State v. Stevens

• Decision Date: 23 February 1993
• Docket Number: No. 14525,14525
• Citation: 620 A.2d 789,224 Conn. 730
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Frances I. STEVENS.

Page 789

620 A.2d 789

224 Conn. 730

STATE of Connecticut v. Frances I. STEVENS.

No. 14525.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Nov. 5, 1992.

Decided Feb. 23, 1993.

Katz, J., dissented and filed opinion in which Berdon, J., joined.

William W. Fisher, Jr., with whom was John J. O'Brien, Hartford, for appellant (defendant).

Leon F. Dalbec, Jr., Asst. State's Atty., with whom, on the brief, were C. Robert Satti, Sr., State's Atty., and Peter McShane, Asst. State's Atty., for appellee (state).

Before CALLAHAN, BORDEN, BERDON, KATZ and SANTANIELLO, JJ.

CALLAHAN, Associate Justice.

The defendant challenges the authority of a Connecticut police officer to conduct a consensual postarrest investigation in another state. The defendant, Frances I. Stevens, was charged in a two count information with assault in the second degree with a motor vehicle while intoxicated in violation of General Statutes § 53a-60d and with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor in violation of General Statutes § 14-227a. ¹ The trial court admitted into evidence the results of two sobriety tests that were administered in Rhode Island and of tests on two blood samples that were obtained from the defendant in Rhode Island. The evidence had been gathered at the request of Officer Louis Diamanti of the Stonington police department. Following the defendant's conviction by a jury on both counts, the trial court sentenced her to a term of imprisonment of one year, execution suspended, on the first count and a concurrent term of six months imprisonment, execution suspended, on the second count. The trial court also suspended the defendant's motor vehicle operator's license for one year and placed her on probation for a period of one year subject to certain conditions. ² The defendant appealed to the Appellate Court, which affirmed the trial court's judgment. State v. Stevens, 26 Conn.App. 805, 603 A.2d 1203 (1992). We granted the defendant's petition for certification to appeal to this court. ³ We now affirm the judgment of the Appellate Court.

The Appellate Court accurately set forth the facts relevant to this appeal. "On January 31, 1990, the defendant, a Rhode Island resident, was driving her car accompanied by a dinner companion, Rose Buck, in the Pawcatuck section of Stonington at about 11 p.m. on a poorly lighted, narrow hilly road. The defendant had been drinking wine at a restaurant earlier that evening with Buck and another friend. Behind the defendant's car, Keith Beebe, an off duty Stonington police officer, was driving with a friend, Amos Steadman. The defendant's car rounded a curve on the two lane road and Beebe lost sight of it. As he reached the other end of the curve, he saw that the defendant's car had gone off the road and crashed into a tree. The car's front end was heavily damaged.

"While Steadman went to summon help, Beebe tried unsuccessfully to open the car doors as Buck screamed in pain. While talking with the defendant, Beebe noticed that her eyes were bloodshot and glassy, her speech slurred. He smelled alcohol on her breath, and she told him she had been drinking wine that evening. At about 11:07 p.m., two on duty Stonington police officers, Randy Holt and Louis Diamanti, arrived. They also spoke with the defendant, smelled alcohol on her breath, noticed her glassy eyes and concluded, as did Beebe, that she was under the influence of alcohol. The defendant also told Diamanti that she had been drinking wine that evening.

"At about 11:15 p.m., an ambulance came to take the women to the Westerly Hospital in Westerly, Rhode Island, the closest medical facility. ⁴ Buck had suffered serious chest and rib injuries, and internal bleeding. She underwent surgery for removal of her spleen and remained in intensive care for three weeks thereafter. The defendant, after being fitted with a neck brace, was removed from the car and placed in an ambulance. Before the ambulance left, however, Diamanti entered the vehicle and conducted a horizontal gaze nystagmus test ⁵ to determine if the defendant was intoxicated. Because the results, along with his prior observations, led him to conclude that she was intoxicated, he then placed her under arrest at about 11:30 p.m. as she lay on a stretcher in the ambulance, waiting to leave for the hospital. ⁶

"Diamanti then rode to the hospital in the ambulance with the defendant. In the emergency room, a doctor examined her and told Diamanti she was suffering from chest bruises. At 12:07 a.m. on February 1, 1990, after the examination was completed, Diamanti gave the defendant Miranda ⁷ warnings. She was coherent and sitting upright in a bed at this time. Diamanti then asked if he could perform two more sobriety tests, and the defendant agreed. ⁸ He also read her Connecticut's implied consent law ⁹ and offered her the chance to contact an attorney, which she chose not to do. When he requested that she submit to two blood tests, she voluntarily consented. At 1 a.m. and again at 1:30 a.m., blood was taken by the defendant's attending doctor, a physician licensed by the state of Connecticut. Diamanti then issued the defendant a summons. After the blood was sealed and placed in a kit Diamanti had brought from Stonington, he took it back to Connecticut for laboratory analysis. The first sample showed a blood alcohol level of .13; the second disclosed a .12 level. At trial, Sanders F. Hawkins, the state's chief toxicologist, estimated that at the time of the collision, the defendant's blood alcohol level was between .14 and .17." State v. Stevens, supra, 26 Conn.App. at 807-809, 603 A.2d 1203.

The defendant does not challenge the Appellate Court's conclusion that "Diamanti had lawfully arrested the defendant at the accident scene pursuant to General Statutes § 14-227a." ¹⁰ Id. at 811, 603 A.2d 1203. The defendant concedes, moreover, that the results of the tests on the blood that the officer obtained in Rhode Island would have been admissible if the blood had been taken at either of the more distant Connecticut hospitals rather than at the Rhode Island hospital to which she was transported. The defendant, nonetheless, challenges the conclusion of the Appellate Court that the results of the tests of the two blood samples were properly admitted into evidence by the trial court. Specifically, she argues that Diamanti had no authority to act as a police officer outside his territorial jurisdiction. To attack the authority of Diamanti to gather evidence in Rhode Island, the defendant relies upon § 14-227b (b). ¹¹ That subsection designates a "police officer" as the one who shall request a chemical analysis after advising an arrestee of the choices available under the "implied consent" statute and who also must advise the arrestee of the right to contact an attorney and who must make the appropriate related notations upon the records of the police department. ¹² The defendant strictly interprets the term "police officer" and maintains that because Diamanti lacked any official capacity to conduct a postarrest investigation outside of his territorial jurisdiction he was not acting as a "police officer" when he advised the defendant and obtained samples of her blood.

"Although we recognize the fundamental principle that criminal statutes are to be construed strictly, 'it is equally fundamental that the rule of strict construction does not require an interpretation which frustrates an evident legislative intent.' " State v. Dolphin, 203 Conn. 506, 523-24, 525 A.2d 509 (1987), quoting State v. Ellis, 197 Conn. 436, 445, 497 A.2d 974 (1985). "It is also a rule of statutory construction that those who promulgate statutes or rules do not intend to promulgate statutes or rules that lead to absurd consequences or bizarre results." State v. Siano, 216 Conn. 273, 278, 579 A.2d 79 (1990), and cases cited therein. We, therefore, reject the defendant's construction of the statute because it leads to the absurd result that mere fortuity would bar the progress of the criminal prosecution against her in any jurisdiction despite the overwhelming evidence of the existence of probable cause to believe that she had committed serious violations of the law.

Because the violations occurred in Connecticut, the courts of Rhode Island would have had no jurisdiction over the defendant's offenses. ¹³ Gilbert v. Steadman, 1 Root 403 (1792); A. Spinella, Connecticut Criminal Procedure (1985) § 3A, pp. 18-19. The extent of a sovereignty's jurisdiction to enforce its civil and criminal laws has long been viewed as being coterminous with its territory. See Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714, 722, 24 L.Ed. 565 (1878). ¹⁴ "It is a general rule of universal acceptation that one State or sovereignty cannot enforce the penal laws of another, nor punish offenses committed in and against another State or sovereignty." State v. Volpe, 113 Conn. 288, 294, 155 A. 223 (1931); Taintor v. Taylor, 36 Conn. 242, 252-53 (1869); see also The Antelope, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 337, 344, 6 L.Ed. 268 (1825) (Marshall, C.J., with, inter alios, Story, J.); J. Story, Conflict of Laws (1834) § 620; 2 Z. Swift, A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut (1796) p. 393. If, therefore, the defendant cannot be effectively prosecuted in Connecticut, she cannot be prosecuted at all.

Even substantive rights based on foreign laws, however, have been given extraterritorial effect. Broderick v. McGuire, 119 Conn. 83, 101-102, 174 A. 314 (1934). Courts have also held that even a criminal statute may have extraterritorial effect. See, e.g., Strassheim v. Daily, 221 U.S. 280, 284, 31 S.Ct. 558, 560, 55 L.Ed. 735 (1910) (upholding prosecution in Michigan for acts of bribery and obtaining public money under false pretenses by defendant in Illinois, offenses by their nature peculiarly injurious to the state of Michigan); see also People v. Tyler, 7 Mich. 161, 221 (1859) ("every sovereignty has the right, subject to certain...