State v. Hoeplinger, 13090

Citation537 A.2d 1010,206 Conn. 278
Decision Date16 February 1988
Docket NumberNo. 13090,13090
CourtSupreme Court of Connecticut
PartiesSTATE of Connecticut v. John C. HOEPLINGER.

Richard Emanuel, Bridgeport, for appellant (defendant).

Richard F. Jacobson, Asst. State's Atty., with whom, on the brief, were Donald A. Browne, State's Atty., and Frank S. Maco, Asst. State's Atty., Bridgeport, for appellee (state).

Before PETERS, C.J., and ARTHUR H. HEALEY, SHEA, GLASS and COVELLO, JJ.

ARTHUR H. HEALEY, Associate Justice.

After a jury trial, the defendant, John C. Hoeplinger, was found guilty of the crime of manslaughter in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-55(a)(1). 1 The defendant was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of twenty years. The defendant appealed to the Appellate Court which affirmed the conviction. State v. Hoeplinger, 9 Conn.App. 147, 517 A.2d 632 (1986). This court granted the defendant's petition for certification. 2

The two issues presented by this appeal are: (1) whether the Appellate Court erred when it concluded that the admission of the defendant's statement in violation of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt; and (2) whether the Appellate Court erred in reviewing the jury instructions on circumstantial evidence "as a whole" rather than using a "close scrutiny" standard and, regardless of the standard of review, whether the Appellate Court erred in concluding that the trial court's failure to instruct the jury that a fact to be inferred must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt was not erroneous. We reverse the Appellate Court and remand to that court with direction to remand to the trial court for a new trial.

The jury could reasonably have found the following facts: The defendant's wife, Eileen Hoeplinger, was bludgeoned and strangled to death in the early morning hours of May 7, 1982. The defendant called the Easton police department at 4:55 a.m., requesting that an ambulance be sent to his house. The defendant reported that his wife was "in terrible shape" and had blood "all over her face and head." Police and medical personnel soon arrived at the scene where the defendant, crying hysterically, led a police officer into the house. The victim, who had a large laceration on her forehead, lay on a couch and was wrapped in sheets and blankets. There were bloodstains on the wall next to the couch, on a coffee table and the rug, and on the floor in the foyer by the front door. The defendant, who had a cut on a finger of his left hand and bloodstains on his shirt and hands, was asked to wait outside the home in the officer's patrol car. After a second police officer arrived, the defendant reentered the house. The defendant was led again to the patrol car and, while seated there, related the following chronology of that night's events: He had awakened during the night, had realized that his wife was not beside him in bed, and had proceeded to search the house for her. He then went outside to look for her and found her covered with blood in a wooded area near the driveway. He returned to the house to get sheets and blankets and then wrapped her in them and carried her into the house before calling the police. The defendant walked to where he had claimed to have found the body, pointing out that spot to the second officer, and then returned to the patrol car.

The chief of police of Easton, Gerard Hance, arrived at the defendant's house shortly thereafter. He was met by the second police officer, who showed him where the defendant had claimed to have found the victim and then took him to view the body. Hance then proceeded to the patrol car, introduced himself to the defendant and asked the defendant to accompany him to the police station in order to relate the events of that night. The defendant acquiesced and was taken by Hance to the Easton police station, where they arrived at about 6 a.m. At the police station, the defendant and Hance proceeded to the chief's office, where the defendant drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. Hance asked the defendant for a written statement of the night's events, but the defendant asked Hance to write down his statement while he spoke. Approximately one and one-half hours after the defendant's phone call to the police, Hance began transcribing the defendant's statement. The defendant's account of the evening was punctuated with various digressions, but Hance would lead him back to the events of the night by reading the last information given by the defendant.

In this sixteen page statement, which was read to the jury, the defendant related, in part, the following: He had retired to bed after seeing his wife sleeping in his daughter's bed. He had "slept like a log" but then had awakened in the middle of the night and had gone to the bathroom. He checked for his wife but she was neither in his daughter's room nor in the spare bedroom. The defendant checked for her downstairs and in the basement before looking outside. After checking the garage for her car, which he found there, the defendant turned on the outside lights and walked up and down the driveway. Finally, he found her off the driveway. He hugged her and spoke to her but she did not answer. The defendant ran back into the house, grabbed some sheets and covers, and returned to his wife. The defendant then carried her back to the house and put her on the couch in the family room. After calling the emergency number, the defendant attempted to clean the blood off the floor so that his children, ages five years and two and one-half years, would not see the blood. The statement mentioned the couple's previous marital problems but also related that "last month everything was so good," that his wife "did oral sex" that night and that "he told her he loved her since he does it every night." Hance read the statement back to the defendant, but he refused to sign it.

Concerning the Miranda issue, we should note the following circumstances. At some point, either during the taking of the statement or immediately thereafter, the defendant requested the use of the bathroom. Prior to doing so, Hance had told the defendant not to wash his hands when he went to the bathroom. Although the defendant had agreed not to wash his hands, Hance escorted the defendant to the men's room and stayed inside the bathroom to make sure that the defendant did not forget not to wash his hands. Neither prior to the taking of the statement nor after was he told that he was free to leave the police station; nor was he expressly told that he was under arrest until about 7:35 p.m. that night. He continued to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes in the chief's office until his lawyer arrived about noon. His attorney was permitted to talk to the defendant in a rear room designated by Hance and where Hance could, and did, observe the conversation through a two-way mirror so that he could make sure nothing happened to the defendant's hands.

Search and seizure warrants were obtained early that afternoon, "near 1 p.m.," and the search warrant for the defendant's person was executed at the police station as the police took swabbings of the defendant's fingers, took fingernail scrapings, and seized his clothing. Later that afternoon, at about 3 p.m., the defendant was transported to St. Vincent's Hospital in Bridgeport so that a blood sample could be obtained and so that he could receive treatment for a cut on his left hand. A police officer drove the defendant to and from the hospital in a police vehicle. The defendant was brought back to the police station "near 6 o'clock" and remained there until 7:35 p.m., when he was arrested. Throughout the thirteen and one-half hour period before his arrest, Hance testified that the defendant, who was "very cooperative," was never told that he should leave or that he was free to leave. It is undisputed that the defendant was never given Miranda warnings at any time prior to his arrest that evening.

At the trial, there was evidence that the victim had been bludgeoned in the head with a blunt object and had also been subject to manual strangulation. The cause of death was a compound skull fracture with brain contusions and lacerations, and asphyxia by strangulation. The state's theory of the case was that the defendant had struck his wife with a brick, which it put into evidence, while she was sleeping on the couch in the family room. The defendant, thereafter, allegedly dragged her body outside to a wooded area off the driveway and then dragged her to another wooded area before bringing her back into the house to the couch. The state's case consisted almost entirely 3 of circumstantial evidence, including interpretation of the physical evidence by forensic witnesses. Some of the physical evidence was inconclusive; the state's forensic experts were able to testify only that certain of the physical evidence was "consistent with" the state's theory of the case. Certain of that physical evidence, however, was also compatible with the story the defendant had told to the police officers at the crime scene.

The defendant testified at trial and repeated much of what he had related in his statement to Hance. He was cross-examined extensively on his statement, particularly with reference to his prior marital problems and his wife's interest in obtaining a divorce concerning which the state had earlier offered evidence. Among the new facts that the defendant disclosed in his testimony were more details concerning previous marital problems, his wife's intention to seek a divorce in 1980 and an incident in 1981 when he had struck his wife. Consistent with his statement, the defendant testified that he and his wife had not had an argument on the evening of the murder and that his wife had never told him that night that she had intended to seek a divorce.

I

The defendant's first claim is that the Appellate Court erred in...

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  • State v. Hafford
    • United States
    • Connecticut Supreme Court
    • 7 Marzo 2000
    ...error where it can be said beyond a reasonable doubt that the confession did not contribute to the conviction. State v. Hoeplinger, 206 Conn. 278, 294, 537 A.2d 1010 (1988). "This court has held in a number of cases that when there is independent `overwhelming evidence' of guilt, a constitu......
  • State v. Garrison
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    • Connecticut Court of Appeals
    • 19 Julio 2022
    ...the question is reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the defendant. See id. ; see also State v. Hoeplinger , 206 Conn. 278, 287 n.6, 537 A.2d 1010 (1988) (determining that, in case in which police officer asked defendant to "give [the officer] a statement concerning wh......
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    ... ... 679] We have, however, applied a somewhat different standard of harmlessness to noninstructional federal constitutional errors, namely, whether the state met its appellate burden of establishing that on the whole record the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Hoeplinger, 206 Conn. 278, 294-95, 537 A.2d 1010 (1988); State v. Silano, 204 Conn. 769, 781-82, 529 A.2d 1283 (1987); State v. Douglas, 10 Conn.App. 103, 118, 522 A.2d 302 (1987). Thus, we have been applying a bifurcated standard of harmlessness to federal constitutional errors: for instructional ... ...
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