State v. Testa

• Decision Date: 30 December 1959
• Citation: 157 A.2d 235,147 Conn. 90
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Albert A. TESTA. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut

Page 235

157 A.2d 235

147 Conn. 90

STATE of Connecticut v. Albert A. TESTA.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

Dec. 30, 1959.

Richard C. Parmelee, Public Defender, Middletown, for appellant (defendant).

Bernard A. Kosicki, State's Atty., Middletown, for appellee (state).

Before BALDWIN, C. J., and KING, MURPHY, MELLITZ and SHEA, JJ.

MURPHY, Associate Justice.

The defendant was found guilty by the jury upon an information charging him with breaking and entering, larceny, possession of burglar tools in the night season and illegally having a weapon in a motor vehicle. At the trial, he was represented by private counsel who withdrew from the case following the taking of this appeal and the filing of the finding. Thereafter, the public defender undertook to process the appeal. Original counsel took no exceptions to the charge to the jury and claimed no error in the rulings on evidence. The assignments of error which have been stressed are directed to four paragraphs of the finding and the denial of the defendant's motion to set aside the verdict.

The trial of this case started on January 15, 1957, and the court concluded its charge to the jury late in the afternoon of January 23. Twenty-two witnesses testified for the state. The defendant presented the testimony of seven witnesses. He did not take the stand. There are 466 pages in the transcript of the evidence. We have reviewed the transcript in order to fully explore the errors assigned by the defendant.

The defendant was apprehended in front of his home in Bristol by a state trooper shortly before 6 a. m. on September 23, 1956, about twenty-six hours after the culmination of a wild chase by the trooper of an automobile allegedly operated by the defendant. The chase started in Cromwell about 3 o'clock on the morning of September 22 as the curiosity of the trooper was aroused when a car passed an intersection at which he had just arrived. The car turned into a side road and disappeared from sight. The trooper gave chase and finally came within ten feet of the car on route 3 in Rocky Hill. He had driven at speeds up to ninety miles an hour to do so. The pursued car was zigzagging on the highway, effectively preventing the trooper from passing or pulling abreast. The trooper with his spotlight and high-beam headlights observed the operator to be a short person with wide shoulders, a large nose, a high forehead and a bald spot. He was hatless. The pursuit continued at varying speeds into Wethersfield and Hartford, through red traffic lights on main and secondary roads and city streets. It ended on Cheshire Street in Hartford, where the car being pursued suddenly stopped and the driver disappeared in a driveway. The trooper stopped his car in back of the other and recognized the defendant as the operator as he passed through the light from the headlights of the trooper's vehicle.

The defendant contends that the court erred in including in the finding the three paragraphs dealing with the opportunity for identification of the operator as the defendant while the trooper's car was close behind the other in Rocky Hill and when the operator alighted in Hartford. The question was one of fact for the jury's determination. A finding in a jury case is not a statement of the facts which have been found proven; it is a statement of facts which, on the evidence, the jury might have found proven and which the parties claim were proven. Quednau v. Langrish, 144 Conn. 706, 708, 137 A.2d 544. There is no merit to the claim that the three paragraphs should not have been included in the finding.

The other paragraph in...