police force, he was convicted of robbery and assault. The defendant claimed, in his offer of proof, that this latter incident further exacerbated bad feelings toward him since he had shot a New Haven police officer in the course of the robbery. The court sustained the state's objection to this evidence for lack of relevance. The court later excluded defense counsel's question as to whether the defendant had engaged in a shootout with the New Haven police department in 1973.

Also on direct examination, the defendant sought to testify as to his ouster from a block watch meeting held at a New Haven police station. The defendant was prepared to testify that Maher was among the policemen who escorted him from the building. The trial court excluded this evidence as well on the basis of lack of relevance.

The defendant claims that the court should not have excluded his testimony because it was highly probative of bias stemming from Maher's association with the New Haven police force. "Impeachment of a witness for bias is a matter of right." State v. Shipman, 195 Conn. 160, 163, 486 A.2d 1130 (1985). "[Evidence] tending to indicate malice or ill will toward another [is] generally admissible in situations where such states of mind are material.... The bias or prejudice of a witness may properly be shown either by cross-examination or by testimony of other witnesses.... [W]here no foundation has been laid by cross-examination of the witness who is under attack for bias or prejudice, the decision whether or not to admit impeaching [evidence] ... lies within the judicial discretion of the court." (Citations omitted.) State v. Mahmood, 158 Conn. 536, 539-40, 265 A.2d 83 (1969); Fairbanks v. State, 143 Conn. 653, 657, 124 A.2d 893 (1956). ¹

The record shows that the defendant did not lay a foundation for the impeachment of Maher for bias. We therefore review the trial court's action in excluding the proposed testimony for abuse of discretion. See State v. Johnson, 190 Conn. 541, 551, 461 A.2d 981 (1983). In Johnson, the defendant sought to show the bias of a former police chief, who was not a witness in the case. The defendant, himself a police officer, argued that the police chief and the victim were "working together to incriminate him." Id., 550, 461 A.2d 981. The Supreme Court held that it was not an abuse of discretion for the trial court to exclude this testimony as irrelevant. Similarly, the defendant in the present case presented the argument that Maher and Consorte had conspired against him. Even if the defendant had been allowed to attempt to impeach Maher for bias, there was no evidence of bias on the part of Consorte, who was a member of the Hamden police department. "It is a reasonable exercise of judicial discretion to exclude ... evidence the relevancy of which appears to be so slight and inconsequential that to admit it would distract attention which should be concentrated on vital issues of the case." (Citations omitted.) State v. Moynahan, 164 Conn. 560, 589, 325 A.2d 199, cert. denied, 414 U.S. 976, 94 S.Ct. 291, 38 L.Ed.2d 219 (1973).

II

The defendant's second claim is that his right to impeach Maher was improperly restricted when the trial court excluded questions concerning whether Maher was trained in techniques of deception as an undercover narcotics officer....