State v. Rodriguez
| Decision Date | 12 November 1996 |
| Docket Number | No. 15339,15339 |
| Citation | 684 A.2d 1165,239 Conn. 235 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE of Connecticut v. Richard RODRIGUEZ. |
Carolyn K. Longstreth, Assistant State's Attorney, with whom were David P. Gold, Supervisory Assistant State's Attorney, and, on the brief, Michael Dearington, State's Attorney, for appellant (state).
Kent Drager, Assistant Public Defender, for appellee (defendant).
Before CALLAHAN, C.J., and BORDEN, BERDON, KATZ and McDONALD, JJ.
The defendant, Richard Rodriguez, was charged in a ten count information with crimes committed during the December 2, 1991 robbery of an elderly couple in their Hamden home. The defendant was convicted on all ten counts and sentenced to a total effective sentence of forty years. 1 He subsequently appealed from the judgment of conviction to this court, and we transferred the case to the Appellate Court pursuant to General Statutes § 51-199(c). 2 In the Appellate Court, he raised eight claims. The Appellate Court found that the trial court's denial of the defendant's motion to suppress certain evidence was improper and ordered a new trial. State v. Rodriguez, 39 Conn.App. 579, 665 A.2d 1357 (1995). We granted the state's petition for certification to consider whether the Appellate Court properly determined that the defendant's suppression motion should have been granted by the trial court and, if so, whether the Appellate Court properly ordered a new trial rather than remanding the case for further findings relative to the doctrine of inevitable discovery. State v. Rodriguez, 235 Conn. 939, 668 A.2d 377 (1996). We reverse the judgment of the Appellate Court.
The following facts are relevant to the determination of the issues presented in this case. On December 2, 1991, at approximately 5:45 p.m., the victims, Aimee and William Harris, heard a vehicle drive up the driveway to their home on Shepard Avenue in Hamden. Moments later, there was a knock at the door. Aimee Harris opened the door and two men forced their way into the house. Both men were wearing stocking masks and loose, baggy pants with elastic waistbands. One of the men grabbed Aimee Harris and forced her into a bathroom, where he tried unsuccessfully to remove her engagement ring, prompting her to remove the ring herself and hand it over. After also robbing Aimee Harris of cash and additional jewelry, that same man forced her into a dressing room and ordered her to lie down. He then bound her hands and feet with her husband's neckties. Meanwhile, the other man entered the living room, where William Harris, who was frail and quite ill, 3 was lying on a couch. That second robber displayed a handgun and forced William Harris into the dressing room and bound him, also with neckties. That man then took William Harris' wristwatch and his wallet, which contained several hundred dollars. In addition, a VCR and a Macy's bag were stolen from the Harris home. After the two men had left, William Harris was able to cut his wife's bonds with a pair of scissors that had been left in the dressing room. At 6:11 p.m., Aimee Harris called 9-1-1 and provided a general description of the perpetrators. At approximately 6:15 p.m., the Hamden police broadcast a report of an armed robbery at the Harris home involving two large Caucasian males wearing ski masks and baggy pants with elastic waistbands. The report also stated that one of the perpetrators had a mustache.
Shortly after the broadcast, Sergeant John Kennelly arrived at the victims' home, where he observed a red automobile parked on the side of the road, twenty to twenty-five feet from the victims' driveway. Upon approaching the vehicle, he noted that there was a woman in the driver's seat accompanied by two men, one standing outside the vehicle and the other seated in the rear of the car. Kennelly noted that the man in the back seat was a Hispanic male with dark hair and a mustache. He recognized the man standing alongside the vehicle as Daniel Garrison, a personal acquaintance, and he asked Garrison what he was doing at that location. Garrison responded that they had stopped there because he and his girlfriend, the driver, had been having an argument and she had stopped the car. Kennelly advised Garrison to move along as there recently had been trouble in the area. Kennelly then proceeded to drive up the driveway to the victims' home, where he interviewed the victims briefly. At that point, Kennelly learned from descriptions given by the victims that one of the perpetrators resembled Garrison and that the other had a mustache and had worn a brown leather coat.
Meanwhile, having learned of the radio report, Hamden police officer Gary Komoroski, alert for possible suspects in the Harris robbery, was patrolling Shepard Avenue. At approximately 6:36 p.m., Komoroski observed several vehicles in front of him swerving as if to avoid an obstruction in the road. As he approached the point of the apparent obstruction, he observed a mustached Hispanic male wearing a brown leather jacket and jeans, standing in the roadway and waving his arms frantically in an attempt to flag down passing vehicles. The Hispanic male was later identified as the defendant. At that point, the defendant was approximately 2.4 miles from the victims' home on Shepard Avenue and was walking southbound, away from the victims' residence.
After notifying the police dispatcher that he was leaving his vehicle to question the defendant, Komoroski approached the defendant and asked several questions to which the defendant gave responses that Komoroski considered suspicious. For example, when asked what he was doing, the defendant said, "just walking." When asked where he was going, the defendant replied that he was walking from New Haven to Hartford. 4 Komoroski then asked the defendant if he knew what town he was in and the defendant replied that he did not know. The defendant then told Komoroski that he had been in a car with a man and a woman and that they had started to fight and had let him out of the car. The defendant also stated that he did not know the names of the people with whom he had been in the vehicle.
Acting on the defendant's implausible and evasive responses, as well as the fact that the defendant had a mustache and was found walking away from the crime scene within a time frame that could have placed him at his present location after having participated in the crimes, Komoroski radioed to Kennelly to tell him that he might have one of the perpetrators of the robbery with him. Kennelly responded that he would be there shortly. Komoroski then returned to the defendant and asked him his name. The defendant responded that his name was Anthony Rodriguez. Komoroski then conducted a patdown search for weapons but found none.
Komoroski subsequently began to issue the defendant a summons for the infraction of reckless use of a highway by a pedestrian in violation of General Statutes § 53-182. 5 While filling out the summons, he asked the defendant for identification in order to confirm the defendant's identity and to complete the summons. Without checking his pockets, the defendant responded that he did not have any identification. Komoroski then asked the defendant either to check his pockets for identification or to empty his pockets to see if he had any identification. 6
The defendant immediately and voluntarily 7 emptied his pockets and extracted among other things, 8 a rubber glove and a tin foil packet containing baking soda. When asked by Komoroski about the purpose of these items, the defendant responded that he used them to freebase cocaine. Komoroski then arrested the defendant for possession of drug paraphernalia in violation of General Statutes § 21a-267 9 and placed the defendant in his police vehicle. Shortly thereafter, and approximately ten minutes after Komoroski had first seen the defendant, Kennelly arrived at the scene. After he arrived, Kennelly approached Komoroski's vehicle and immediately recognized the defendant, who was seated in the rear of the police vehicle, as one of the passengers in the red vehicle that had been parked near the victims' driveway.
Thereafter, the defendant, after he had orally waived his Miranda 10 rights, voluntarily spoke with Kennelly concerning his activities earlier that evening. The defendant confirmed that he had been in the red car near the victims' driveway. He stated that he had been there because he and the two others in the car had been using cocaine and had pulled over to the side of the road to do so. The defendant stated that he did not know the name of the other male in the car, but that the female's name was either Carol or Chris, 11 despite having previously told Komoroski that he did not know her name. A few minutes after his initial statement to Kennelly, the defendant further stated that at some point the female and the other male had left the vehicle and had walked up the victims' driveway. He said that they later returned down the driveway carrying a Macy's bag. After making this second statement, the defendant was transported to the victims' home for a show-up in order to allow the victims to attempt to identify him.
Upon arriving at the victims' home, the defendant stood on the front walkway illuminated by two lights. The victims observed the defendant from a window in their darkened house. This arrangement was made so that the defendant would be unable to see the victims. There was no evidence introduced at trial relevant to whether the victims, at the show-up, had been able to identify the defendant positively. 12 The defendant was then escorted back to the police vehicle where, although he had not been informed of the number, age or gender of the victims, he twice stated that the "old man" and the "old woman" could not identify him.
The following day, while in the Meriden courthouse detention area awaiting his arraignment, 1...
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