State v. Jarrett, 14037

• Decision Date: 21 May 1991
• Docket Number: No. 14037,14037
• Citation: 218 Conn. 766,591 A.2d 1225
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Michael J. JARRETT.

Page 1225

591 A.2d 1225

218 Conn. 766

STATE of Connecticut v. Michael J. JARRETT.

No. 14037.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued March 27, 1991.

Decided May 21, 1991.

Carl D. Eisenman, Public Defender, for appellant (defendant).

Harry Weller, Asst. State's Atty., with whom, on the brief, were John M. Bailey, State's Atty., and Herbert Carlson, Jr., Asst. State's Atty., for appellee (State).

Before PETERS, C.J., and CALLAHAN, GLASS, COVELLO and FRANCIS X. HENNESSY, JJ.

PETERS, Chief Justice.

The principal issue in this appeal is whether the state sustained its burden of disproving the insanity defense tendered on behalf of a man who killed his victim as part of a mutual suicide pact. The defendant, Michael Jarrett, was charged with having committed the crime of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a(a). After a probable cause hearing established that the state had sufficient evidence to proceed, the defendant interposed a multifaceted defense of mental disease or defect and elected to be tried to a three judge panel of the Superior Court. The trial court found him guilty as charged and sentenced him to a term of imprisonment of fifty years. The defendant appealed to this court pursuant to General Statutes § 51-199(b)(3). We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The three judge panel could reasonably have found the following facts. The defendant and the victim became romantically involved after the victim began babysitting for the defendant's son. Because of a substantial age disparity between the defendant, who was in his thirties, and his teenage victim, the victim's mother filed a complaint that led to the defendant's conviction of risk of injury to a child, for which he received a suspended sentence conditioned on his not seeing the victim. Distressed by the efforts to enforce their separation, which the defendant and the victim knowingly tried to circumvent, they entered into a suicide pact. Each of them alluded to their plan of action in conversations with a mutual friend, shortly before the fatal day; the defendant told the friend that he intended to do something that he characterized as dangerous.

On September 6, 1983, in a park in Manchester, the defendant killed the victim by stabbing her twice with his knife, and stabbed her once more after her death. Although he thereafter also stabbed himself, his three self-inflicted lacerations proved not to be fatal. When police officers arrived at the scene, they found that the defendant's clothing was stained with blood from the victim as well as from his own wounds. The defendant told a paramedic, who was examining him to ascertain the extent of his wounds, that his girlfriend was in the woods nearby and that she was dead.

In his defense against the charge of murder, the defendant formally denied that he had stabbed the victim, but relied principally on a defense of mental disease or defect. He properly notified the state, in accordance with Practice Book §§ 758 and 759, that he intended to rely upon expert evidence to put into question whether his mental condition: (1) rendered him incapable of forming the specific intent to commit murder; General Statutes (Rev. to 1983) § 53a-54a(a); ¹ (2) rendered him legally insane; General Statutes (Rev. [218 Conn. 769] to 1983) § 53a-13; ² or (3) demonstrated that he had committed the crime under extreme emotional disturbance. General Statutes (Rev. to 1983) § 53a-55(a)(2). ³

The trial court found the defendant guilty as charged. In two oral memoranda of decision, one denying the defendant's motion for acquittal and the other rendering its judgment, the court found that the defendant had killed the victim and had intended to do so. After hearing the evidence relating to the defendant's mental disease or defect, the court further determined that the testimony of lay witnesses and of the state's expert witness proved that the defendant had not lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct under the requirements of the law. Accordingly, the court concluded that the state had established the elements of the crime of murder beyond a reasonable doubt.

In his appeal, the defendant contends that his conviction should be set aside because: (1) he was entitled to an acquittal because the evidence at trial was insufficient to establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt or to establish that the state had satisfied its burden of disproving his defense of mental disease or defect beyond a reasonable doubt; and (2) he was entitled to a new trial because the trial court should not have relied on an inculpatory statement that he made to the state's psychiatric expert. ⁴ We are unpersuaded.

I

The defendant has mounted two challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence to support his conviction. He urges us to hold, contrary to the trial court, that the state adduced insufficient evidence of his commission of the underlying crime or to rebut his defense of mental disease or defect. Accordingly, he contends that his midtrial and posttrial motions for acquittal should have been granted. We disagree.

A

In his challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence to warrant his conviction of the crime of murder, the defendant questions the validity of the trial court's findings that he was the person who stabbed the victim and that his conduct was intentional. Neither of these contentions warrants extensive discussion.

Whether we review the findings of a trial court or the verdict of a jury, our underlying task is the same. See State v. Evans, 203 Conn. 212, 238, 523 A.2d 1306 (1987). We first review the evidence presented at trial, construing it in the light most favorable to sustaining the facts expressly found by the trial court or impliedly found by the jury. We then decide whether, upon the facts thus established and the inferences reasonably drawn therefrom, the trial court or the jury could reasonably have concluded that the cumulative effect of the evidence established the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Weinberg, 215 Conn. 231, 253, 575 A.2d 1003 (1990); State v. Rollinson, 203 Conn. 641, 665-66, 526 A.2d 1283 (1987); State v. Garrison, 203 Conn. 466, 471, 525 A.2d 498 (1987); State v. Cobbs, 203 Conn. 4, 6-7, 522 A.2d 1229 (1987).

In this case, the trial court could reasonably have concluded that the defendant committed the homicide on the basis of its factual findings that the defendant was discovered at the scene of the crime, close to the victim's body, covered with her blood, shortly after she had been stabbed by a knife that belonged to him. The court could reasonably have inferred that the defendant had the specific intent to cause the victim's death from its findings concerning the wounds he inflicted upon her and the contemporaneous statements he had made to others concerning the crime. With regard to the latter, it was especially probative that, at the scene of the crime, the defendant volunteered that his girlfriend was dead in the woods nearby and that he knew she was not merely unconscious but dead. Earlier, he had told a friend about his plans to do something that he himself characterized as dangerous. This record in its entirety is sufficient to sustain the trial court's conclusion that the defendant had committed the crime of murder.

B

The defendant's central challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence is his assertion that the state did not disprove his defense of mental disease or defect beyond a reasonable doubt. At the time of this trial, the state bore the burden of proof on this defense. Although resolution of this second issue presents a closer question than the first one, we conclude that the trial court's judgment must stand.

At the trial, the defendant adduced expert testimony by two psychiatrists, Peter M. Zeman, M.D., and Walter A. Borden, M.D., and two clinical psychologists, David F. Berry, Ph.D., and John A. Cegalis, Ph.D., in support of his contention that he could not be held criminally responsible for the stabbing of the victim. These experts testified that the defendant, at the time of the stabbing, as a result of mental disease of psychotic proportion, either paranoid schizophrenia or bipolar illness, ⁵ lacked substantial capacity both to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct and to conform his conduct to the requirements of law. They agreed that the defendant's mental disease was not proximately caused by voluntary substance abuse. They described the defendant as suffering from delusional beliefs about "astroplaning," reincarnation, and the existence of life on another planet. In their view, the defendant's psychopathology genuinely led him to believe that, in stabbing the victim, he was not harming her or causing her pain but was instead enabling her to be reunited with him in another place and in another form.

To satisfy its burden of proof, the state presented Donald R. Grayson, M.D., as its own expert witness. Grayson acknowledged that the defendant was delusional and possibly psychotic. His own examination of the defendant led him to conclude nonetheless that, despite the defendant's bizarre ideation, the defendant understood that what he was doing was legally wrong even though he felt it was not morally wrong. As further evidence of the defendant's knowledgeability, the state relied on two lay witnesses, a former roommate who testified that the defendant had knowingly planned to violate the restrictions on his probation and the friend who testified of the defendant's planning to undertake, the day before the stabbing, some undefined but dangerous action.

The trial court was entitled to find credible the testimony of the state's witnesses and, on that basis, to conclude that the defendant's sanity had been proved by the state beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Evans, supra, 203 Conn. at 238-39, 523 A.2d 1306; State v. Perez, 182 Conn. 603, 610, 438 A.2d 1149 (1981). The...