State v. Higgins, (SC 16403)
| Decision Date | 29 July 2003 |
| Docket Number | (SC 16403) |
| Citation | 826 A.2d 1126,265 Conn. 35 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. SHELDON HIGGINS. |
Sullivan, C. J., and Borden, Norcott, Katz and Vertefeuille, Js.
Pamela S. Nagy, special public defender, for the appellant (defendant).
Marjorie Allen Dauster, senior assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were James E. Thomas, state's attorney, and Donna Mambrino, senior assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).
The defendant, Sheldon Higgins, appeals1 from the judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of capital felony in violation of General Statutes § § 53a-54b (8)2 and 53a-8,3 two counts of assault in the first degree in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a-59 (a) (1)4 and 53a-8, and assault in the first degree in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a-59 (a) (5)5 and 53a-8. The defendant claims on appeal that: (1) the trial court improperly determined that § 53a-54b (8) does not require the state to establish that the defendant had the specific intent to kill a person known by him to be under the age of sixteen; (2) even if § 53a-54b (8) does not require the state to prove that the defendant knew the age of the victim, the defendant's conviction of capital felony was improper because the doctrine of transferred intent does not allow the state to charge a defendant with a more serious crime than the crime that he intended to commit; (3) if this court rejects the foregoing claims, it should exercise its supervisory authority to rule that the doctrine of transferred intent cannot be applied under the circumstances of this case; (4) § 53a-54b (8) is unconstitutional under the eighth and fourteenth amendments to the United States constitution6 and article first, §§ 8 and 9, of the Connecticut constitution;7 (5) § 53a-54b (8) is unconstitutional under the equal protection clauses of the state and federal constitutions;8 (6) the conviction was legally inconsistent because the defendant could not simultaneously have had the three separate states of intent required by the various crimes of which he was convicted; and (7) the presence of uniformed correction officers in the courtroom during jury selection and trial deprived the defendant of a fair trial in violation of his due process rights and his right to a fair trial under the sixth amendment to the United States constitution.9 We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
The jury reasonably could have found the following facts. On the afternoon of July 5, 1997, Corey Hite was standing outside the house owned by his aunt, Brenda Lawrence, at 65 Hartland Street, Hartford, when he saw a burgundy Nissan Pathfinder speeding on the street and endangering the children playing nearby. Hite stepped into the street, waved for the vehicle to stop and asked the driver, later identified as Dennis Smith, to drive more slowly. As he spoke to Smith, Hite placed his hands on the driver's side window of the vehicle, which was rolled down about four inches. Smith became angry and, without warning, sped off. As he drove away, the window broke.
Later that day, Smith told the defendant that the window had been broken during an attempted robbery.
The defendant then drove Smith back to Hartland Street in the defendant's gold Acura Legend. Smith rode in the backseat of the car and carried a Colt semiautomatic rifle. At approximately 11:30 p.m., they arrived at Hartland Street. At that time, Hite was sitting in front of Brenda Lawrence's house with his seventeen year old brother, Marcus Hite, their cousins, O'Marie Lawrence and thirteen year old Tramell Maddox, and O'Marie Lawrence's girlfriend, seventeen year old Shani Richardson. Smith and the defendant drove slowly past the house, turned right onto Litchfield Street, immediately turned around and then turned left back onto Hartland Street. At that point, the defendant turned off the car's headlights. As the car passed Brenda Lawrence's house for the second time, Smith fired multiple gunshots at the group gathered in front of the house. The car then sped away. Police responding to the incident recovered eleven .223 caliber shell casings from the street and sidewalk near the shooting.
Maddox was killed by a gunshot wound to his pelvis that severed his right common iliac artery. Marcus Hite received a gunshot wound to his right arm that severed his brachial artery, injured a nerve and ultimately resulted in the permanent loss of the use of his right hand. Richardson received a gunshot wound to her right buttock that resulted in permanent disfigurement. O'Marie Lawrence received multiple small puncture wounds to his arm, fingers, hand and chest. Corey Hite was not wounded.
Shortly after the shooting, at approximately 11:45 p.m., the defendant drove his Acura to the house of Orrett Currie and his wife, Wanda Currie. He left the car in their garage. The next day, he called the Curries and asked them to wipe down the interior of the car. Later that day, Orrett Currie went to see the defendant at the house of the defendant's girlfriend. The defendant told him about the shooting at that time. Meanwhile, Wanda Currie saw on the evening news on television that a child had been killed in a drive-by shooting on Hartland Street. The next morning, she told her husband that she wanted the defendant's car to be removed from their garage. Orrett Currie called the defendant, and they arranged for the car to be taken away by the defendant's brother.
During the next several days, Wanda Currie made a series of anonymous telephone calls to the Hartford police department and told them what she knew about the defendant's involvement in the shooting and the location of the defendant's car. Ultimately, she gave a written statement to the police. On the basis of the information provided by Wanda Currie, the police searched the defendant's apartment and found a Colt semiautomatic rifle loaded with .223 caliber ammunition hidden under a mattress. The gun was wrapped in a plastic bag on which Smith's fingerprints were found. Four of the cartridges in the rifle were designed to fragment after impact so as to maximize trauma to a victim. All eleven cartridge casings found at the scene of the shooting and a bullet fragment removed from Maddox's body had been fired by the gun found in the defendant's apartment.
In January, 1998, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's fugitive task force arrested the defendant in New York City. He was returned to Connecticut in June, 1998. After a jury trial, he was convicted of capital felony in connection with the murder of Maddox (count one), two counts of assault in the first degree in connection with the assaults on Marcus Hite and Richardson (counts two and three) and assault in the first degree in connection with the assault on O'Marie Lawrence (count four). The trial court imposed a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of release on the capital felony count; twenty years imprisonment on the count of assault on Marcus Hite, to be served consecutively to the sentence on count one; ten years imprisonment on the count of assault on Richardson, to be served consecutively to the sentences on counts one and two; and five years imprisonment on the count of assault on O'Marie Lawrence, to be served consecutively to the sentences on counts one, two and three, for a total effective sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of release to be followed by thirty-five years imprisonment. This appeal followed. Additional facts and procedural history will be set forth as required.
The defendant claims that his conviction of capital felony under the doctrine of transferred intent was improper because he did not have the intent to kill a person known by him to be under the age of sixteen. This claim rests on two premises. First, he argues that § 53a-54b (8) contains an implied requirement that the state must prove that the defendant knew or reasonably should have known the age of the victim. Therefore, he argues, to permit the transfer of an intent to kill a person over the age of sixteen to the mistaken killing of a younger person would relieve the state of the burden of proving that element of the offense. Second, he argues that, even if knowledge of the victim's age is not an element of § 53a-54b (8), the doctrine of transferred intent may not be applied to impose a greater degree of liability than that which would have been imposed had the defendant committed the intended crime. The defendant also argues that, if this court rejects the foregoing claims, it should exercise its supervisory power to declare that the doctrine of transferred intent may not be applied under the circumstances of this case.
We conclude that § 53a-54b (8) contains no implied requirement that the defendant know the age of the victim. We further conclude that, under the circumstances of this case, the doctrine of transferred intent, as incorporated in General Statutes § 53a-54a,10 allows the imposition of a greater degree of criminal liability than that imposed by the intended crime. Finally, we decline the defendant's invitation to exercise our supervisory power to pronounce on this question of substantive law.
We first consider whether § 53a-54b (8) contains an implied requirement that the defendant know the age of the victim. This claim involves a question of statutory interpretation, over which our review is plenary. See State v. Sostre, 261 Conn. 111, 120, 802 A.2d 754 (2002). "Whether a culpable mental state is or is not to be implied in the definition of a statutory crime, where it is not expressed, must be determined from the general scope of the statute, and from the nature of the evils to be avoided." State v. Gaetano, 96 Conn. 306, 316, 114 A. 82 (1921); see also Commission to Revise the Criminal Statut...
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