State v. McArthur
| Decision Date | 20 June 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. 26742.,26742. |
| Citation | 96 Conn.App. 155,899 A.2d 691 |
| Parties | STATE of Connecticut v. Gregory McARTHUR. |
| Court | Connecticut Court of Appeals |
Pamela S. Nagy, special public defender, for the appellant (defendant).
James A. Killen, senior assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were James E. Thomas, state's attorney, and Gary W. Nicholson, senior assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).
Concern about the trustworthiness of confessions of criminal misconduct has led to the enunciation of the corpus delicti rule, pursuant to which a criminal conviction cannot be based only on an uncorroborated extrajudicial confession of guilt. State v. Farnum, 275 Conn. 26, 33, 878 A.2d 1095 (2005). In this case, the defendant confessed to conduct implicating himself in the abduction and death of a victim to whose skeletal remains he led the police. The principal issue on appeal is the sufficiency of the corroborative evidence to sustain the defendant's conviction of manslaughter in the first degree, felony murder, kidnapping in the first degree and larceny in the third degree. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
In a five count information, the state charged the defendant with capital felony in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54b(5), murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a, felony murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54c, kidnapping in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-92(a)(2)(A) and (B), and robbery in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-134(a)(1). The jury found the defendant guilty of felony murder and kidnapping in the first degree as charged. The jury found the defendant not guilty of the capital felony, murder and robbery charges, but found him guilty of the lesser included offenses of manslaughter in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-55(a)(1) and larceny in the third degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-124(a)(1). The trial court accepted the verdict and sentenced the defendant to a total effective term of sixty years, to be served consecutive to the sentence he was serving in Massachusetts.
Considering the record as a whole, including the defendant's confessions, the jury reasonably could have found the following facts. At about 10:30 p.m. on Friday, January 2, 1998, the defendant called an escort service owned by Gabriel Gladstone. He asked for an escort and gave Gladstone his telephone number and his address, 550 Prospect Avenue, apartment nine, in Hartford. Gladstone gave this information to Ann Marie Cusano, a part-time employee of the service, but discouraged her from setting up an appointment. Cusano disregarded Gladstone's admonition and called the defendant shortly before 11 p.m. Cusano and the defendant arranged an appointment for that evening, and she called Gladstone and informed him that she was going to Hartford to meet with the defendant.
Before Cusano arrived, the defendant went into the north end of Hartford in search of narcotics. He was stabbed multiple times by a drug dealer from whom he attempted to steal drugs. At some time around midnight, the defendant, still bleeding from his injuries, appeared on the porch of the Magnolia Street home of Victor Alvarado and his wife in Hartford.1 Declining the suggestion that an ambulance be called to take him to a hospital, the defendant was cared for by the Alvarados and then driven to Prospect Avenue as he requested.
Cusano drove herself to the defendant's apartment, arriving shortly before 1 a.m., on January 3. After arriving, she telephoned Gladstone from inside the defendant's apartment to notify him that she was not keeping the appointment and that she was going home. That was the last time Gladstone heard from Cusano.
When Cusano informed the defendant that she wanted to leave his apartment, he was standing between her and the door. The defendant, however, wanted Cusano to stay. A physical struggle ensued, which lasted for about five to ten minutes. The defendant eventually succeeded in preventing her from leaving, by grabbing her leg and then placing her in a headlock. He held her there until she stopped breathing. The defendant carried Cusano's body downstairs and placed it in her car. He drove to Suffield and disposed of her body.
Driving Cusano's car into the north end of Hartford later on January 3, the defendant approached a drug dealer named Darryl Wilson. In exchange for $50 worth of cocaine, the defendant "rented" Cusano's car to Wilson and another drug dealer named Corey Brown. Wilson and Brown dropped the defendant off at a "crack house," with the understanding that they would pick him up the following morning. When they returned for him the next morning, however, the defendant was not there. Brown initially kept the car but subsequently gave it to Wilson, who abandoned it on Pliny Street in Hartford after learning from a news program that it was linked to a missing person.2
Some time after having traded Cusano's car for cocaine, the defendant appeared at the home of his cousin Barbara Shannon and her husband Craig Shannon on Mansfield Avenue in Hartford. The defendant told Craig Shannon that he had been in a fight in a nearby housing project. His clothes were disheveled. The Shannons helped the defendant clean his injuries and offered to call him an ambulance, which he refused. After a few days, they asked him to leave, and he went to the West Hartford house of his aunt, Margaret Cappella. While there, the defendant asked his aunt and her daughter to clean out his Prospect Avenue apartment. He then fled to Massachusetts.
In the meantime, Cusano's daughters had become concerned about their mother's absence. On January 2, 1998, they had been staying with friends in Waterbury. When Cusano failed to pick them up, as planned, on the following day, they called their uncle and went with him to the Shelton police station to file a missing person's report.
Telephone records for Cusano's home led the police to Gladstone, who informed the police of her appointment with the defendant. The Shelton police then went to the defendant's apartment, where they found the apartment door ajar and observed a chair, a bed and a bag of clothes with brownish red stains. Concluding that the apartment was a possible crime scene, they summoned the Hartford police. A subsequent search of the apartment, pursuant to a warrant, revealed blood stains on the walls, mattress and chair. Also found was a bag of bloody and punctured clothing. Although there was no evidence of Cusano's blood or DNA in the defendant's apartment, under the bed the police found a gold hoop earring that was similar to one owned by Cusano.
The Hartford police traced the defendant to Massachusetts, where he had been arrested and was incarcerated for other crimes. Hartford police Detective James Rovella spoke to the defendant there on August 24, 1998, but the defendant was not brought back to Hartford pursuant to a detainer until September 1, 2000.
Upon his return to Hartford, the defendant was given Miranda warnings3 and was interviewed by Rovella, Inspector Gary Mazzone and Detective Ben Trabka. He gave them four different accounts of what happened on the evening of January 2 and early morning of January 3, 1998.
In the first account, the defendant explained that, after Cusano arrived at his apartment, they went into the city to buy narcotics. One of the two drug dealers they approached, however, attacked the defendant, and the defendant blacked out. The last time that he saw Cusano, he said, she was in her car with the two dealers.4
In the second, third, and fourth accounts, the defendant confessed to having strangled Cusano to death in his apartment.5 To prevent her from leaving, he placed his arm around her in a headlock in which he held her until she stopped breathing. He disposed of her body by putting it in her car and driving to Suffield. Thereafter, he traded the use of her car for cocaine.
The defendant twice accompanied the police to Suffield to show them where the victim's body was located. Although the first search in an area off 666 Boston Neck Road was unsuccessful, a second search brought Detective Michael Sheldon to a vegetated area where he found a skull. The skull and other skeletal remains found on the scene were subsequently identified as belonging to Cusano. The report issued by the office of the chief medical examiner identified the cause of death as "homicidal violence, type undetermined." At trial, the medical examiner testified that the remains recovered were consistent with someone who had been killed by strangulation.
The defendant has raised three major issues on appeal. He challenges (1) the sufficiency of the evidence to support each of the crimes of which he was convicted, (2) the court's restriction of his closing argument to the jury with respect to one of the drug dealers and (3) the court's instructions to the jury on kidnapping and on avoiding juror deadlock. We are not persuaded by any of these claims of impropriety.
We first address the defendant's claim that the there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction. The defendant's argument is twofold. First, the defendant argues that the state failed to prove the corpus delicti of these crimes because the only evidence of their occurrence came from the defendant's allegedly uncorroborated confessions. Second, the defendant claims that the state failed to prove the essential elements of each crime beyond a reasonable doubt. We are not persuaded.
Our review of claims challenging the sufficiency of the evidence is governed by a two part test. ...
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