State v. Mele
| Citation | 100 A.2d 570,140 Conn. 398 |
| Court | Supreme Court of Connecticut |
| Decision Date | 10 November 1953 |
| Parties | STATE v. MELE. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut |
Anthony A. E. DeLucia, New Haven, for appellant (defendant).
Abraham S. Ullman, State's Atty., New Haven, with whom, on the brief, was Arthur T. Gorman, Asst. State's Atty., New Haven, for appellee (state).
Before BALDWIN, INGLIS, O'SULLIVAN, QUINLAN and WYNNE, * JJ. concurring.
Upon an information charging an assault with intent to murder, the defendant was convicted of assault with intent to kill. From that conviction he has appealed, assigning several errors in the charge, one of which is that the court failed to instruct the jury that they might bring in a verdict of guilty of aggravated assault.
The information charged that 'Andrew Mele did commit an assault upon one Henrietta Amici Mele, with intent to murder her, against the peace, and contrary to the Statute Section 8356 in such case made and provided.' The state claimed to have proved that on the night of September 29, 1952, the defendant inflicted thirty or forty lacerations and stab wounds upon the complainant, who was his wife; that his motive for doing so was revenge upon her for having made a complaint to the police that he had committed adultery; and that, after his arrest on the present charge, he had made a statement to the effect that he had gone to the home of the complainant that evening for the purpose of killing her.
The defendant claimed that when he arrived home on the night in question there were suspicious circumstances which led to his accusing his wife of having had improper relations with another man. Thereupon an argument started in which his wife struck him the he went into the kitchen, took the knife and stabbed her.
The court charged the jury, in part, as follows: The court went on to say that 'if, as between any of these three verdicts of guilt, you entertain a doubt between the higher and the lower, you must give the accused the benefit of that doubt.' The accused had filed no requests to charge, but at the end of the charge he took exception to the court's failure to mention aggravated assault.
In response to an inquiry from the jury as to the difference between assault with intent to murder and assault with intent to kill, the court gave then a supplemental charge. In that it mentioned that there was It did not, however, instruct the jury that it was possible for them to render a verdict of guilty of aggravated assault. After the jury had again retired, the defendant called the court's attention to the omission to so charge. Thus the question is presented whether the defendant was entitled to a charge that the jury might find the defendant guilty of aggravated assault.
It is well settled that upon a trial on a charge of a greater offense there may be a conviction of a lesser offense if two conditions are satisfied. The first of these conditions is that the evidence must be such that it...
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State v. Whistnant
...the claim that a defendant has a fundamental constitutional right to a jury instruction on a lesser included offense. State v. Mele, 140 Conn. 398, 402, 100 A.2d 570 (1953); State v. Pallanck, 146 Conn. 527, 529, 152 A.2d 633 (1959); State v. Devine, 149 Conn. 640, 650, 183 A.2d 612 (1962);......
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State v. Brown
...was not, therefore, entitled to a charge on the crime of possession-regardless of the evidence presented at his trial. 2 In State v. Mele, 140 Conn. 398, 100 A.2d 570, we stated that where a short form information was used by the state, the so-called 'evidence test' was to be used to inform......
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State v. Miller
...in a certain manner, then the information must be read as though it alleged that the crime was committed by that means. State v. Mele, 140 Conn. 398, 402, 100 A.2d 570. The bill of particulars furnished the defendant applied only to be one count in which he was charged with a violation of t......
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State v. Martin
...to short form informations, in which the court was free to examine the evidence for any crimes suggested therein. See State v. Mele, 140 Conn. 398, 100 A.2d 570 (1953). Our decision in State v. Troynack, 174 Conn. 89, 96-97, 384 A.2d 326 (1977), stated the rule that a court is to "look only......