State v. Torres
| Decision Date | 10 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | SC 20306 |
| Citation | 343 Conn. 208,273 A.3d 163 |
| Parties | STATE of Connecticut v. Quavon TORRES |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
Jennifer B. Smith, for the appellant (defendant).
Laurie N. Feldman, Deputy assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Patrick J. Griffin, state's attorney, Seth R. Garbarsky, senior assistant state's attorney, and Sean P. McGuinness, assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).
Robinson, C. J., and McDonald, D'Auria, Mullins, Kahn, Ecker and Keller, Js.*
The defendant, Quavon Torres, appeals from the judgment of the trial court convicting him of the crimes of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a (a) and carrying a pistol without a permit in violation of General Statutes § 29-35. The defendant's principal claim is that the trial court improperly excluded evidence of an assault of one of the state's witnesses, Tasia Milton. The defendant also claims that the trial court improperly prevented him from impeaching another state's witness, Teresa Jones, with evidence of certain previous criminal offenses. We disagree with both of these claims and, accordingly, affirm the judgment of the trial court.
The jury reasonably could have found the following facts. On the evening of July 23, 2012, the defendant, Freddy Pickette, and Marcus Lloyd were socializing with the defendant's cousin, Milton, and the defendant's sister, Amber Torres, in a third floor apartment located at 543 Orchard Street in New Haven. At around 7 p.m. that evening, Lloyd called the victim, Donald Bradley, and asked him for a ride to a housing project in New Haven. Shortly thereafter, the victim parked his car outside of a CVS Pharmacy (CVS) located across the street from the apartment, got out of the driver's seat, and went inside of the store. Moments later, the defendant, Pickette, and Lloyd walked through the parking lot and got into the victim's car. Pickette sat in the front passenger seat, Lloyd sat in the rear passenger seat, and the defendant sat in the rear seat on the driver's side of the car.
A short time later, the victim exited the store and got back into the driver's seat, but he did not initially notice that the defendant was the person sitting behind him. Pickette then asked the victim to stop at a Burger King located a short distance to the east along Whalley Avenue. When they got to the drive-through, the victim noticed that the defendant was in the car and told him to get out. When the defendant refused, the victim got out of the driver's seat, walked around to the passenger side of the car, opened one of the doors, and leaned inside in order to retrieve a baseball bat from under a seat. In response, the defendant got out of the car, walked around the trunk toward the passenger side, and fatally shot the victim four times.
The defendant, Pickette, and Lloyd fled the scene of the shooting, heading back west along Whalley Avenue and then up Orchard Street toward the third floor apartment where they had previously been socializing. The defendant and Lloyd ran into the apartment, where they once again encountered Milton and Amber Torres. Pickette split off from the others, crossed Orchard Street, ran through the CVS parking lot, and eventually continued walking west along Whalley Avenue. Once inside of the apartment, the defendant gave Amber Torres a black revolver with a wooden handle and told her "to do something with it ...." Amber Torres then picked up the revolver using a washcloth and placed it in a black bag.
The police arrived at the apartment soon thereafter, surrounded the building, and instructed everyone inside to vacate the premises. Eventually, the defendant and Lloyd exited the building and were arrested. During a search of the apartment, the police located a .38 caliber black revolver with a wooden handle in a black bag. Inside of the revolver were two live rounds and four empty chambers. Later, ballistics testing determined that the revolver was the gun used to shoot and kill the victim.
The defendant was subsequently charged with, and convicted of, the crimes of murder and carrying a pistol without a permit. On appeal, the Appellate Court reversed that conviction and remanded the case for a new trial. See State v. Torres , 175 Conn. App. 138, 154, 167 A.3d 365 (), cert. denied, 327 Conn. 958, 172 A.3d 204 (2017), cert. denied, ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 1303, 200 L. Ed. 2d 474 (2018). The case was then presented to a jury for a second time, and the defendant was once again convicted of the crimes of murder and carrying a pistol without a permit. The trial court imposed a total effective sentence of fifty years of incarceration on those charges.1 The defendant now appeals from that conviction directly to this court pursuant to General Statutes § 51-199 (b) (3).
The defendant's first claim is that the trial court improperly excluded evidence that Milton was physically assaulted in the days leading up to the defendant's first trial. Specifically, the defendant argues that evidence of this assault was necessary in order to explore Milton's motives, interests, and bias, and that the exclusion of that evidence violated the defendant's rights under the sixth amendment to the United States constitution. The defendant, in the alternative, also implicitly presses the underlying claim of evidentiary error. For the reasons that follow, we reject defendant's constitutional claims and conclude that any evidentiary error was harmless.
The following undisputed facts and procedural history are necessary to our consideration of these claims. Before trial in the present case, the state filed a motion in limine seeking to exclude "any and all evidence relating to an argument between ... Pickette and ... Milton on August 14, 2014, and an assault [on] ... Milton on August 16, 2014 ...." In an accompanying memorandum of law, the state argued that evidence regarding the argument and the assault should be excluded as irrelevant, inadmissible hearsay, inadmissible character evidence, and as unduly prejudicial. Defense counsel responded that such evidence was "relevant and [would go] to motive, interest, [and] bias of ... Milton to lie."
In response to the trial court's request for an offer of proof, Milton testified outside of the presence of the jury as follows. Just prior to the defendant's first trial, Milton allegedly encountered Pickette and another individual in the hallway of the courthouse. An argument ensued, during which Pickette called Milton a "snitch" and said "they were going to whip [her ass]" if she testified. Milton responded to Pickette by asking, "how am I a snitch when we both [are] in the same predicament?" The second individual then said to Pickette, "don't argue with this girl, you have a sister named Ash Black ...." Two days later, Pickette's sister, Ashley Black, and two other individuals "jumped" and "beat on" Milton in New Haven. During this assault, Milton's assailants allegedly told her that she "should mind [her own] business" and mentioned "something about [Pickette] ...."
Following the offer of proof, defense counsel argued that the threat and the assault were admissible to show Milton's "motive, interest, bias with respect to [her] testimony, what may or may not have been said in the past, and ... also ... to state of mind and the consciousness of guilt of ... Pickette ...." The trial court denied the state's motion in limine with respect to the argument between Pickette and Milton in the courthouse but granted the motion with respect to the assault of Milton in New Haven. The trial court reasoned that, because Pickette was involved in the argument in the courthouse hallway but not the assault, the connection between Milton's trial testimony and the latter was "too speculative ...." Specifically, the trial court reasoned:
Before the jury in the defendant's second trial, Milton testified that Pickette ran by 543 Orchard Street after the shooting and tossed Lloyd the gun that was later found by the police in the apartment. This testimony contradicted not only Milton's initial statement to the police about whom she saw with the gun but also her subsequent testimony during the defendant's first trial. Specifically, during her statement to the police on the night of the shooting, Milton said that she had seen the defendant giving the gun to Amber Torres and that she did not see Pickette after the shooting. Notwithstanding her initial statement to the police, Milton testified during the defendant's first trial that she never saw the defendant holding the gun. Milton, however, continued to maintain that she had not seen Pickette after the shooting. The state offered, and the trial court subsequently admitted, both Milton's statement to the police and her testimony from the first trial as prior inconsistent statements for substantive purposes pursuant to State v. Whelan , 200 Conn. 743, 753, 513 A.2d 86, cert. denied, 479 U.S. 994, 107 S. Ct. 597, 93 L. Ed. 2d 598 (1986).
Milton explained that her statement to the police on the night of the shooting implicated the defendant, her own cousin, rather than Pickette, a person she had never known before, because she was high, nervous, and felt "pressured by the cops." Milton also explained that she had lied at the defendant's first trial because she was afraid of Pickette. Specifically, on direct examination by the prosecutor, Milton gave the following specific testimony about Pickette's threats and the events that followed:
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