State v. Morales
| Decision Date | 06 May 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 15405,15405 |
| Citation | 694 A.2d 758,240 Conn. 727 |
| Parties | STATE of Connecticut v. David MORALES. |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
Patricia A. King, New Haven, for appellant (defendant).
Timothy J. Sugrue, Executive Assistant State's Attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Michael Dearington, State's Attorney, and Gary Nicholson, Assistant State's Attorney, for appellee (State).
Before CALLAHAN, C.J., and BORDEN, NORCOTT, McDONALD and PETERS, JJ.
The sole issue in this appeal is whether a child 1 who has been transferred, pursuant to General Statutes (Rev. to 1995) § 46b-127, 2 from the docket for juvenile matters to the regular criminal docket of the Superior Court on a charge of murder must be returned to the docket for juvenile matters if he is acquitted of murder but convicted of the lesser included offense of manslaughter in the first degree. The defendant, David Morales, contends that allowing a child acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter to remain on the regular criminal docket for sentencing is contrary to both the language of § 46b-127 and the equal protection and due process provisions of the federal constitution. We disagree with the defendant's statutory and constitutional arguments and affirm the judgment of the Appellate Court, which affirmed the trial court's sentencing of the defendant for manslaughter as an adult.
The following facts and procedural history are relevant to this appeal. When the defendant was fifteen years old, he was the driver of a vehicle involved in a gang related drive-by shooting in New Haven that resulted in the death of a sixteen year old male. As a result of the defendant's involvement in the shooting, he was arrested by warrant and, in a petition of delinquency, charged with murder in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a-8 and 53a-54a. 3 On June 12, 1991, the state filed a motion to transfer the defendant to the regular criminal docket pursuant to § 46b-127. After an evidentiary hearing, the trial court transferred the defendant on the basis of its finding of probable cause to believe that the defendant had committed murder. 4
Following the transfer of the defendant to the regular criminal docket, another probable cause hearing was held pursuant to General Statutes § 54-46a. 5 That court also found probable cause to believe that the defendant had committed murder in violation of §§ 53a-8 and 53a-54a. The state then filed an amended two count information charging the defendant with murder and with conspiracy to commit murder in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a-48 (a) 6 and 53a-54a.
In August, 1994, the defendant was tried by a jury. At the defendant's request, the trial court instructed the jury as to the lesser included offenses of manslaughter in the first and second degrees. The jury convicted the defendant of manslaughter in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § § 53a-8 and 53a-55 (a)(1), 7 and acquitted him of the charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Thereafter, the defendant moved to have his case returned to the juvenile docket for further proceedings. The trial court denied the motion and sentenced the defendant to a term of incarceration of eighteen years, suspended after fourteen years, with five years probation. The defendant appealed to the Appellate Court, which affirmed the judgment of the trial court in a per curiam opinion based upon its decision in State v. Cuffee, 32 Conn.App. 759, 630 A.2d 621 (1993). State v. Morales, 40 Conn.App. 935, 671 A.2d 867 (1996). We granted the defendant's petition for certification to determine: (1) whether, as a matter of statutory construction, a child who is transferred to the regular criminal docket pursuant to § 46b-127, on the basis of a finding of probable cause to believe that he has committed murder, must be transferred back to the juvenile docket if he is found guilty of the lesser included offense of manslaughter in the first degree; and (2) whether the statute, if construed not to require such a retransfer, violates the child's constitutional rights to equal protection and due process. State v. Morales, 237 Conn. 907, 674 A.2d 1333 (1996). We affirm the judgment of the Appellate Court.
Section 46b-127 provides that the juvenile court must transfer to the regular criminal docket of the Superior Court all cases in which there has been a finding of probable cause that a child has committed murder in violation of §§ 53a-54a through 53a-54d and the alleged crime occurred after the child had attained fourteen years of age. Section 46b-127 (d) also provides that We are asked to determine how the legislature intended this language to be applied where, as here, a child is properly transferred to the regular criminal docket on the basis of a finding of probable cause to believe that he has committed murder, but is later acquitted of murder by a jury and convicted of the lesser included offense of manslaughter. As noted above, in 1993, the Appellate Court concluded that a child transferred to the regular criminal docket on a murder charge could be sentenced as an adult if that child was convicted of a lesser included offense. State v. Cuffee, supra, 32 Conn.App. at 764-65, 630 A.2d 621. Since Cuffee, the legislature has made significant changes to the juvenile transfer statutes but has not enacted legislation to overrule that decision. See Public Acts 1995, No. 95-225, § 13; Public Acts, Spec. Sess., July, 1994, No. 94-2, § 6. While we are aware that legislative inaction is not necessarily legislative affirmation; see Conway v. Wilton, 238 Conn. 653, 662, 680 A.2d 242 (1996); we also "presume that the legislature is aware of [the Appellate Court's] interpretation of a statute, and that its subsequent nonaction may be understood as a validation of that interpretation." Ralston Purina Co. v. Board of Tax Review, 203 Conn. 425, 439, 525 A.2d 91 (1987). The defendant has failed to articulate a convincing rationale to alter the Appellate Court's 1993 interpretation of § 46b-127, and we see no reason to do so.
We first consider the language of § 46b-127 (d), which provides that, "[u]pon the effectuation of the transfer, [the] child shall stand trial and be sentenced, if convicted, as if he were sixteen years of age...." That language, which has not changed since the time of the decision in Cuffee, dictates that children who are validly transferred from the juvenile docket to the regular criminal docket are to be prosecuted in all respects, including sentencing, as though they were adults. 8 It is undisputed that an adult tried for murder may be convicted of any lesser included form of homicide. State v. Rodriguez, 180 Conn. 382, 398-408, 429 A.2d 919 (1980). General Statutes § 53a-45 (c) provides that "[t]he court or jury before which any person ... held to answer for murder after a hearing conducted in accordance with the provisions of section 54-46a is tried may find such person guilty of homicide in a lesser degree than that charged." (Emphasis added.) The defendant in this case certainly falls within the category of "any person ... held to answer for murder" and § 53a-45 (c) therefore would apply to the charges against him unless the legislature has carved out a specific exception to § 53a-45 (c).
The defendant asks us to find such an exception in the last sentence of § 46b-127 (d), which provides that "[i]f the action is dismissed or nolled or if such child is found not guilty of the charge for which he was transferred, the child shall resume his status as a juvenile until he attains the age of sixteen years." The defendant argues that murder is the only "charge for which he was transferred" and that, when the jury found him not guilty of that charge, the court was obligated to send his case back to the juvenile docket. We are not persuaded.
The defendant's interpretation of § 46b-127 would, within the context of cases transferred from the juvenile docket to the regular criminal docket, require a departure from our well established rules pertaining to lesser included offenses. Under the defendant's interpretation, in a transferred case a jury would never deliberate regarding a lesser included offense because the jury is routinely instructed, as the jury was in this case, that it may not begin to deliberate regarding any lesser included offense until it has concluded that the defendant is not guilty of the greater offense. See State v. Sawyer, 227 Conn. 566, 587, 630 A.2d 1064 (1993). Before it ever reached the lesser included offense, the jury would have had to conclude that the defendant was not guilty of the greater offense. Further deliberations regarding lesser included offenses would be meaningless under the defendant's construction of the statute and, therefore, trial courts presumably would be precluded from giving lesser included offense instructions. 9 Forcing the jury to choose between murder and acquittal in a case where there is evidence of a less culpable state of mind "would limit the jury's function of determining questions of fact and undermine a defendant's right to a trial by jury." State v. Rodriguez, supra, 180 Conn. at 404, 429 A.2d 919. We are unable to find any indication that the legislature intended that the state and the child defendant engage in this version of Russian roulette. 10
Our interpretation finds further support in the provision of § 46b-127 (d) that "[a]ny...
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