State v. Groomes
| Decision Date | 28 March 1995 |
| Docket Number | No. 15122,15122 |
| Citation | 232 Conn. 455,656 A.2d 646 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE of Connecticut v. Bobby GROOMES. |
Elizabeth M. Inkster, Asst. Public Defender, for appellant (defendant).
Mary H. Lesser, Asst. State's Atty., with whom, on the brief, were Michael Dearington, State's Atty., and James G. Clark, Asst. State's Atty., for appellee (State).
Before PETERS, C.J., and CALLAHAN, BORDEN, BERDON and NORCOTT, JJ.
This appeal concerns several issues arising out of the criminal trial of the defendant, Bobby Groomes. The defendant appealed 1 from his convictions of twenty-four separate counts that were tried together to a jury. He was convicted of one count of burglary in the first degree as an accessory; General Statutes §§ 53a-101(a)(1) and 53a-8; 2 one count of robbery in the first degree; General Statutes §§ 53a-134(a)(4) 3 and 53a-8; one count of larceny in the second degree as an accessory; General Statutes §§ 53a-123(a)(1) 4 and 53a-8; two counts of burglary in the second degree; General Statutes § 53a-102; 5 one count of attempted burglary in the third degree; General Statutes §§ 53a-103 and 53a-49; 6 and eighteen counts of burglary in the third degree. General Statutes § 53a-103. In a subsequent court trial, the defendant also was convicted of being a persistent serious felony offender; General Statutes § 53a-40(b); 7 and was sentenced to a total effective sentence of seventy-five years incarceration.
The facts are undisputed. There had been a large increase in the number of burglaries in the Westville area of the city of New Haven beginning in the first week of August, 1991. In many of the burglaries, garages were broken into and bicycles were taken. In response, Detective Frederick Hurley and Officer Michael Pachesa of the New Haven police department conducted a stakeout in Westville on the night of September 14, 1991. The two officers, dressed in plain clothes, patrolled the area in a pickup truck.
The defendant was a suspect in the recent burglaries because he had been convicted of similar burglaries in the same area. Moreover, he had been released from prison in early August, 1991. Not only were the officers aware of this information, but they also knew that the defendant lived about one-half mile from Westville, in the Valley Street projects. The officers had a picture of the defendant with them during the stakeout.
At about 1:30 a.m. on September 14, 1991, Hurley saw the defendant riding a bicycle on Willard Street in Westville. There was nothing on the bicycle other than the defendant, and he did not appear to have anything on his back. The officers followed the defendant and saw him enter the backyard of a house on Willard Street, where, they knew, he did not live. The officers thereafter unsuccessfully searched several backyards on Willard Street, looking for the defendant. Forty to forty-five minutes later, the officers returned to their truck and resumed their patrol of the area.
Shortly after resuming their patrol, the officers saw the defendant riding a bicycle on Barnett Street, also in Westville. At that time, the officers observed that the defendant had a backpack on his back and had an aluminum attache case strapped to the back of the bicycle, neither of which had been in his possession earlier. As the officers drove the truck toward the defendant, he jumped off the bicycle and ran into the backyard of a house, leaving the bicycle on the sidewalk. After calling for backup, the officers followed the defendant into the backyard, shouting "Police, stop."
Andrew Faggio, a uniformed officer who responded to the backup call, subsequently apprehended the defendant in front of a school on Fountain Street. When Hurley arrived at the school, Faggio was trying to handcuff the defendant. Hurley noticed that the open backpack and books it contained bore the name Josh Forrest, which he knew was not the defendant's name. Hurley then performed a pat down search for weapons 8 and placed the defendant under arrest, orally advising him of his Miranda 9 rights.
The defendant indicated that he was willing to cooperate with the officers and took them to where he had hidden a video cassette recorder (VCR) that he had taken from a residence at 140 McKinley Avenue that night. After recovering the VCR, the officers and the defendant returned to the abandoned bicycle. There they found a video camera in the aluminum attache case, and a red duffle bag containing a Nintendo video game machine, video game cartridges and frozen food. In the bushes in the backyard on Barnett Street where the defendant had gone initially when he had run from the officers, they also found a flashlight, a metal bar and other tools, all of which were consistent with tools used to burglarize buildings.
The officers next went to 140 McKinley Avenue where, the defendant had told the officers, he had stolen the recovered items. The defendant stated to the officers that he had gained access to the house by passing through a backyard on Willard Street, where the officers had seen the defendant earlier. After waking the occupants of 140 McKinley Avenue, the officers asked if anything was missing from their home. An occupant informed the police that a VCR, video camera, Nintendo machine and cartridges and frozen food were missing. In addition, the occupant verified that his son's book bag was missing, and that his son's name was Josh Forrest.
The officers then took the defendant to the police station where Hurley again read him the Miranda rights, this time from a waiver form. After reading the rights form, the defendant initialled the waivers and signed the form at the bottom. He stated that he was willing to tell the officers about other burglaries that he had committed, and agreed to show the officers the locations of these burglaries. Hurley took a number of reports that had been filed concerning recent burglaries in the Westville area, and went with Pachesa to drive the defendant around the neighborhood.
As they drove, the defendant pointed out garages or homes that he had entered and told the officers how he had gained entry and what he had taken. Hurley was able to match the details of what the defendant told him with many of the available burglary reports. The defendant indicated some locations, however, for which there were no reports, and there were some reported burglaries to which the defendant did not admit. He refused to sign a written statement regarding the burglaries. The defendant subsequently was charged only in connection with burglaries of those homes which he orally confessed to having burglarized. Additional facts will be discussed as necessary in connection with the defendant's specific claims.
The defendant claims on appeal that the trial court improperly: (1) denied his motion for severance; (2) denied his motion to suppress his confession and his motion to suppress physical evidence that flowed from an illegal investigative stop; (3) instructed the jury on flight as consciousness of guilt and as independent circumstantial evidence of the defendant's guilt; and (4) failed to elicit, on the record, a waiver by the defendant of his right to a jury trial on the persistent serious felony offender charge. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
The defendant first claims that the trial court improperly denied his motion for severance. Before trial, the defendant argued that he would be prejudiced substantially by the consolidation in a single trial of all of the counts with which he was charged and that trial of all the incidents should be severed from each other. The defendant offered four reasons in support of his motion for severance: first, the "very fact [that] they're all very similar crimes would prejudice him"; second, the weight of cumulative evidence might persuade the jury that the defendant must have done something wrong and influence them to convict him when separate trials might lead to acquittals on some or all of the individual counts; third, the jury might use evidence in one case improperly when considering guilt of another; and fourth, the defendant's decision to testify might be influenced by the consolidation because he might wish to testify regarding only one or several of the charges, but not all of the charges.
The court denied the motion to sever. It found that the facts of the separate cases were not complex, the factual situation would not be inflammatory and the central piece of evidence would be the confession of the defendant, which included all the offenses.
On appeal, the defendant again argues that the trial court improperly rejected his arguments for severance, "but narrows the claim to focus on the compelling need for severing the first three counts (the armed robbery, burglary and car theft from the Bango residence); from the 21 cat burglaries...." In this court, in other words, the defendant has not argued, as he did at trial, that all counts of the information should have been severed, but has focused instead only on the severance of the first three counts of the information. These counts charged the defendant with being an accessory to burglary in the first degree, robbery in the first degree and larceny in the second degree, and arose from an incident that occurred at the residence of the Bango family, located at 40 Alston Avenue in Westville on August 24, 1991.
Joseph Bango testified at trial concerning that incident. He testified that at around 3 a.m. on August 24, he was asleep in the sun porch of his home while his parents were asleep on the second floor. He heard a noise that woke him and saw two figures approaching him in the dark. He reached for his hand gun, which was next to him, but hesitated because he thought that one of the figures may have been his father. He thereafter was struck in the head and told to face the wall. There were two people in the room...
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