State v. Elliott
| Decision Date | 06 March 1979 |
| Citation | 177 Conn. 1,411 A.2d 3 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE of Connecticut v. Robert L. ELLIOTT. |
George N. Thim, Asst. Public Defender, with whom, on the brief, was Thomas J. Ullman, law student intern, for appellant (defendant).
Eugene J. Callahan, Asst. State's Atty., with whom, on the brief, was Donald A. Browne, State's Atty., for appellee (state).
Before COTTER, C. J., and LOISELLE, BOGDANSKI, LONGO and PETERS, JJ.
The defendant, Robert L. Elliott, was indicted by a grand jury for the crime of murder in violation of § 53a-54a of the General Statutes. A jury found him guilty as charged. The defendant was sentenced to not less than twenty-five years to life imprisonment and from that judgment he has appealed.
From the testimony, the jury could have found that on the morning of June 22, 1976, the defendant, armed with a loaded revolver, went to the home of his brother, the victim in this case. After failing to gain entrance to the dwelling at the front door, he forced his way in through the kitchen door. Once inside, he threatened his ten-year-old niece with a gun, forcing her to tell him that his brother was upstairs in bed. On the stairs, Elliott encountered his brother's wife. When she saw the defendant she ran down the hallway to the back door. Elliott pursued her down the hall pointing a gun at her. Mrs. Elliott's path was blocked by a hobbyhorse. She turned and saw that the defendant was only a few feet away from her. She then saw her husband come up from behind the defendant. He called out "Bobby." The defendant then turned around and shot him twice in rapid succession. The defendant said nothing during this whole episode. The victim died from the gunshot wounds. The defendant was apprehended shortly after the shooting about one half mile away from his brother's house.
After he was apprehended, Elliott was brought to police headquarters and booked. He gave a written statement to the police detailing the events of that morning. The booking police officer testified that the defendant was calm and able to comprehend and answer questions. The officer described Elliott's emotional state at the time of the arrest and interrogation as normal.
The defendant offered into evidence the testimony of a psychiatrist who interviewed the defendant about eleven months after the shooting. The psychiatrist testified that the defendant, at the time of the shooting, was acting under the influence of an extreme emotional disturbance caused by a combination of child custody problems, the inability to maintain a recently purchased home and an overwhelming fear of his brother. The psychiatrist placed particular emphasis on the history of conflict between the two brothers, noting that the defendant referred to his brother as a "ranger killer." The defendant told the psychiatrist that at one time his brother pulled him from a bus and chased him with a tire iron. The defendant stated that this incident was so frightening that it caused him to leave the area for a couple of years. The psychiatrist believed that this incident compounded by many other extenuating circumstances resulted in the defendant's overwhelming fear of his brother. And he testified that these circumstances taken together constituted a reasonable explanation of the defendant's extreme emotional disturbance.
The defendant's one assignment of error is that the trial court erred in its charge on the defense of extreme emotional disturbance, contained in General Statutes § 53a-54a(a). 1 We agree. In explaining the meaning of "extreme emotional disturbance," the court actually gave the substance of the traditional charge on the "heat of passion" defense, which existed prior to the enactment of the present Penal Code. 2 The defenses of extreme emotional disturbance and heat of passion are not interchangeable.
The extreme emotional disturbance defense outlined in General Statutes § 53a-54a(a) is the same as the affirmative defense that appears in the New York murder statute. 3 The fact that a statute is almost a literal copy of a statute of a sister state is persuasive evidence of a practical reenactment of the statute of the sister state; as such it is proper to resort to the decisions of a sister court construing that statutory language. See Witherspoon v. Salm, 251 Ind. 575, 243 N.E.2d 876 (1969); 82 C.J.S. Statutes § 371; 73 Am.Jur.2d, Statutes § 166, see also People v. Connolly, 36 Cal.App.3d 379, 111 Cal.Rptr. 409 (1973).
Construing the New York statute, the United States Supreme Court upheld the designation of extreme emotional disturbance as an affirmative defense and the placing of the burden of proof upon the defendant in Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 97 S.Ct. 2319, 53 L.Ed.2d 281 (1977). In the present case, however, which was decided prior to the Supreme Court's ruling in Patterson, the trial court charged that the state had the burden of proving the nonexistence of the defense. In charging this way, the trial court was, no doubt, trying to conform to the dictates of Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975), and In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970). These cases were distinguished in Patterson, supra, and the Supreme Court went on to hold that the defense of extreme emotional disturbance was not constitutionally infirmed even though the burden of proof was placed on the defendant.
The United States Supreme Court's reasoning for allowing the burden of proof to be placed upon the defendant was that the defense of extreme emotional disturbance does not serve to negate intent, but rather is raised to establish circumstances that mitigate culpability. People v. Patterson, 39 N.Y.2d 288, 302, 383 N.Y.S.2d 573, 582, 347 N.E.2d 898, 907 (1976).
In Patterson v. New York, the United States Supreme Court noted that the defense of extreme emotional disturbance is a considerably expanded version of the common law defense of heat of passion or sudden provocation.
It is evident from a reading of § 53a-54a(a) that the defense does not require a provoking or triggering event; or that the homicidal act occur immediately after the cause or causes of the defendant's extreme emotional disturbance; or that the defendant have lost all ability to reason. Further, the reasonable man yardstick is only used to determine the reasonableness of the explanation or excuse of the action of the defendant from the viewpoint of a person in the defendant's situation under the circumstances as the defendant believed them to be. Thus, the statute sets forth a standard that is objective in its overview, but subjective as to the defendant's belief. 4
Before the enactment of the present Penal Code in this state, to establish the "heat of passion" defense a defendant had to prove that the "hot blood" had not had time to "cool off" at the time of the killing. State v. Rosa, 87 Conn. 585, 89 A. 163 (1913). A homicide influenced by an extreme emotional disturbance, in contrast, is not one which is necessarily committed in the "hot blood" stage, but rather one that was brought about by a significant mental trauma that caused the defendant to brood for a long period of time and then react violently, seemingly without provocation.
General Statutes § 53a-54a is based on the Model Penal Code of the American Law Institute, Tentative Draft No. 9, § 201.3, on manslaughter. The comments accompanying the Model Penal Code attempt to explain the change from the old common law concept of killing in the "heat of passion" to the new concept of killing under the influence of an "extreme emotional disturbance." The comments seem to be contradictory in that they claim the ultimate test is objective yet the state of mind of the accused is to be evaluated from his viewpoint under the circumstances as he believes them to be. In the draft, there are no attempts to set guidelines to aid the trier of fact. The draftsmen state: The Chief Reporter for the Model Penal Code has noted that "(t)he purpose was explicitly to give full scope to what amounts to a plea in mitigation based upon a mental or emotional trauma of significant dimensions, with the jury asked to show whatever empathy it can." Wechsler, "Codification of Criminal Law in the United States; The Model Penal Code," 68 Colum.L.Rev. 1425, 1446 (1968). Those comments may explain the rationale of the draftsmen but they ignore the realities of the courtroom....
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