State v. Francis

• Decision Date: 18 March 2014
• Docket Number: No. 35753.,35753.
• Citation: 86 A.3d 1074,148 Conn.App. 788
• Court: Connecticut Court of Appeals
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Maurice FRANCIS.

148 Conn.App. 788

86 A.3d 1074

STATE of Connecticut

v.Maurice FRANCIS.

No. 35753.

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued Dec. 3, 2013.

Decided March 18, 2014.

John L. Cordani, Jr., assigned counsel, for the appellant (defendant).

Kathryn W. Bare, assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Gail P. Hardy, state's attorney, and Donna Mambrino and Richard J. Rubino, senior assistant state's attorneys, for the appellee (state).

GRUENDEL, LAVINE and ALVORD, Js.

ALVORD, J.

The defendant, Maurice Francis, appeals from the trial court's judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a–54a. On appeal, the defendant claims that the court improperly (1) denied his motion to suppress statements that he had given police officers in the absence of Miranda¹ warnings; (2)(a) determined in a pretrial ruling that he was competent to stand trial, and (b) denied his defense counsel's requests for an additional competency evaluation made during the trial proceedings; (3) forced him to choose between his right to representation by counsel and his right to testify on his own behalf; (4) dismissed a juror during the trial; and (5) charged the jury in supplemental instructions on intent. We disagree and affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The jury reasonably could have found the following facts. In November, 2008, the defendant and his girlfriend, Tashima Reddick, lived together in Reddick's apartment at 47 Berkeley Drive in Hartford. They began dating ten or eleven months earlier, and the defendant immediately moved in with Reddick. During the course of their relationship, Reddick's demeanor changed from being happy and outgoing to being unhappy and withdrawn. She avoided the family gatherings that she had attended in the past. At work, her supervisor noticed bruising and other unexplained injuries on her body.

On November 1, 2008, sometime between 8:30 a.m. and 8:45 a.m., Beverly Copeland, who lived diagonally across the street from Reddick's apartment, got into her car and was preparing to leave when she noticed unusual activity on the front lawn at 47 Berkeley Drive. A black male was standing in the grassy area and picked up what Copeland originally thought to be a pile of clothing. Copeland quickly determined that the male had picked up a body and was carrying a female over his shoulder. After he had taken a few steps, he dropped the body to the ground and began dragging her through the grass and across the street to a silver Volvo station wagon. The male placed the female in the front passenger seat of the vehicle and then drove past Copeland's vehicle. Copeland could not see the male's face as he drove alongside her vehicle because he was looking at his passenger and was facing away from Copeland. Copeland did, however, write down the license plate number of the Volvo. According to the records of the Department of Motor Vehicles, the defendant was the owner of that 1998 Volvo station wagon.

The defendant had purchased the 1998 Volvo in October, 2008, from Garth Wallen at Sparks Motor Sales, LLC, in Hartford. Between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. on November 1, 2008, the defendant called Wallen, who was then at home, and they agreed to meet at the dealership at 9:30 a.m. The defendant complained that he had been having problems with the Volvo, and Wallen offered the option of returning the 1998 Volvo in exchange for another vehicle. When Wallen arrived at the dealership, the defendant already was waiting for him by the locked gate. The defendant was standing outside of his vehicle, and Wallen noticed a female in the front passenger seat. Wallen could see that her seat belt was fastened.

After Wallen unlocked the gate, the defendant drove his vehicle into the lot and parked to the side of the building. At some point during the day, Wallen secured a 1999 Volvo station wagon for the defendant. The defendant transferred his license plate from the 1998 Volvo to the 1999 Volvo. Wallen noticed, as the defendant was making the plate transfer, that the defendant had positioned the two Volvos passenger side to passenger side. Wallen did not notice how or when the female passenger left the 1998 Volvo. Although the defendant had been at the dealership from early morning until nearly 4 p.m., Wallen never spoke with the female passenger, nor did he see her leave the 1998 Volvo at any point in time during the day. After the defendant left the dealership, he then called Wallen at 4:44 p.m. to report that he liked the 1999 Volvo much better than the 1998 Volvo. No further calls were made from the defendant's cell phone to Wallen on that day.

Later that evening, two firefighters from the Hartford Fire Department responded to a 911 call placed by the defendant at 10:51 p.m. They were dispatched to Reddick's apartment. When they arrived at 10:57 p.m., the defendant was standing outside the building, and he directed them to the second floor. Reddick was in the bathtub; she was naked and the bathtub contained no water. Although there appeared to be numerous wounds on her body, there was no blood in the bathroom or in the bathtub, and the firefighters did not wipe any blood off her body. After they removed Reddick from the bathtub, one of the firefighters performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation until the emergency medical technicians arrived. Reddick was pronounced dead at 11:20 p.m.

Detectives Richard Salkeld and Seth Condon, with the Hartford Police Department, also were dispatched to the scene and arrived at approximately 11:30 p.m. They saw the defendant outside Reddick's apartment and wanted to question him about the circumstances surrounding his discovery of Reddick's body. Before they asked any questions, however, the defendant complained that he was having chest pains and that he needed to go to a hospital. Shortly thereafter, the defendant was taken by ambulance to a hospital. He was discharged early in the morning of November 2, 2008, and was transported by a police cruiser to the police station. When the defendant arrived at the station, he agreed to speak with Salkeld and Condon about the events of the previous day. At that point in time, the police did not know the cause or manner of Reddick's death. The detectives did not provide the defendant with Miranda warnings because he was not under arrest.

During his interview at the police station, the defendant gave the detectives the following account of his activities on November1, 2008. At approximately 8 a.m., he and Reddick left her apartment, and he drove them to Sparks Motor Sales, LLC, in the 1998 Volvo. The defendant performed “odd jobs” at the dealership during the day while Reddick sat in the car. Reddick never left the vehicle while they were at the dealership, although the defendant did bring her five bottles of water during the course of the day. When they left the dealership at approximately 5 p.m., Reddick switched from the front passenger seat of the 1998 Volvo to the front passenger seat of the 1999 Volvo. They arrived at Reddick's apartment about fifteen minutes later. Reddick stayed at the apartment, and the defendant left at 5:20 p.m. to return to the dealership to “clean up.” He was supposed to meet with Wallen later that evening at Wallen's home in East Hartford, so he left the dealership at 6:20 p.m. for that purpose. Although the defendant could not remember the street name or house number of Wallen's address, he waited in East Hartford for Wallen until 10:30 p.m. Wallen never showed up. The defendant called Wallen's cell phone number several times that evening in an attempt to reach him, but was unsuccessful. He left East Hartford at 10:30 p.m. and returned to Reddick's apartment. When he arrived, the door to the apartment was open and all of the lights were on. He entered the apartment, found Reddick in the bathtub and called 911.

Susan Williams, an associate medical examiner, performed the autopsy on Reddick's body on November 3, 2008. In her report, Williams preliminarily noted that Reddick, who was twenty-nine years old, had black curly hair with braided, long black extensions. According to Williams, the body had multiple injuries on the head, shoulders, arms, legs and back, approximately seventy-five in total, which consisted of several fresh incised wounds, several healing incised wounds, abrasions, contusions, hemorrhages and scars. The fresh incised wounds were caused by a sharp instrument, probably a knife or scissors. The injuries were not considered to be stab wounds, because they were wide on the skin rather than deep into the skin. None of the wounds penetrated an internal organ or major artery. No single wound caused her death.² The number of injuries resulted in major blood loss, and she “bled out.” The cause of death was determined to be multiple sharp force injuries, and the manner of death was determined to be homicide. Williams was unable to determine an exact time of death.

During the course of the investigation, Hartford police officials interviewed witnesses and collected evidence from the crime scene. Ramone Baez, an investigator with the department, collected braid extensions from the lawn in front of Reddick's apartment and swabbed bloodstains on the doors and door frames in the apartment. Detective Claudette Kosinski processed the defendant's 1998 and 1999 Volvo station wagons. She collected a Poland Springs water bottle under the front passenger seat of the 1998 Volvo and took photographs of grass, leaf and dirt debris on the floor of the front passenger's side of the 1998 vehicle. Additionally, Kosinski retrieved a hair strand and swabbed a blood-like stain from the same areas in the 1998 Volvo. ³ Detective William J. Siemionkoreviewed telephone records for the cell phone numbers of Wallen and the defendant. He determined that, contrary to the defendant's account, the defendant did not place any calls to Wallen after 4:44 p.m. on November 1, 2008, and that the...