State v. Revels
| Decision Date | 30 September 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. 19170.,19170. |
| Citation | 99 A.3d 1130,313 Conn. 762 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE of Connecticut v. Dashawn James REVELS. |
James B. Streeto, assistant public defender, for the appellant (defendant).
Mitchell S. Brody, senior assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Michael L. Regan, state's attorney, and David J. Smith, senior assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).
Hope C. Seeley, Danielson, filed a brief for the Innocence Project as amicus curiae.
Lisa J. Steele filed a brief for the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association et al. as amici curiae.
ROGERS, C.J., and PALMER, ZARELLA, EVELEIGH, McDONALD, ESPINOSA and VERTEFEUILLE, Js.
The defendant, Dashawn James Revels, appeals1 from his judgment of conviction, following a jury trial, of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a–54a. On appeal, the defendant raises the following four claims: (1) the trial court improperly denied his motion to suppress the pretrial and in-court2 identifications of the defendant because the court concluded that the one-on-one showup identification procedure was not unnecessarily suggestive, and, even assuming that it was, the identification nonetheless was reliable; (2) the trial court improperly denied the defendant's motion to have the jury view the crime scene; (3) the state did not disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant acted in self-defense; and (4) the trial court improperly instructed the jury that an “initial aggressor” includes a person who appeared to threaten the imminent use of physical force. We affirm the judgment of conviction, addressing each of the defendant's claims in turn.
The jury could have found the following relevant facts. On the night of March 31, 2009, sometime shortly before 11 p.m., the victim, Bryan Davila, was walking on Crystal Avenue, near the Thames River Apartments, a three building complex in New London (apartment complex). A group of approximately eight to nine men, including the defendant, were walking closely behind him. The victim crossed over from Crystal Avenue to State Pier Road. Most of the men in the group continued walking toward a nearby footbridge to a nearby housing project. Two men in the group, however, one of whom was the defendant, remained near the victim. The defendant then ran toward the victim, who was on the sidewalk on State Pier Road in front of a building housing an electrical supply company. When the victim attempted to run, the defendant fired numerous shots at the victim, who fell to the ground. The defendant then fled the scene on foot.
Immediately after he was shot, the victim called 911. He was unable to communicate with the dispatcher, so she triangulated his location to the closest cell phone tower. She then notified the New London Police Department of the call and the likely location of the victim. When police reported to the area, they found the victim lying face up on the sidewalk, breathing, but unable to communicate, with a nine millimeter semiautomatic pistol near his right hand and his cell phone on the ground nearby, with the call to the 911 dispatcher still connected. After securing the area, some officers remained to assist emergency medical services as they provided treatment to the victim, while others were sent to canvass the neighborhood. The victim was subsequently taken by ambulance to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 11:37 p.m. The autopsy later revealed that the victim bled to death from gunshot wounds, one in the abdomen, another in the left buttock, and a grazing wound near the left shoulder blade. Two .22 caliber bullets were recovered from the victim's body. Eight spent .22 caliber shell casings were discovered at the scene. A single, nine millimeter cartridge case was removed from the chamber of the nine millimeter pistol.
While canvassing the area of the apartment complex, Officer Justin Clachrie was approached by two women, Fidelia Carrillo and her younger sister. Because Carrillo spoke only Spanish, her younger sister translated for her. Carrillo explained to Clachrie that she had seen the shooting from her apartment windows on the fifth floor of 40–46 Crystal Avenue, a building in the apartment complex. Although the building was located approximately 265 feet away from where the victim's body was found, Carrillo had been able to see that the shooter was a black male with braided hair, wearing a green camouflage jacket, a red baseball cap, dark pants and dark tennis shoes. Shortly after Clachrie broadcast the description of the suspected shooter over the radio, he received news that other officers had located a suspect matching that description. He then asked Carrillo if she and her sister would accompany him to view the suspect, which Carrillo agreed to do.
Clachrie drove Carrillo and her sister to Home Street in New London, where officers had apprehended the defendant. When Clachrie pulled up at approximately 11:40 p.m., the defendant was standing in the middle of the road, handcuffed and surrounded by uniformed police officers. Clachrie directed the spotlight on his cruiser toward the suspect, at which point Carrillo, with no prompting from Clachrie, exclaimed in Spanish, “That's him!” The defendant was wearing a camouflage jacket, a red cap, and dark pants.
The police had apprehended and detained a second suspect, Eric Caple, in the same general vicinity as the defendant. After she had identified the defendant, they brought Caple forward to show him to Carrillo. Although Carrillo identified Caple as being present at the murder scene, she hesitated in making the identification and did not evince the same level of “excitement” that she had displayed when identifying the defendant.
The defendant was taken to the New London Police Department, where his hands and clothes were tested for gunshot residue,3 and he was interviewed twice by Detective Richard Curcuro. During the first interview, after he was advised of his rights, the defendant denied being in the area of the shooting. When Curcuro interviewed the defendant for a second time, however, the defendant admitted to being present at the crime scene after being shown still photographs of him taken from video surveillance footage from cameras at one of the buildings in the apartment complex. The defendant admitted that outside the apartment complex, his group had a confrontation with a Hispanic man. The Hispanic male then pulled out a gun and fired shots at the defendant's group. Finally, the defendant told Curcuro that he had fired back at the victim, and then had discarded the gun by throwing it down an embankment near the footbridge as he ran away.4
In a substitute information, the defendant was charged with murder in violation of § 53a–54a. Following his conviction, the defendant's subsequent motions for a new trial and a judgment of acquittal were denied. This appeal followed.
We first address the defendant's claim that the trial court improperly denied his motion to suppress both the pretrial and in-court identifications. The defendant claims that both identifications should have been precluded because the one-on-one showup identification procedure was unnecessarily suggestive without any exigency that supported a need for an immediate identification, and because the identification was unreliable. Assuming without deciding that the identification procedure was suggestive, we conclude that it was not unnecessarily so because the procedure was justified by the need for an immediate identification. Accordingly, we affirm the ruling of the trial court denying the defendant's motion to suppress.5
The following additional facts are relevant to our resolution of this claim. During trial, the defendant moved to suppress Carrillo's identification of him, on the bases that the one-on-one showup procedure was unnecessarily suggestive, and that, viewed under the totality of the circumstances, the identification was unreliable. The trial court held a hearing on the motion to suppress, during which the court heard testimony from Clachrie and Carrillo, and from Officer Roger Newton, who was present both at the crime scene and the showup identification. Clachrie's testimony closely mirrored the testimony he offered at trial, with the exception that he mistakenly identified a legal intern seated at defense counsel's table as the defendant.
Carrillo was questioned extensively during the suppression hearing regarding what she witnessed on the night of the shooting. She testified that on that night, she was in her fifth floor apartment at 40–46 Crystal Avenue. At approximately 11 p.m., she heard a disturbance outside, so she looked out her kitchen window. She saw the victim walking on Crystal Avenue, and a group of men walking on the other side of the street. She observed the victim walk toward State Pier Road, while the group of men walked toward a footbridge that leads to a housing project. Two of the men in the group, however, then turned around and ran back to the victim, who was now on the sidewalk on State Pier Road, standing in front of an electrical supply company. Carrillo testified that her view from the kitchen window was unobstructed and the two men were standing directly under a street light. The victim tried to run and then Carrillo heard approximately six gunshots. At the same time that she heard the gunshots, Carrillo could see flashes emanating from the hand of one of the two men who had run toward the victim. Although she could not see a gun, she inferred from the sounds and the flashes that the man had shot the victim. Carrillo could see that the shooter was black, that his hair was braided, and that he was wearing a red cap, a green camouflage jacket, dark pants and dark tennis shoes.
Carrillo testified during the suppression hearing that during the one-on-one showup procedure, she had identified the defendant on the basis of the clothing he was...
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