State v. Pastet

• Decision Date: 30 June 1964
• Citation: 203 A.2d 287,152 Conn. 81
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. John J. PASTET. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut

Page 287

203 A.2d 287

152 Conn. 81

STATE of Connecticut v. John J. PASTET.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

June 30, 1964.

John M. Murphy, Public Defender, and Philip N. Costello, Jr., Sp. Asst. Public Defender, with whom, on the brief, was Lawrence R. O'Brien, New Haven, for appellant (defendant).

George R. Tiernan, Asst. State's Atty., with whom, on the brief, was Arthur T. Gorman, State's Atty., for appellee (state).

Before KING, C. J., and MURPHY, SHEA, ALCORN and COMLEY, JJ.

MURPHY, Associate Justice.

The defendant has appealed from his conviction by a jury of murder in the first degree. He has filed four assignments of error which will be discussed seriatim.

The defendant's offense was committed in the perpetration of a robbery. See General Statutes, § 53-9. His defense was based on the claim that, when he accosted his victim, he was overcome by such an irresistible impulse that he lacked the legal capacity to commit the crime of which he was charged and that he was not guilty by reason of insanity.

The first assignment of error is directed to one paragraph of the charge. The court, in instructing the jury on the four essential elements of murder, had stated that the fourth element was malice, which would be implied if an unlawful homicide resulted from the use of a deadly weapon in the perpetration of a robbery. The court then said: 'That killing would be murder, even though there was no ill will, hatred or malevolence toward the person killed, because the evil intent to commit the robbery carried over to make the crime murder in the first degree. This is true even though the killing itself is accidental.' As used in the particular portion of the charge then being delivered, this paragraph was a correct statement of the law. State v. Taborsky, 139 Conn. 475, 489, 95 A.2d 59. There is no merit to the defendant's claim that this one paragraph relieved the state of the burden of proving two of the four essential elements of murder or that under it malice could be imputed to an insane person. In a later portion of the charge, the court, in defining murder in the second degree, repeated the four essentials of that crime and then stated: 'If, in addition to those elements the State also proves a fifth element, namely, that the murder was committed in the perpetration of a robbery, as alleged in this indictment, it becomes by force of law murder in the first degree.' The court also reiterated that the jury had to find that the defendant was legally sane while perpetrating the robbery in order to convict him of murder in the first degree.

In the second assignment of error, the defendant claims that the court omitted pertinent material language from the charge on the defense of insanity and did not make proper reference to the defendant's reliance on irresistible impulse as affecting mental capacity to commit crime. The court instructed the jury that '[t]o be the subject of punishment an individual must at the time of the offense, have had mind and capacity, reason and understanding enough to enable him to judge of the nature, character and consequence of the act charged against him, to distinguish between right and wrong, to realize that the act is wrong and criminal, and that the commission of it will justly and properly expose him to penalties.' The court stated that this was the test of legal sanity and added, after discussing the legal standard as compared to the medical standard: 'The definition of insanity which I have given you would include a mind which is either so naturally weak or so impaired by disease or otherwise [as] to make its possessor incapable of distinguishing right from wrong.' The court spoke of...