State v. Singleton

• Decision Date: 28 July 2009
• Docket Number: No. 17795.,17795.
• Citation: 292 Conn. 734,974 A.2d 679
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Ronald M. SINGLETON.
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court

974 A.2d 679

292 Conn. 734

STATE of Connecticut v. Ronald M. SINGLETON.

No. 17795.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued October 17, 2008.

Decided July 28, 2009.

Toni M. Smith-Rosario, senior assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Michael Dearington, state's attorney, and James G. Clark, senior assistant state's attorney, for the appellant (state).

Kent Drager, senior assistant public defender, for the appellee (defendant).

NORCOTT, KATZ, PALMER, VERTEFEUILLE and ZARELLA, Js.

ZARELLA, J.

The state appeals, on the granting of certification, from the judgment of the Appellate Court reversing the conviction of the defendant, Ronald M. Singleton, of manslaughter in the first degree.¹ The Appellate Court concluded that the trial court failed to instruct the jury properly on self-defense by removing from its consideration the disputed factual issue of whether the defendant had used deadly or nondeadly physical force during an altercation with the victim, Leonard Cobbs, that resulted in the victim's death. On appeal to this court, the state claims that the trial court correctly instructed that the defendant had used deadly physical force in defending himself against the victim because his claim of self-defense required a jury determination as to whether he was justified in killing the victim with a knife, thus making his theoretical use of nondeadly force during the preceding struggle irrelevant. The defendant responds that the instructions were improper because the use of deadly or nondeadly physical force during the struggle was a disputed factual issue for the jury to decide. The defendant alternatively² contends that the trial court improperly instructed the jury on the "initial aggressor" exception to the law of self-defense and on the offense of manslaughter in the first degree. We agree with the state that the court's instructions on self-defense were proper and reject the defendant's alternative grounds for affirmance. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Appellate Court.

The following facts, which the jury reasonably could have found, are set forth in the opinion of the Appellate Court. "The defendant and the victim ... had used illegal drugs together. The victim purchased these drugs with the defendant's money. The defendant was angry that the victim had failed to reimburse him for his share of the drugs. On December 18, 2002, the defendant attempted to find the victim to collect this debt and traveled to both West Haven and New Haven in order to locate him. He eventually found the victim in the Newhall area of West Haven.

"The two men spoke, and the defendant demanded that the victim pay him. The victim indicated that he did not have the money. The victim agreed to go to the defendant's apartment later that day to repay his debt of $180. After arriving at the apartment, the victim again informed the defendant that he did not have the money but offered to perform oral sex as an alternative means to settle the debt. The defendant rejected this proposal and became angry. The defendant then threatened the victim by stating: `Yo, I'll fuck you up.' At approximately 6:45 p.m., a physical altercation between the two men commenced. The victim and the defendant moved around the room while engaged in this physical altercation. During this encounter, the defendant stabbed the victim several times with both a knife and a screw-driver.³ The stab wound that caused the victim's death was seven and one-half inches deep, running from left to right, and was caused by a downward strike.⁴ This wound penetrated the chest wall, a portion of the left lung, the pericardium and the heart, and the diaphragm, terminating in the liver. The length, depth and size of the wound all were consistent with having been caused by the knife blade.

"The defendant did not call the police or paramedics immediately but, instead, disposed of the knife blade, which had broken off from the handle, and attempted to clean up the apartment. More than thirty minutes after the altercation had ended, at approximately 7:22 p.m., the defendant called his girlfriend, Victoria Salas. After arriving at the apartment, Salas attempted to revive the victim and called 911. At approximately 8:51 p.m., the defendant, using Salas' cellular telephone, called the building maintenance supervisor, Richard McCann. McCann helped the defendant retrieve the knife blade that he had thrown down the garbage chute. At 9:06 p.m., Salas telephoned the police department, and officers arrived more than two hours after the fight. The officers discovered blood throughout the defendant's apartment. The knife had the victim's blood on it. The screwdriver had DNA from the victim on the handle, blood from the defendant on the shaft, and a mixture of blood on the tip with the defendant's DNA as the major contributor. One of the detectives observed that the defendant was bleeding from the middle of his chest and that there was a bloodstain on his shirt approximately the size of a fifty cent piece. This wound later was determined to have been caused by the screwdriver.⁵

"The defendant raised the issue of self-defense at trial. The defense was premised on the defendant's version of the fight. The defendant testified that after he had asked the victim to repay him in the apartment, the victim became verbally aggressive and pulled out the screwdriver and threatened him. The victim then stabbed the defendant in the chest, and a struggle ensued. The defendant managed to disarm the victim, and they continued to struggle. Eventually, the victim grabbed the knife. The defendant managed to grab the victim's wrists, and, at some point, the knife went into the victim's body, ending the struggle."⁶ State v. Singleton, 97 Conn.App. 679, 680-82, 905 A.2d 725 (2006).

Both parties requested jury instructions on self-defense. In the state's request to charge, it proposed instructions referring to "deadly physical force" that were based on language in General Statutes § 53a-19 (a)⁷ and the instructions given in State v. Clark, 264 Conn. 723, 732, 826 A.2d 128 (2003), State v. Prioleau, 235 Conn. 274, 286-87, 664 A.2d 743 (1995), and State v. Skelly, 78 Conn.App. 513, 516-17, 827 A.2d 759, cert. denied, 266 Conn. 910, 832 A.2d 74 (2003), in which the victims had been fatally shot or stabbed.⁸ The defendant proposed instructions that did not refer to "deadly physical force" but, rather, to "reasonable physical force" and the use of "a dangerous instrumentality...."⁹ The trial court followed the state's approach and instructed the jury to consider whether the defendant's use of "deadly physical force" was justified under a theory of self-defense.¹⁰ It did not instruct on the use of nondeadly physical force, nor did it instruct that the jury was required to decide the degree of force that the defendant had used. The jury subsequently rejected the defendant's claim of self-defense and found him guilty of the lesser included offense of manslaughter in the first degree. Thereafter, the court rendered judgment, sentencing the defendant to a term of twenty years incarceration.

On appeal to the Appellate Court, the defendant claimed that the trial court's instructions were improper because the trial court had failed to submit to the jury the factual question of whether the defendant had used deadly or nondeadly force during his struggle with the victim prior to the stabbing. State v. Singleton, supra, 97 Conn.App. at 687, 905 A.2d 725. The Appellate Court agreed, concluding that "[t]he defendant testified that he [had] grabbed the victim's wrists and that during this physical encounter, the knife ended up wounding the victim. We cannot conclude, as a matter of law, that such actions constituted deadly physical force. The defendant was entitled to have the jury, rather than the court, make that factual determination.... Simply put, the jury did not have the opportunity to consider the factual issue of whether the defendant used deadly or nondeadly physical force." (Citation omitted.) Id., at 696, 905 A.2d 725. The Appellate Court further observed that, "[h]ad the jury been instructed to determine whether the defendant used nondeadly force, it could have found that the defendant's grabbing of the victim's wrists and the ensuing struggle constituted an appropriate level of force to repel the victim. The option never was afforded to the defendant.... [T]he improper instructions [thus] prejudiced the defendant by making it easier for the state to disprove the claim of self-defense." Id., at 697, 905 A.2d 725. The Appellate Court also concluded that the evidence was not "so overwhelming as to render the improper instruction[s] harmless" and ordered a new trial. Id., at 698, 905 A.2d 725. This appeal followed.

I

The state claims that the Appellate Court improperly reversed the defendant's conviction on the ground that the jury should have been instructed to consider the issue of nondeadly force. The state contends that there was no dispute that the defendant inflicted the fatal stab wound with the knife and that, once the jury determined that he had done so intentionally, all that was left to decide regarding his claim of self-defense was whether his actions were justified, thereby rendering irrelevant the issue of whether he had used deadly or nondeadly force during the struggle that preceded the stabbing. The defendant responds that the only intentional force he used was when he fought with the victim over the knife and that the actual stabbing was an unintended consequence of the altercation. Accordingly, he argues that the jury, in considering his claim of self-defense, was required to resolve the factual question of whether he used deadly or nondeadly force during the struggle. The defendant contends that the resolution of this factual question was crucial because it affected the state's burden of disproving his claim of self-defense by making it easier to refute a claim of...