State v. Riddick

• Decision Date: 02 January 2001
• Docket Number: (AC 20519)
• Citation: 763 A.2d 1062,61 Conn. App. 275
• Court: Connecticut Court of Appeals
• Parties: STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. JEFFREY RIDDICK

61 Conn. App. 275

763 A.2d 1062

STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. JEFFREY RIDDICK

(AC 20519)

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued September 27, 2000.

Officially released January 2, 2001.

Lavery, C. J., and Spear and Mihalakos, JS. James B. Streeto, deputy assistant public defender, for the appellant (defendant).

Robert J. Scheinblum, assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were John A. Connelly, state's attorney, and Maureen Keegan, supervisory assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).

Opinion

MIHALAKOS, J.

The defendant, Jeffrey Riddick, appeals from the judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a¹ and risk of injury to a child in violation of General Statutes § 53-21 (1).² The defendant claims that the trial court improperly (1) denied his motion for additional equipment to assist him with his hearing impairment during the trial, (2) denied his motion to suppress his confession, (3) denied his motion in limine regarding a bloodstained towel that was introduced into evidence, (4) allowed his confession into evidence because it was inherently unreliable and (5) instructed the jury that it could consider the circumstances under which the defendant's statement was taken, including a lack of corroboration, the failure to record the statement electronically, and the defendant's physical and mental state. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The jury reasonably could have found the following facts. On the morning of December 25, 1996, the victim, Gertrude Teasley, was discovered by her son, Lacy Lewis, on the floor of her apartment bludgeoned and stabbed about the head and neck. When Lewis discovered the victim, the victim's two year old child was standing over her, crying. Lewis summoned the authorities.

Arkady Katsnelson, the state medical examiner, performed an autopsy on the victim's body. The victim was struck on the head at least seven times with a blunt object such as a brick. The victim also was stabbed in the neck twelve times after she was unconscious. Defensive wounds were found on the victim's hands.

The police determined that the defendant was the last person to see the victim alive. At about 4 p.m. on Christmas day, Sergeant Neil O'Leary, Lieutenant Michael Ricci and Sergeant Gary Pelosi of the Waterbury police department arrived at the apartment of the defendant's mother-in-law and asked to see the defendant. The defendant agreed to accompany the officers to the police station to discuss the death of the victim.

At about 4:30 p.m., Ricci and Pelosi brought the defendant into an interview room at the police station and asked him if he was willing to discuss the victim's death. The defendant agreed. Prior to questioning, Ricci had the defendant read the Miranda³ card aloud.

At about 9:30 p.m., the defendant informed Ricci that he wanted to "get something off his chest" and, thereafter, admitted that he had killed the victim. The defendant provided the officers with accurate details of the crime. Ricci then asked the defendant if he would put his confession in writing. The defendant agreed, and Ricci had him read the Miranda rights aloud again and sign a waiver of those rights.

The defendant's confession was read into evidence at trial. From that reading, the jury could have found that the defendant went to visit the victim and her two year old daughter at about 7 p.m. on December 23, 1996. The defendant spoke with the victim for some time. After the two year old child fell asleep on the sofa, the victim gave the defendant ten dollars and asked him to go out and buy her some crack cocaine. The defendant returned with the crack cocaine, but neither the victim nor the defendant was successful in lighting it. The victim thereafter became angry and began yelling at and grabbing the defendant. The defendant then picked up a brick and hit the victim in the head several times. The victim pulled a knife out from under a couch cushion. The defendant took the knife away from the victim and stabbed her in the throat and neck. The defendant then took a towel from the bathroom and attempted to wipe the victim's blood off the walls. He wrapped the brick that he had used to bludgeon the victim in the bloody towel and left the apartment.

Shortly before midnight on December 25, 1996, the defendant was placed under arrest. After being arrested, the defendant led the police officers to the empty lot in which he had left the bloody brick and to the sewer into which he had thrown the bloody towel. Blood samples were taken from the victim, the bloody brick and the bloody towel. Not enough DNA was gathered from the towel for testing. The DNA from the bloody brick and the victim, however, matched.

At trial, Henry Lee, chief criminalist for the state of Connecticut and director of the state police forensic laboratory, established a sequence of events from the physical evidence left at the victim's apartment. According to Lee's testimony, the attack occurred in multiple locations around the apartment.

The defendant first claims that the court improperly denied his motion for additional listening equipment to assist him during the trial. We disagree.

The defendant is hearing impaired and required the aid of a listening device to participate in his trial. Prior to the trial's commencement, a hearing was held during which the court, Iannotti, J., found that the defendant was hearing impaired and, therefore, entitled to a mechanical listening aid. The defendant was allowed to choose between the FM Wireless system or the CART system. After trying both systems, the defendant chose the CART system.

CART is a computer assisted simultaneous transcription system. The defendant was provided with a monitor on which he could read the transcription of everything that was said during his trial. The text of the transcription scrolled up the screen as the trial progressed.

The defendant also raised this claim before the trial court, Gill, J., in a motion for additional equipment that he had filed during jury selection. The defense requested that a Brauser system be obtained to work in conjunction with the CART system. A Brauser system would have allowed the defendant to stop the scrolling text on his monitor at any time so that he could read more slowly. It also would have allowed him to back up and read text that already had scrolled past. The defendant argued that this was necessary because he was having difficulty keeping up with the speed of the scrolling. The court, Gill, J., found that the CART system was adequate and that there was no need for a Brauser system.⁴ Neither this court nor our Supreme Court has addressed the legal standard applicable to a hearing impaired person's right to an interpreter or to equipment. Our Supreme Court, however, has "stated in dictum that [t]he federal due process clause requires continuous translations at trial when a non-English speaking defendant cannot understand or appreciate the proceedings." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Munoz, 233 Conn. 106, 132, 659 A.2d 683 (1995). "A hearing-impaired defendant's right to due process may be implicated in the same way that the absence of an interpreter for a non-English speaking defendant's right may be implicated: `A defendant who cannot hear is analogous to a defendant who cannot understand English, and a severely hearing-impaired defendant cannot be tried without adopting reasonable measures to accommodate his or her disability.'" People v. James, 937 P.2d 781, 783 (Colo. App. 1996). "A number of courts have held, and we agree, that hearing-impaired defendants have a constitutional right to hearing assistance and an appropriate accommodation of that right. And, once a trial court has identified that a hearing-impaired defendant requires some assistance, the trial court has broad discretion in accommodating the defendant's right to that assistance." Id.

In reviewing whether the trial court abused its discretion, the issue "is not whether we would reach the same conclusion in the exercise of our own judgment, but only whether the trial court acted reasonably." State v. Deleon, 230 Conn. 351, 363, 645 A.2d 518 (1994). "Discretion means a legal discretion, to be exercised in conformity with the spirit of the law and in a manner to subserve and not to impede or defeat the ends of substantial justice." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Whalen v. Ives, 37 Conn. App. 7, 21, 654 A.2d 798, cert. denied, 233 Conn. 905, 657 A.2d 645 (1995). "In determining whether the trial court abused its discretion, this court must make every reasonable presumption in favor of its action." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Walton v. New Hartford, 223 Conn. 155, 169, 612 A.2d 1153 (1992).

In the present case, the court found the defendant to be hearing impaired and, as an accommodation, provided him with the CART transcription system for use during the trial. The court acted within its broad discretion in ascertaining that the Brauser system was not required. We find no abuse of discretion by the court.

The defendant also raises the unpreserved claim that the court violated his right to a fair trial by not complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq. We disagree. "[A] defendant can prevail on a claim of constitutional error not preserved at trial only if all of the following conditions are met: (1) the record is adequate to review the alleged claim of error; (2) the claim is of constitutional magnitude alleging the violation of a fundamental right; (3) the alleged constitutional violation clearly exists and clearly deprived the defendant of a fair trial; and (4) if subject to harmless error analysis, the state has failed to demonstrate harmlessness of the alleged constitutional violation beyond a reasonable doubt." (Emphasis in original.) State v. Golding, 213 Conn. 233, 239-40, 567 A.2d 823 (1989).

Although the...