State v. Marshall

• Decision Date: 09 July 1974
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. George T. MARSHALL.

Page 756

353 A.2d 756

166 Conn. 593

STATE of Connecticut v. George T. MARSHALL.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

July 9, 1974.

Igor I. Sikorsky, Jr., Sp. Public Defender, for appellant (defendant).

Francis M. McDonald, State's Atty., for appellee (state).

HOUSE, Chief Justice.

The defendant, George T. Marshall, was tried by a jury and found guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree. From the judgment rendered on the verdict, the defendant has appealed, assigning as error several technical and substantive issues and claiming that reversible error occurred during the course of the trial.

The basic facts are not disputed. At the trial, the state offered evidence to prove and claimed to have proved that at about 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 22, 1970, the body of Joseph Vanasse was found by his father in the caretaker's cottage at Lake Hills Village, an apartment complex in the town of Wolcott. Vanasse occupied the cottage with his wife as part of his employment as caretaker of the complex. His death was caused by seven wounds inflicted by a .38 caliber firearm, and five such bullets were recovered from the victim's body and clothing by the police and by the pathologist who conducted an autopsy. He died sometime during a twenty-four-hour period commencing at 1:30 p.m. on the previous Friday afternoon.

The defendant and the victim were both prospective members of an organization known as the Aliens Motor Cycle Club and, although neither was arrested or charged with any crime in connection with the multiple rapes at Wallingford by the Slumlords motorcycle gang, they were present on that occasion. See State v. Clemente, Conn., 353 A.2d 723. Other Alien club members, including the president, Walter Ryan, had been charged with participation in that incident. On Friday morning before the shooting, the defendant told Ryan that he would like to kill Vanasse because he refused to contribute money to aid in the defense of those charged in the Wallingford rapes, and, that evening at Ryan's house, Ryan gave the defendant a .38 caliber Colt revolver and some cartridges. It was testified that bullets fired from this revolver cause the death of Vanasse. The defendant left Ryan's house about 1 a.m. with the revolver and the bullets, and between 2:10 a.m. and 2:20 a.m. he telephoned Ryan and his wife and requested them to tell anyone who asked that he had left their house at about 1:40 a.m. Later that same morning, while Ryan drove the defendant to a garage in Torrington where they both worked, the defendant told Ryan that he had gone to see Vanasse the previous night in Wolcott, where he drank beer with the victim and then shot him because Vanasse would not help raise money for the defense of those charged with the Wallingford rapes.

On the preceding Friday morning, Vanasse's wife had left the cottage with another man and did not return over the weekend. She left behind in the refrigerator six cans of Schaefer beer which she had previously purchased in Wolcott. On Saturday, Vanasse's father visited his son's cottage but he did not enter it. Through the partially open front door, however, he had seen a beer can on the coffee table. Five empty Schaefer beer cans were subsequently found in the cottage, four of which were in a wastebasket. One of those, as well as the beer can on the coffee table, bore the right thumbprint of the defendant.

On March 27, 1970, the police went to the defendant's home with a search warrant, and, in a shed in the rear of the house, they discovered the murder weapon and some cartridges.

The defendant's first assignment of error is predicated on the cumulative effect of the denial of two motions, rulings which the defendant claims constitute reversible error. At the commencement of the trial, the defendant unsuccessfully moved to exclude from the courtroom, when the jury were excused and counsel were arguing the law or raising objections to the admissibility of evidence, the single newspaper reporter present. Also, during the trial but in chambers, the court denied the defendant's motion to examine the jury to inquire whether any juror had read an article in a local newspsper, ¹ an article the defendant claimed was prejudicial. The court declined to poll the jury to see if they had read the article unless the defense counsel first moved for a mistrial. Counsel refused to do so, and the motion to poll the jury was denied. The defendant concedes that there was no affirmative showing of actual prejudice, but asserts that prejudice must be assumed because of the earlier denial of his motion to exclude the newspaper reporter and the later denial of his request to poll the jurors to inquire whether they had read the newspaper article. We find the defendant's thesis wholly untenable.

During the trial, the court repeatedly warned the jury at recesses not to read newspaper accounts or listen to the radio or watch television accounts of the proceedings. The newspaper article involved neither mentioned the defendant nor commented upon the evidence presented at the trial. It merely stated that one of the Slumlords' rape victims would testify as a rebuttal witness. ² By no stretch of the imagination can the situation thus presented be compared to those where front-page headlines and numerous inflammatory articles over extended periods of time jeopardize a defendant's right to a fair trial. See Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600. The court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to poll the jurors regarding the newspaper article and had properly and adequately charged the jury when they were impaneled and during the course of the trial not to read, listen to or watch media coverage of the trial. Havey v. Kropp, 458 F.2d 1054, 1057 (6th Cir.); People v. Crovedi, Cal.App., 49 Cal.Rptr. 724, 731-733, rev'd on other grounds, 65 Cal.2d 199, 53 Cal.Rptr. 284, 417 P.2d 868; State v. Holloway, 274 So.2d 699, 701 (La.); notes, 15 A.L.R.2d 1152-53, 31 A.L.R.2d 417, 432-34; note, 3 L.Ed.2d 2004, 2006; see United States v. Hirsch, 74 F.2d 215, 218-219 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 295 U.S. 739, 55 S.Ct. 653, 79 L.Ed. 1686, rehearing denied, 295 U.S. 768, 55 S.Ct 825, 79 L.Ed. 1709; A.B.A., Standards Relating to Fair Trial and Free Press (Tentative Draft) § 3.4(c); article,45 F.R.D. 391, 410, 413 n. 38. Nor do we believe that the defendant had an absolute right to exclude the newspaper reporter from the trial. As the United States Supreme Court observed in Craig v. Harney, 331 U.S. 367, 374, 67 S.Ct. 1249, 1254, 91 L.Ed. 1546: 'A trial is a public event. What transpires in the court room is public property. . . . There is no special perquisite of the judiciary which enables it, as distinguished from other institutions of democratic government, to suppress, edit, or censor events which transpire in proceedings before it.'

As indicated in Craig v. Harney, supra, 375, 67 S.Ct. 1254, it is conceivable that 'a plan of reporting on a case could be so designed and executed as to poison the public mind, to cause a march on the court house, or otherwise so disturb the delicate balance in a highly wrought situation as to imperil the fair and orderly functioning of the judicial process' or that comment on pending cases could create a 'clear and present danger' to the administration of justice. There is nothing to suggest that such a situation existed in this case and we find no error in the rulings of the court.

The defendant next claims that the court erred in admitting testimony by Ryan which the state offered as proof of the defendant's motive in killing Vanasse, that the victim had allegedly written a letter implicating the defendant in the rapes and other misdeeds which was to be turned over to the authorities if anything happened to him. The offer of proof was accepted by the court, and, over the defendant's objections, Ryan was permitted to testify regarding the Slumlord rapes, the alleged letter and the conversation with the defendant in which he admitted killing Vanasse. Also over the defendant's objections and for the purpose of showing 'motive, malice, intent and premeditation,' Mary Ryan, wife of the Aliens' president, was permitted to testify concerning the participation of the defendant and of Vanasse in the Slumlord rapes. While conceding that evidence of other crimes is admissible when relevant to prove intent or motive, the defendant claims that the probative value of this evidence was far outweighed by the prejudicial effect it created in the minds of the jurors, and that the court abused its discretion in admitting the testimony.

' Evidence of motive which suggests the doing of the act charged is always admissible and this is true even though such evidence shows or tends to show the commission of another crime. Thus, where the motive for the crime charged is the concealment of some other crime, as by killing a . . . witness, the evidence of such other crime is admissible to show motive.' 1 Wharton, Criminal Evidence (13th Ed.) § 247. In State v. Simborski, 120 Conn. 624, 630-631, 182 A. 221, 224, it was stated thus: 'The accused objected to the admission of this evidence upon the ground that it was evidence of the commission by the accused of separate and distinct crimes unconnected with that for which he was being tried. Evidence of the commission by the accused of crimes unconnected with that for which he is being tried when offered by the State in chief violates the rule of policy which forbids the State initially to attack the character of the accused, and also the rule that bad character may not be proved by particular acts and is therefore inadmissible for that purpose. State v. Gilligan, 92 Conn. 526, 530, 103 A. 649. But the inadmissibility of an evidential fact for one purpose does not render it inadmissible for some other purpose otherwise proper. 1 Wigmore, Evidence (2d Ed.) § 215. That evidence tends to prove the commission of other crimes by the accused...