State v. Ingram, 14844
| Decision Date | 13 February 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 14844,14844 |
| Citation | 687 A.2d 1279,43 Conn.App. 801 |
| Court | Connecticut Court of Appeals |
| Parties | STATE of Connecticut v. Jay INGRAM. |
Lisa M. Bologna and Cameron Dorman, Certified Legal Interns, with whom was Richard Emanuel, Assistant Public Defender, for appellant (defendant).
Paul J. Ferencek, Assistant State's Attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Michael Dearington, State's Attorney, and Michael A. Pepper, Assistant State's Attorney, for appellee (state).
Before HEIMAN, FRANCIS X. HENNESSY and HEALEY, JJ.
The defendant, Jay Ingram, appeals from the judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of three counts of robbery in the second degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-135 (a)(2), 1 as lesser included offenses of robbery in the first degree, and one count of commission of a class C felony with a firearm in violation of General Statutes § 53-202k. 2 The trial court imposed concurrent ten year sentences for each of the three counts of second degree robbery, and a consecutive five year sentence for commission of a class C felony with a firearm, for a total effective sentence of fifteen years. 3 On appeal, the defendant claims that (1) the evidence was insufficient to establish his identity as the individual who committed the robbery, (2) his double jeopardy rights were violated by his conviction and punishment on three separate counts of robbery rather than one, and (3) his double jeopardy rights were violated by his conviction and cumulative punishment for the crimes of robbery in the second degree and commission of a class C felony with a firearm. We affirm the judgments of the trial court.
The jury could reasonably have found the following facts. At approximately 9:50 a.m. on March 22, 1994, a man wearing a green hooded sweatshirt, a purple ski mask and a glove on his left hand, entered a branch of the Bank of New Haven at 395 Whalley Avenue in New Haven. The man was holding a black gun in his right hand and a heavy plastic bag with drawstrings in his left hand. During the robbery, the robber's mask covered most of his face, and the witnesses were later able to describe him only as a tall, slim black male. Five employees were present: the branch manager was at a teller station; a customer service representative, Elizabeth Rios, was at her desk near the entrance; and three tellers, Tim Holland, Elizabeth Alsever and Angela Vigliotto, were at their respective teller windows. Several customers were also present. The robber faced the first teller station, pointed the gun at Holland and said, "This is a hold-up." He went to Holland's window, put the plastic bag over the counter and demanded money. Holland placed money from his cash drawer into the bag, including "bait money" 4 and money containing a "dye pack." 5 The robber then sequentially approached each of the other two tellers' windows and demanded money. Each of the other tellers put money, including bait money, into the bag, and one of them placed money containing another dye pack into the bag.
The robber walked to the front doors near Rios' desk, pushed them slightly ajar, turned back and swept the gun across the room at the tellers, and eventually pointed it directly at Rios. Then he fled across Whalley Avenue carrying the bag of money. As he did so, Rios saw the dye packets explode, spewing red and pink smoke from the bag. The robber then ran behind a brick building on the opposite side of Whalley Avenue. In searching the area after the robbery, the police found fresh footprints in a muddy area behind the brick building. The footprints led east onto Winthrop Avenue, about one block from the bank. The bank's video cameras captured most of the robbery on tape. Enlarged photographs of the robber were made from the bank's security videotape. The videotape itself was admitted at trial and was viewed by the jury. The robber was in the bank for approximately thirty seconds. None of the eyewitnesses was able to identify the defendant as the robber.
In March, 1994, the defendant, who is a slim black male, six feet one inch in height, resided in a second floor apartment at 681 Elm Street, New Haven, with Jolynn Wilson, their infant son, and Wilson's two other young children. Winthrop Avenue intersects Elm Street within one block of the defendant's apartment. On March 22, 1994, shortly before 9 a.m., Wilson asked the defendant to care for their son while she went to purchase a used car. The defendant refused, claiming that he had an appointment elsewhere that morning. Wilson left the apartment at about 9 a.m., taking their infant son with her.
When Wilson arrived home about one and one-half hours later, the defendant was in the bathroom with wet, red-stained United States currency spread out in the sink and bathtub. He was attempting to bleach the stains off the money. When Wilson asked where the money had come from, the defendant claimed that he had found it. 6 Wilson ordered the defendant to get the money out of the apartment. The defendant left the apartment with the money in a black fanny bag and, without Wilson's knowledge, placed it in a hall closet outside the apartment entrance. He then left the building.
A few days later, the New Haven police, on the basis of information from a confidential source that the defendant was the perpetrator of the bank robbery, secured a warrant to search the defendant's apartment at 681 Elm Street, which was located one and one-half blocks from the bank. They executed the warrant on March 29, 1994, at 6 a.m. The defendant was not home at the time of the search, but Wilson and the children were. The police seized a number of pieces of evidence from various locations in the apartment: a red-stained clorox bleach bottle and various items of red-stained men's, women's and children's clothing from a washroom area; a magazine for a semiautomatic pistol containing two live rounds of ammunition and a purple ski mask 7 from a nightstand drawer and bureau, respectively, in Wilson's bedroom, which she shared with the defendant; a plastic toy gun from a milk crate filled with other children's toys; numerous scraps of torn, charred, red and pink stained United States currency from a plastic waste can located in the rear area of the apartment; a black fanny bag filled with damp, stained currency from the exterior hallway closet; and a green hooded shirt.
During the police search, the defendant entered the building but fled immediately upon seeing a plainclothes detective standing at the top of the stairs outside the second floor apartment. The police chased the defendant and found him hiding in the basement of 278 Sherman Avenue, a few blocks away. The defendant testified that he ran away when he saw the police because he had sixteen bags of cocaine on his person. 8 He was taken into custody, and the police found sixteen packets of cocaine on his person.
The serial number on a $50 bill seized in the defendant's apartment was the same as one recorded on the bank's bait money log sheet. A bank security officer testified that when a dye pack explodes, the currency closest to the gas cartridge burns, while the remaining currency becomes stained with red dye. A police inspector with extensive experience investigating bank robberies testified that he inspected the currency and fragments seized from the defendant's apartment and concluded that their condition was consistent with having been exposed to a dye pack explosion. A New Haven police detective who participated in the search testified that he had investigated several prior bank robberies and that he was familiar with the results of a dye pack explosion. He testified that in his opinion the clothing taken from the defendant's apartment had been stained through contact with a person or item that had been exposed to an exploding dye pack. The stains on the clorox bottle and clothing indicated that those items had made contact with someone or something which had been exposed to an exploding dye pack. The ski mask seized in the search was of the same style, shape and color as that worn by the bank robber. The toy gun seized was similar to that displayed by the robber in the robbery.
The defendant first claims that the evidence was insufficient to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was the perpetrator of the robbery at the Bank of New Haven on March 24, 1994. To have arrived at its verdict, he argues, the jury had to resort to speculation and conjecture and to draw unwarranted inferences from the facts presented. He contends that there was nothing distinctive or unique about the perpetrator's racial or physical characteristics, that the items seized from the washing machine and laundry area on March 29, 1994 "are of little probative value," that none of the stains or discolorations on the clorox bleach bottle or clothing were ever forensically tested so as to show that they were caused by dye from a dye pack, that neither the magazine or toy gun were material factors in circumstantially proving identity and that the green hooded shirt was "another red herring" in that its only use as evidence "was its tendency to confuse or mislead the jury." While conceding that "unquestionably" the seized red-stained currency was "inculpatory," he argues that the fact that "the state's proof on the element of identity was almost entirely dependent on circumstantial evidence," and given the "relative absence of other inculpatory factors," the possession of the currency alone was not sufficient to prove that he was the robber.
In denying that he was the perpetrator, the defendant, who testified in his own behalf, said that he came into possession of the dye-stained and bait money as the result of a drug transaction that took place on March 22, 1994, in his apartment at 681 Elm Street while Wilson was out. The defendant said that one of his drug customers came to...
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