State v. Miller
| Citation | 228 A.2d 136,154 Conn. 622 |
| Court | Supreme Court of Connecticut |
| Decision Date | 09 March 1967 |
| Parties | STATE of Connecticut v. Harlis MILLER. |
Herbert J. Bundock, Public Defender, with whom was G. Sarsfield Ford, Asst. Public Defender, for appellant (defendant).
Otto J. Saur, State's Atty., for appellee (state).
Before KING, C.J., and ALCORN, HOUSE, THIM and RYAN, JJ.
On December 13, 1962, a grand jury indicted the defendant for murder in the first degree. A jury found him guilty and recommended a sentence of life imprisonment which the court imposed. The defendant appealed, and we found error and ordered a new trial as reported in State v. Miller, 152 Conn. 343, 206 A.2d 835. On the retrial a jury found him guilty of murder in the second degree, and the court imposed the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. General Statutes § 53-11. The defendant has again appealed, assigning error in the denial of his motion to set aside the verdict on the ground that the state failed to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, in the denial of a motion for a mistrial, and in two rulings on evidence. Two other assignments of error are not briefed and therefore are considered abandoned. William Peck Lumber Co. v. Virmides, Inc., 153 Conn. 710, 712, 215 A.2d 912; Leo Foundation v. Cabelus, 151 Conn. 655, 656, 201 A.2d 654; Maltbie, Conn.App.Proc. § 327.
To sustain the verdict, the evidence must be sufficient to entitle the jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim of the crime had been killed by the defendant with malice aforethought. State v. Kurz, 131 Conn. 54, 60, 37 A.2d 808. Although the defendant was indicted for murder in the first degree, the jury obviously concluded that the added element of a wilful, deliberate and premeditated killing necessary to establish that crime had not been proved and, by their verdict, they determined the crime to be of the lesser or second degree as they properly could do. General Statutes § 53-9; see McBrien v. Warden, 153 Conn. 320, 328, 216 A.2d 432; State v. Rossi, 132 Conn. 39, 41, 42 A.2d 354. In determining whether the evidence was sufficient to sustain the verdict, we test it in the same way which the jury should have done in reaching the verdict, and, if we find it is one which twelve honest jurors acting fairly, intelligently, and reasonably might have rendered, we cannot disturb it. State v. Bradley, 134 Conn. 102, 109, 55 A.2d 114.
The jury could reasonably have found the following facts: In 1962, Isabel Sillan, the deceased, lived in Westport with her husband, two sons, and a fourteen-year-old daughter. The defendant was employed on a part-time basis by a landscape gardener who had done work for the Sillans for ten or twelve years. The defendant had worked on the Sillan property on at least six different days in October and November, 1962, and on the adjoining Stewart property on at least four different days during the same period. The defendant had never failed to report for work on a scheduled day. On Saturday, November 10, he had been engaged to work on Monday, November 12, but he failed to report for work on that day.
On Monday, November 12, Mr. Sillan left for work at about 7 a.m., leaving his wife and daughter in the house. The boys were not at home. He went out the kitchen door, which he closed but did not lock and took the train for New York. The daughter awoke about 8:45 a.m. and stated down the hall toward her parents' bedroom. As she walked past an intersecting hallway, the defendant, who was lurking there, grabbed her by the neck and pulled her back into her bedroom, pushing her against her closed bedroom door. As the defendant held her by the throat, her mother came to the closed door and asked if she was all right. She could not answer because of the defendant's grip on her neck, and she fainted. Regaining consciousness, she went downstairs and saw the defendant on top of her mother on the floor with his hand around her mother's neck. She tried, unsuccessfully, to held her mother, and the defendant forced them both back to her mother's bedroom where he choked both women and placed a rope around the daughter's neck. The daughter fainted a second time, and, when she regained consciousness, she was on the floor, bound hand and foot, and her mother was on the floor beside her with a rope around her neck, unconscious and breathing heavily. The defendant cut the daughter's bonds, forced her back to her bedroom, again bound her, hand and foot, and left the room for about ten minutes. He then returned, untied her, and ordered her to change into another nightgown, bed jacket and slippers. He again bound her, covered her head and body with a quilt, and carried her downstairs. He then placed her on the floor in the rear of his automobile and drove off with her.
Mr. Sillan returned home about 6:30 that evening and found the house in darkness and the living room and master bedroom in disorder. Opening the door of the bathroom, he found Mrs. Sillan, dead, still clad in her nightgown, seated on the toilet, her head resting against the wall. She had been dead at least six hours. He was unable to find his daughter until about 8 p.m., when, in response to a call from the Norwalk Hospital, he found her there, bleeding, with marks on her neck, and clad only in a nightgown. She had been taken to the hospital following her escape from the defendant's automobile, where she had been held captive all day either bound and tied in the rear seat or imprisoned in the trunk compartment.
Mrs. Sillan died from asphyxiation due to strangulation caused by a rope or clothesline around her neck. Marks which encircled her neck could have been made by a clothesline such as that used to bind her daughter. When the daughter escaped from the defendant's automobile, her hands were still bound behind her back with a clothesline which was identical in construction and had the same apparent origin as another length of clothesline found behind a bush outside the entrance to the defendant's basement apartment.
Without reciting more of the gruesome details which were before the jury, it is clear that, from those set forth, the jury were fully justified in concluding that the defendant had killed Mrs. Sillan with malice aforethought. Malice aforethought State v. McGuire, 84 Conn. 470, 476, 483, 80 A. 761, 763, 38 L.R.A.,N.S., 1045; State v. Jacowitz, 128 Conn. 40, 44, 20 A.2d 470. Malice aforethought may be proved by circumstances from which it may be inferred as a question of fact. State v. Bissonnette, 83 Conn. 261, 267, 76 A. 288. Thus, the verdict of murder in the second degree was clearly justified.
On the day following the crime, the defendant left Connecticut for Florida and, on November 16, was arrested in Georgia, where he had stopped en route, as we related in State v. Miller, 152 Conn. 343, 346, 206 A.2d 835. One of the evidential rulings assigned as error in the present appeal relates to a portion of the testimony of the Connecticut police officer who went to Georgia to bring the defendant back to Connecticut. Over the defendant's objection, the officer testified that, when he went to Georgia, he had, in his possession, and arrest warrant for the defendant. The objection made was that the...
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