State v. Piorkowski

• Decision Date: 19 March 1996
• Docket Number: No. 15259,15259
• Citation: 236 Conn. 388,672 A.2d 921
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Michael PIORKOWSKI.

Page 921

672 A.2d 921

236 Conn. 388

STATE of Connecticut v. Michael PIORKOWSKI.

No. 15259.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Oct. 31, 1995.

Decided March 19, 1996.

Elizabeth M. Inkster, Assistant Public Defender, with whom, on the brief, was Joseph G. Bruckmann, Public Defender, for appellant (defendant).

Judith M. Rossi, Assistant State's Attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Eugene J. Callahan, State's Attorney, and James Bernardi, Assistant State's Attorney, for appellee (state).

Before PETERS, C.J., and BORDEN, BERDON, NORCOTT and KATZ, JJ.

BORDEN, Associate Justice.

The dispositive issue in this certified appeal is whether the defendant's conditional plea of nolo contendere in the trial court, to the crime of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a(a), ¹ presents an appropriate occasion for appellate review of his substantive claims pursuant to Practice Book § 4003(b). ² The defendant, Michael Piorkowski, appeals ³ from the judgment of the Appellate Court which declined to review his claims regarding the admissibility of certain statements that he had made to the police, ⁴ and remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings. State v. Piorkowski, 37 Conn.App. 252, 656 A.2d 1046 (1995). The defendant contends that the Appellate Court improperly concluded that his claims were not reviewable under General Statutes § 54-94a, ⁵ Practice Book § 4003 or the appellate supervisory power over the administration of justice. We conclude that the defendant's claims: (1) are not reviewable under General Statutes § 54-94a; and (2) are reviewable under Practice Book § 4003(b). ⁶ Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Appellate Court.

The following facts and procedural history are undisputed. On October 21, 1992, the defendant was arrested for the murder of Tim Lee. He moved to suppress two statements that he had made to the police, one on October 21, 1992, and the other on October 22, 1992. With respect to the October 21 statement, the defendant asserted in his motion that it was: (1) obtained without a valid waiver of his Miranda ⁷ rights; and (2) a product of a violation of his right to a prompt arraignment under General Statutes §§ 54-1c and 54-1g. ⁸ With respect to the October 22 statement, the defendant asserted that it was: (1) a fruit of his illegal interrogation on October 21; and (2) independently inadmissible because it was the product of a violation of his right to counsel under article first, § 8, of the Connecticut constitution ⁹ that had attached at his arraignment on October 21.

Following an evidentiary hearing on the defendant's motion to suppress, the trial court found the following facts. After having been arrested by the Norwalk police department on drug charges in early 1992, the defendant became a confidential informant for the Norwalk police, working primarily with Detective James Saraceni. The defendant informed the police that Lee was a marijuana dealer, but in September, 1992, when Saraceni attempted to use the defendant in an investigation of Lee, the defendant told Saraceni that Lee had left town.

On approximately October 10, 1992, Lee's body was discovered in New Jersey. In the early morning of October 20, 1992, Norwalk Detective Robert DeLallo learned that Christine Thompson, a friend of Lee, had given New Jersey police a statement implicating the defendant in Lee's murder. At approximately 7:30 a.m. on October 20, DeLallo and other officers located the defendant in Norwalk and, during a frisk of the defendant for weapons, found drugs and drug paraphernalia on his person. The police arrested the defendant on drug charges, orally advised him of his Miranda rights, and brought him to the Norwalk police station at approximately 8 a.m.

The defendant was not presented in court on the drug charges on October 20, but was held in the police department lockup while the police continued to investigate Lee's murder. At approximately 11 p.m., on October 20, the police secured an arrest warrant charging the defendant with Lee's murder. At approximately midnight on October 21, Saraceni and Detective Nelson Alicia awakened the defendant in his lockup cell. The defendant indicated that he wanted to talk with Saraceni, after which the detectives took the defendant to an interview room, where Saraceni informed him that the police had an arrest warrant for the defendant on a murder charge. Saraceni told the defendant that he would talk to him only after giving him the Miranda warnings and having him fill out a waiver of rights form. Saraceni read the waiver of rights form to the defendant, who did not sign the form. Saraceni then interrogated the defendant in Alicia's presence. During the interrogation, the defendant spoke freely, giving a detailed statement implicating himself in Lee's murder.

The detectives concluded their interrogation of the defendant at approximately 2 a.m on October 21, 1992. Later that day, approximately twenty-six hours after his arrest on the drug charges, the defendant was arraigned in geographical area number twenty of the Superior Court on both the drug and murder charges; that court had been in session on October 20. A public defender was appointed to represent the defendant on both charges.

At approximately 10:30 p.m. on October 21, DeLallo and Detective Charles Chrzanowski went to the home of Denise Van Valen, with whom the defendant lived, to ascertain whether she had any information regarding the murder of Lee. While they were in Van Valen's home, the defendant called her from the Bridgeport correctional center. Van Valen told the defendant that the detectives were there, and asked him if he wanted to talk to DeLallo. The defendant indicated that he did, and she handed the telephone to DeLallo. When the defendant asked DeLallo to come to the jail to speak to him, DeLallo told the defendant that he would try to see him at the jail the next day. When Van Valen visited the defendant at the jail on October 22, she learned that DeLallo had not yet visited the defendant. Later that day Van Valen called DeLallo and asked him why he had not yet visited the defendant.

Although DeLallo was aware that the defendant was represented by an attorney on the murder charge, no call was placed to the public defender assigned to the defendant's case. After Van Valen's call to him on October 22, DeLallo spoke to assistant state's attorney James Bernardi and state's attorney's inspector Phil O'Grady, in order to determine whether he could appropriately interview the defendant at the jail. Bernardi and O'Grady advised DeLallo that, if the defendant had initiated the contact with him and had requested to speak with him, it was permissible to interview him regarding the murder charge. Having obtained approval from the state's attorney's office, DeLallo and Alicia visited the defendant at the jail on the evening of October 22. Neither the detectives nor the state's attorney's office informed the defendant's counsel of the detectives' intention to interview the defendant. The detectives read him a Miranda rights and waiver form, which he initialed and signed. They then interviewed him about the Lee murder, and he gave another oral statement.

With respect to the defendant's motion to suppress his statements to the police, the trial court concluded that: (1) although the defendant had not signed a waiver of rights form, he had nonetheless knowingly and intelligently waived his Miranda rights prior to making a statement on October 21; (2) the defendant had been timely arraigned because §§ 54-1c and 54-1g require only that a suspect be arraigned no later than the day following his arrest; ¹⁰ (3) because the defendant had validly waived his Miranda rights on October 21, his statement that day had not rendered his statement on October 22 invalid; and (4) the defendant's statement on October 22 did not violate his right to counsel under article first, § 8, of the state constitution because our cases do not require that counsel be present when a suspect waives his right to counsel. ¹¹

Having rejected the defendant's claims for suppression of both his October 21 and October 22 statements, the trial court denied the defendant's motion to suppress. Thereafter, the state and the defendant appeared before the trial court, and the defendant entered a conditional plea of nolo contendere to the charge of murder pursuant to § 54-94a. See footnote 5. Both the state and the defendant urged the trial court to accept the conditional plea. The state and the defendant shared certain common understandings: (1) the defendant's plea was being entered pursuant to § 54-94a, and would be reviewed by this court pursuant either to that statute or to our supervisory power, as articulated in State v. Kelley, 206 Conn. 323, 335-36, 537 A.2d 483 (1988), and State v. Chung, 202 Conn. 39, 44, 519 A.2d 1175 (1987); (2) the record was adequate for appellate review of the suppression issues that the defendant intended to raise on appeal; (3) all of the defendant's claims concerned his statements given on October 21 and 22, 1992; (4) the defendant's claims could otherwise only be tested by a full trial, which would be burdensome because, Lee's body having been discovered in New Jersey, the state intended to call many out-of-state witnesses; and (5) because the defendant would be challenging two confessions, if he were successful on appeal with respect to either confession, the reviewing court would remand the case to the trial court for further proceedings, rather than determine whether the admissibility of one of the confessions rendered the inadmissibility of the other confession harmless. ¹²

Following this recitation of understandings and expectations, the trial court expressed some reservation regarding whether § 54-94a, which requires that the statement sought to be suppressed have been involuntary; see footnote 5; encompassed the defendant's conditional plea and appeal in ...