State v. Gill

• Decision Date: 07 November 2017
• Docket Number: AC 39841
• Citation: 178 Conn.App. 43,173 A.3d 998
• Court: Connecticut Court of Appeals
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Andre GILL

178 Conn.App. 43

173 A.3d 998

STATE of Connecticut

v.Andre GILL

AC 39841

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued September 13, 2017

Officially released November 7, 2017

Lisa J. Steele, assigned counsel, for the appellant (defendant).

Jennifer F. Miller, deputy assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Gail P. Hardy, state's attorney, and Anne Mahoney, state's attorney, for the appellee (state).

DiPentima, C.J., and Alvord and Kahn, Js.^*

ALVORD, J.

The defendant, Andre Gill, appeals from the judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of murder in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a–54a and 53a–8 ; carrying a revolver without a permit in violation of General Statutes § 29–35(a) ; false statement in the second degree in violation of General Statutes (Rev. to 2011) § 53a–157b; and tampering with physical evidence in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a–155 and 53a–8.¹ On appeal, the defendant's sole claim is that there was insufficient evidence to prove the element of specific intent necessary to support the murder conviction. We disagree and, accordingly, affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The following facts, which the jury reasonably could have found, are relevant to the defendant's appeal. On the night of November 18, 2011, the defendant drove his Acura with his friend Charles Young to a nightclub in Hartford, Mi Bar, to perform rap music. At the time, the defendant lived at his grandmother's house with his children and others, including Young. A few days earlier, the house had been invaded, and the defendant's daughter and Young were tied up. After the home invasion, the defendant asked his brother's friend, Antoine Armour, to bring a gun to the house for protection. Armour provided the defendant with a .38 caliber Taurus revolver and a .380 caliber semiautomatic handgun. Armour also gave the defendant ammunition.

Initially, the defendant did not bring the guns to Mi Bar on November 18, 2011. After seeing people in the nightclub whom he knew to be associated with the home invasion, however, he returned to his grandmother's house with Young to retrieve the two guns. They then returned to Mi Bar, left the guns in the defendant's car, and reentered the nightclub.

During a performance by Arkeit Iverson, the sound system in the nightclub malfunctioned, at which point a fight broke out. The performer at the time, Iverson, was a cousin of the victim, Fred Pines. Iverson began pushing through the crowd, which included the defendant and the defendant's cousin, to reach the disc jockey. The defendant tried to stop Iverson from reaching the disc jockey, at which time the victim grabbed the defendant by the throat. The fight was captured on video, which was played for the jury during the evidentiary portion of the trial.

After the fight, people began running out of the nightclub into the parking lot, where the argument continued. The defendant testified that he was "having some words" with the victim in the parking lot. According to Young, the defendant went back to his car and got into the driver's seat, and Young got into the passenger's seat. The defendant began to drive out of the parking lot, but stopped to roll down his window and yell at the victim. The victim walked toward the car, at which time the defendant got out of the car. Young also got out of the car with the .380 caliber semiautomatic handgun and fired two shots into the air. The defendant then fired one shot from the .38 caliber revolver at the victim. Young heard the victim say: "You missed. You ain't hit nothing." The defendant and Young ran to the back of the nightclub, got into cars located there, and left separately.

The defendant and Young met back at the defendant's grandmother's house, and the defendant called his brother, Morgan Gill, and Armour to ask them to get rid of the guns. The defendant, Morgan Gill, and Armour first cleaned the guns with bleach to remove any fingerprints or DNA. Armour then left with the guns and dumped them in the Connecticut River. The next morning the defendant and Young learned that the victim had died. Harold Wayne Carver, the chief medical examiner at the time of the shooting who had conducted the autopsy of the victim, concluded that the victim died as a result of a single gunshot wound

to his trunk.² The bullet entered the victim's trunk close to the bottom of the breastbone, caused damage to the right lung, and passed through the diaphragm.

On November 19, 2011, the day after the shooting, the defendant went to the police station and voluntarily gave a written statement, in which he stated that he saw Young with a gun and that Young "pulled up and fired." He also falsely told the police during that interview that he went to Mi Bar alone on the night of November 18, 2011, because, he explained later, he "did not want to be associated with somebody who made a stupid decision." The defendant thereafter was arrested, charged with murder, among other crimes, tried before the jury, and convicted.³ The court sentenced the defendant to a total effective term of fifty years of incarceration. This appeal followed.

The defendant claims that there was insufficient evidence presented at trial to convict him of murder. Specifically, he argues that the state failed to present sufficient evidence that he had intended to cause the victim's death, and, therefore, his conviction of murder cannot stand. We are not persuaded.

We first set forth our standard of review and the legal principles relevant to a claim of evidentiary insufficiency. "In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence to support a criminal conviction we apply a two-part test. First, we construe the evidence in the light most favorable to sustaining the verdict. Second, we determine whether upon the facts so construed and the inferences reasonably drawn therefrom the [finder of fact] reasonably could have concluded that the cumulative force of the evidence established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Franklin, 175 Conn. App. 22, 30, 166 A.3d 24 (2017).

"While the jury must find every element proven beyond a reasonable doubt in order to find the defendant guilty of the charged offense, each of the basic and inferred facts underlying those conclusions need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. ... If it is reasonable and logical for the jury to conclude that a basic fact or an inferred fact is true, the jury is permitted to consider the fact proven and may consider it in combination with other proven facts in determining whether the cumulative effect of all the evidence proves the defendant guilty of all the elements of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt. ...

"Moreover, it does not diminish the probative force of the evidence that it consists, in whole or in part, of evidence that is circumstantial rather than direct. ... It is not one fact, but the cumulative impact of a multitude of facts which establishes guilt in a case involving substantial circumstantial evidence. ... In evaluating evidence, the [finder] of fact is not required to accept as dispositive those inferences that are consistent with the defendant's innocence. ... The [finder of fact] may draw whatever inferences from the evidence or facts established by the evidence it deems to be reasonable and logical." (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. White, 127 Conn. App. 846, 850, 17 A.3d 72, cert. denied, 302 Conn. 911, 27 A.3d 371 (2011). "On appeal, we do not ask whether there is a reasonable view of the evidence that would support a reasonable hypothesis of innocence. We ask, instead, whether there is a reasonable view of the evidence that supports the [finder of fact's] verdict of guilty." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Crespo, 317 Conn. 1, 17, 115 A.3d 447 (2015).

Section 53a–54a(a) provides in relevant part that "[a] person is guilty of murder when, with intent to cause the death of another person, he causes the death of such person ...." "[T]he specific intent to kill is an essential element of the crime of murder. To act intentionally, the defendant must have had the conscious objective to cause the death of the victim. ... Because direct evidence of the accused's state of mind is rarely available ... intent is often inferred from conduct ... and from the cumulative effect of the circumstantial evidence and the rational inferences drawn therefrom. ... Intent to cause death may be inferred from the type of weapon used, the manner in which it was used, the type of wound

inflicted and the events leading to and immediately following the death. ... Furthermore, it is a permissible, albeit not a necessary or mandatory, inference that a defendant intended the natural consequences of his voluntary conduct." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Otto, 305 Conn. 51, 66–67, 43 A.3d 629 (2012).

The defendant's contention on appeal is that, on the basis of the evidence presented, the jury could have concluded that he had committed manslaughter, not murder.⁴ The defendant seeks to distinguish the facts of this case from the facts in cases in which our courts have found sufficient evidence of intent to kill the victim. He emphasizes the fact that he fired only a single shot and that the victim did not know that he had been injured. He claims that if he really had intended to kill the victim, he "could have fired another shot" after the victim seemed unhurt by the first shot. He further argues that the fight in the nightclub prior to the shooting was not "serious" enough to...