State v. Lorain
| Decision Date | 23 November 1954 |
| Citation | 141 Conn. 694,109 A.2d 504 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE of Connecticut v. William J. LORAIN. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut |
James D. Cosgrove, Public Defender, Hartford, for appellant (defendant).
Albert S. Bill, State's Atty., Hartford, with whom, on the brief, was Douglass B. Wright, Asst. State's Atty., Hartford, for appellee (state).
Before INGLIS, C. J., and BALDWIN, O'SULLIVAN, WYNNE and DALY, JJ.
The defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree. The indictment set forth that the murder was done in attempting to perpetrate a robbery upon the person of George Zgierski. On his appeal to this court, the defendant in his assignment of errors attacks the finding in several particulars. These attacks have no merit. Included also are assignments as to the admission of evidence and exhibits. These have to do with the claim that a confession obtained while the defendant was in the custody of the police in Rhode Island was not voluntary. Other confessions, subsequently made, could only, it is claimed, have had their inception in the first. The errors assigned on this aspect of the case, while set forth in detail, raise the one fundamental question whether the defendant's rights were violated. This was pressed in brief and argument as a complete entirty. The answer to it is determinative of the appeal, because on the basis of the confessions the jury's verdict was amply supported and the motion to set aside the verdict was properly denied.
The defendant did not take the stand except, in the absence of the jury, in the course of a preliminary hearing concerned with the admissibility of the entire line of testimony under attack. The conviction of the defendant rests, undoubtedly, upon a confession made by him in Rhode Island and subsequent ones made to police officers in Connecticut. It is the defendant's claim that his first statement was not voluntary in the legal sense but was made as a result of a promise by or a bargain with the chief of police of Providence, Rhode Island, and was vitiated by that circumstance. It is further argued that the later confessions in Connecticut were so inextricably connected with the first that the admission of any, or all, of them was a violation of the defendant's rights.
We shall first consider the denial of the motion to set aside the verdict. With the claimed confessions and the exhibits before the jury, the following facts reasonably could have been found: On August 12, 1952, the defendant and one John Petetabella came to Hartford by bus from Providence. The defendant had a gun loaded with eight bullets in the clip and one in the chamber. Shortly after 9:30 in the evening of the day in question, the defendant and Petetabella accosted George Zgierski, who was driving his automobile in a westerly direction on Park Street in Hartford, and requested a ride. Zgierski acquiesced, and the two men entered the automobile. Shortly thereafter, when Zgierski announced that he was not going much farther, the defendant placed his gun against Zgierski and ordered him to stop the car. The defendant then forced Zgierski at gun point to climb into the back seat with him, and Petetabella took the wheel and continued to drive. First asking Zgierski if he had any money, the defendant took from him his motor vehicle license and registration. In Wethersfield, while the car was still traveling Zgierski made an attempt to grab the gun held by the defendant. The defendant then shot him, five times in all. The defendant and Petetabella drove to an isolated spot, dragged the lifeless body of Zgierski from the car and dumped it in the weeds near a brook within a few feet of Deming Road in Berlin. The defendant had first gone through the pockets of Zgierski, and Petetabella had taken his wrist watch. The gun from which the fatal shots were fired was shown to have been in the possession of the defendant just before his arrest. Blood found on the back seat of Zgierski's car was human blood of the same classification as Zgierski's. On these facts the court was fully justified in denying the motion to set aside the verdict.
The facts found with reference to the admission of the confessions, with such corrections as are warranted, can be stated in summary as follows: On August 20, 1952, Captain Mulcahy of the Connecticut state police and a Providence police sergeant found the defendant at a boarding house in Providence, in the company of his divorced wife. Both were taken in custody to the police station. For a period of about an hour and a half directly following this, Captain Mulcahy was not present. During this time the defendant was questioned by Chief Stone of the Providence police department and other Rhood Island police officers as to the whereabouts of Petetabella and concerning a crime which had been committed in Providence. In the course of this questioning, the defendant asked the police to let his ex-wife go. He was told by Chief Stone that she would be released if it appeared that she was not involved in anything. When Captain Mulcahy returned to the place where the defendant was being questioned, he and some Providence police officers took the defendant in an automobile and drove to the front of the Pawtucket police station. While sitting in the car, the defendant made the statement that on August 12 (the date of the murder) he had been in Connecticut. Mulcahy then made it known that he was a Connecticut police officer, and the defendant proceeded to tell of the killing of...
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