State v. Patterson, 14299

Decision Date03 May 1994
Docket NumberNo. 14299,14299
Citation229 Conn. 328,641 A.2d 123
CourtConnecticut Supreme Court
PartiesSTATE of Connecticut v. Richard PATTERSON.

William Holden, Public Defender, with whom, on the brief, were Barry A. Butler, Asst. Public Defender, and Michael A. Heran, Certified Legal Intern, for appellant (defendant).

Richard F. Jacobson, Asst. State's Atty., with whom, on the brief, were Donald A. Browne, State's Atty., and Robert Lacobelle, Asst. State's Atty., for appellee (state).

Before CALLAHAN, BORDEN, BERDON, KATZ and PALMER, JJ.

PALMER, Associate Justice.

The defendant, Richard Patterson, was convicted, after a trial to a three judge court, of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a(a). 1 The defendant appealed 2 from the judgment of conviction claiming that: (1) the state failed to prove the element of intent beyond a reasonable doubt; and (2) the evidence presented by the defendant established, as a matter of law, the affirmative defenses of insanity 3 and, in the alternative extreme emotional disturbance. After hearing oral argument, we remanded the case to the three judge court for an articulation of the facts underlying its determination that the defendant had committed the crime of murder. 4 State v. Patterson, 227 Conn. 448, 629 A.2d 1133 (1993). The articulation rendered by the court pursuant to our remand sets forth its factual findings and explains its reasons for rejecting the defendant's affirmative defenses. Because the factual findings and verdict of the three judge court are supported by the evidence, we affirm the judgment of conviction.

The court stated that it had found the following facts. On October 21, 1988, at approximately 9 p.m., Desmond Clark entered a variety store on Stratford Avenue in Bridgeport. Clark saw an acquaintance, Nesbourne Wright, in the store, and asked him for a ride home. Wright agreed, and the two men left the store and proceeded toward Wright's car. On their way to the car, they were approached by the defendant, a distant cousin of Clark's, who also requested a ride from Wright. Wright agreed to give the defendant a ride as well. As Wright and his two passengers walked to Wright's car, the defendant stated that three men had sexually assaulted his girlfriend. Wright responded that he did not know what the defendant was talking about. When they arrived at the car, the defendant sat in the front passenger seat and Clark sat in the rear, behind the driver, Wright.

Wright drove directly to the defendant's house and double-parked on the street in front. The defendant, however, requested that Wright "take Clark home first." When Wright indicated that he was "not coming back this way," both Clark and the defendant exited the car. Immediately thereafter, Clark heard several gunshots from the direction of the car and, frightened, ran to the house of a relative that was located next door to the defendant's residence. As Clark fled, he observed the defendant running in the direction of his own house with a gun in his hand. 5

The Bridgeport police were called to the scene, where they found Wright slumped over in the driver's seat of the car, bleeding profusely from a wound to the head. Wright died shortly thereafter. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was a bullet fired at close range to Wright's right temple. 6 That bullet was extracted from Wright's head during the autopsy. A second bullet was removed from the dashboard of Wright's car by the police.

On October 24, 1988, police officers executed a search warrant at the defendant's apartment and found two handguns, including a .38 caliber revolver wrapped in an old pair of pants, hidden beneath the turntable of a stereo set in the defendant's bedroom. A forensic firearms examiner determined that both the bullet recovered from Wright's head and the bullet recovered from his car had been fired from the .38 caliber revolver discovered in the defendant's bedroom.

The defendant presented the testimony of several expert witnesses and family members in support of his affirmative defenses of insanity and extreme emotional disturbance. The court rejected those defenses, however, and unanimously found the defendant guilty of the crime of murder. The defendant has appealed from the judgment of the court sentencing him to a term of imprisonment of forty-five years to be suspended after the expiration of thirty-five years.

I

The defendant first claims that the state failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he shot the victim with the intent to kill him. We disagree.

Upon appellate review of a claim of evidentiary insufficiency, "[w]e first review the evidence presented at trial, construing it in the light most favorable to sustaining the facts expressly found by the trial court.... We then decide whether, upon the facts thus established and the inferences reasonably drawn therefrom, the trial court ... could reasonably have concluded that the cumulative effect of the evidence established the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt...." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Rasmussen, 225 Conn. 55, 73-74, 621 A.2d 728 (1993); State v. Lewis, 220 Conn. 602, 606, 600 A.2d 1330 (1991). "That the [trier of fact] might have drawn other possible inferences from [the evidence] is not sufficient to undermine its verdict, since proof of guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt, not beyond a possible doubt." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Medina, 228 Conn. 281, 304, 636 A.2d 351 (1994); State v. Sinclair, 197 Conn. 574, 578, 500 A.2d 539 (1985).

In order to establish that the defendant had the requisite intent to commit murder, the state bears the burden of proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant caused the death of another with the conscious objective to do so. General Statutes §§ 53a-3(11) [229 Conn. 333] and 53a-54a. That the defendant acted with the specific intent to kill may be proven solely by circumstantial evidence, as long as that evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had the conscious objective to take the life of another. State v. Rasmussen, supra, 225 Conn. at 74, 621 A.2d 728; State v. Zdanis, 182 Conn. 388, 396, 438 A.2d 696 (1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 1003, 101 S.Ct. 1715, 68 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981). The defendant's intent to kill, therefore, may be inferred from evidence of the defendant's use of a deadly weapon, the manner in which the weapon was used, and the nature and number of wounds inflicted. State v. Medina, supra, 228 Conn. at 303-304, 636 A.2d 351; State v. Rasmussen, supra, 225 Conn. at 74, 621 A.2d 728. "Intent is a question of fact, the determination of which should stand unless the conclusion drawn by the trier is an unreasonable one." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Medina, supra, 228 Conn. at 303, 636 A.2d 351; State v. Bzdyra, 165 Conn. 400, 403, 334 A.2d 917 (1973).

The evidence introduced at trial supported the facts found by the trial court and its determination that the defendant had intentionally killed the victim. The state presented testimony from which the court concluded that the defendant had fatally shot the victim in the head from close range with a .38 caliber revolver. There was also testimony that the defendant had asked the victim to take Clark home first, evidence from which the court could reasonably have inferred that the defendant had sought to exclude Clark as a possible witness to the shooting. In addition, the evidence supported the court's findings that the defendant had: (1) intentionally concealed a revolver on his person prior to using it to shoot the victim; (2) fled from the scene immediately after fatally wounding the victim; (3) hidden the murder weapon subsequent to the shooting to avoid its detection by the authorities; and (4) left his residence and the city of Bridgeport for several days after the fatal encounter. Furthermore, the court expressly found that the defendant's concealment of the murder weapon and his flight after the shooting reflected a consciousness of guilt. We conclude, therefore, that the evidence was sufficient to permit the three judge court to have found beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had intended to kill the victim.

II

The defendant also claims that the evidence he introduced at trial established, as a matter of law, his affirmative defenses of insanity and, in the alternative, extreme emotional disturbance. 7 We conclude that because the court's rejection of the defendant's affirmative defenses is reasonably supported by the evidence, his claim must fail.

In support of his affirmative defenses, the defendant presented the testimony of three psychiatrists and a clinical psychologist, as well as several family members who described the defendant's bizarre behavior and his mental and physical deterioration in the two years prior to the fatal shooting. Joseph More, a psychiatrist at the Whiting Forensic Institute (Whiting), 8 testified that the defendant suffered from chronic paranoid schizophrenia and that his beliefs were, at times, illogical, irrational and delusional. More further testified that the defendant had suffered from this illness for at least one year prior to the shooting, and that his mental condition was not the result of drug abuse. Ann Hoefer, a psychiatrist who had been retained by the state, agreed that the defendant suffered from chronic paranoid schizophrenia, that he had suffered from the illness for a considerable period of time prior to the shooting, and that he had experienced hallucinations and delusions that resulted in the development of a belief system that bore little or no relationship to reality. Hoefer stated that on the day of the shooting, the defendant had experienced a hallucination in which two men had restrained the defendant's girlfriend while the victim had sexually assaulted her, and that this hallucination had compelled the...

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