State v. Williams

• Decision Date: 14 August 2001
• Docket Number: 21243
• Citation: 782 A.2d 149
• Parties: STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. ALSTON WILLIAMS21243 THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
• Court: Connecticut Court of Appeals

STATE OF CONNECTICUT v ALSTON WILLIAMS

No. AC 21243

THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT

Argued March 2, 2001

August 14, 2001

Counsel Suzanne Zitser, assistant public defender, for the appellant (defendant)

Mitchell S. Brody, assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were James E. Thomas, state's attorney, and Dawn Gallo, deputy assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).

Schaller, Flynn and Shea, Js.

Opinion

Shea, J.

The defendant, Alston Williams, appeals from the judgment of conviction rendered by a panel of three judges of the Superior Court. ¹ The panel found him guilty of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a ² as charged in the first count of the information, arson murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54d ³ as charged in the second count and arson in the third degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a113 ⁴ as charged in the third count. On appeal, the defendant claims that (1) the court improperly denied his motion to suppress the several statements he made to or in the presence of the police, (2) the court's finding that he was competent to stand trial and that no further competency examinations were necessary violated due process, and (3) his conviction for arson murder is not supported by the evidence because the victim's death did not occur in the course of the arson as required by § 53a-54d. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The panel, as the trier of fact, reasonably could have found the following facts. On December 22, 1996, at approximately 6:22 a.m., the Hartford police received a 911 call reporting that the apartment building at 61 Imlay Street in Hartford was on fire and that a person in the building was in need of immediate medical assistance. The telephone call was made by Jennifer Garrison, who lived in an apartment on the second floor directly beneath apartment 304, which was occupied by the defendant on the third floor. Garrison had heard furniture being moved in the defendant's third floor apartment. When the noise became louder and a woman started to yell and then to scream, Garrison called the police for emergency assistance.

Stephen Hanks, who lived next door to the defendant in apartment 303, also heard the noise of moving furniture and the screams of a woman, as well as her cries for help emanating from the defendant's apartment. Looking through the peephole of his apartment door, Hanks saw a woman in the hallway who was saying: ''[H]e set me on fire, he set me on fire.'' Another witness, Yusef Delaine, who lived in apartment 302, saw a woman knocking on doors as she ran through the hallway and heard her screaming: ''[H]elp, he tried to set me on fire, he tried to burn me.'' Garrison, accompanied by a neighbor, left her apartment and walked up a rear staircase to the third floor hallway, where she encountered Jearline Blakely, the victim, who was in pain because the upper half of her body had been burned pink. Blakely was screaming: ''[H]e set me on fire, somebody help me.'' She stopped screaming when Garrison told her to go downstairs and await the assistance of the emergency personnel who were in transit to the apartment building.

At that time, smoke began to emerge from under the door of the defendant's apartment, and Hanks observed the defendant, wearing no clothing, exit from the apartment into the hallway. He asked Hanks for some clothes, and Hanks gave him a pair of pants. Thereafter, Hanks went downstairs and learned that the victim was with a neighbor in a first floor apartment.

Police officers arrived at the scene soon after receiving the 911 call. Sergeant Edmund Pawlina arrived shortly after the first group of officers. Pawlina and other officers entered a first floor apartment and were directed to the kitchen, where they found Blakely, who was naked from the waist up. She was wedged into a small space between the sink and the stove. She was badly burned on her face and on her upper torso. Pieces of skin were hanging off her body and her flesh was blistering in spots and oozing blood. She was shaking, crying, groaning and screaming in pain.

Pawlina testified that Blakely named the defendant as her assailant, and stated that she and the defendant had been drinking in his apartment, that their relationship was over and that he did not want her to leave. An argument ensued and the defendant became angry. He splashed some lighter fluid or kerosene on her from a plastic bottle that he kept in the kitchen of his apartment. He lighted a match and flicked it at her, but it went out. Blakely pleaded with him not to light another, but he lighted a second match and threw it on her, igniting the lighter fluid or kerosene and setting her on fire. She told the officers that the defendant was somewhere in the building.

Pawlina and Officer Ronald DaMotta, accompanied by other officers, left the first floor apartment and went upstairs to the third floor of the building. When Pawlina reached the third floor landing, the defendant walked over to him and the other officers, and said, ''I am the one you are looking for, I burned her, I did it, the fire is in my apartment, number 304.'' Pawlina testified that none of the officers had said anything to the defendant or had given him a Miranda ⁵ warning before he made those statements. Pawlina asked the defendant for his name, and the defendant responded, ''Alston Williams.'' The defendant was handcuffed and then asked if he could get a shirt. Officer Bryant Moore escorted him down the stairs and out of the building into a police cruiser. Moore then read the standard Miranda warning to him. Thereafter, the defendant was taken to police headquarters.

The police officers attempted to extinguish the fire in the defendant's apartment, but were unable to do so. They ordered the evacuation of the residents inside the building. Blakely was taken to the emergency room at Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center, where she was diagnosed as having life threatening second and third degree burns on her face, neck and upper body. During an interview, she told emergency room personnel that kerosene had been poured on her and that she had been set on fire. She was given morphine on four occasions for the pain resulting from her burns. Thereafter, she was flown to the burn unit at Bridgeport Hospital, where she died after forty-one days of medical treatment. An autopsy revealed that Blakely's death was caused by complications from the thermal burns that covered 45 to 55 percent of her body.

At police headquarters, the defendant received another Miranda warning and was then questioned by Detective James Rovella. The defendant never asserted his right to remain silent. He told the police that he and Blakely had been drinking in his apartment when an argument ensued, the nature of which he refused to reveal. The defendant stated that Blakely picked up a bottle of lighter fluid that was in the apartment. The defendant pushed her, causing the kerosene to splash on her body. He said he did not know how the fire started. The defendant was calm and even tempered. Despite an odor of alcohol emanating from him, he did not appear to be intoxicated.

In the emergency room, DaMotta spoke to Blakely before hospital personnel began to attend to her. At trial, DaMotta testified that Blakely told him that she and the defendant had gone into his apartment, where they were drinking. When she decided that she wanted to leave, the defendant became angry because he did not want her to leave. They started to argue, and he picked up a plastic bottle of kerosene and started splashing it on her. He remained angry and started flicking lighted matches onto her, eventually igniting the kerosene.

Later in the day, at approximately 2:45 p.m., police investigators and a fire inspector from the Hartford fire department entered the defendant's apartment to determine the cause of the fire. They smelled a strong odor of kerosene or some other petroleum derivative. The heaviest fire damage was in the kitchen, which they concluded was the point of origin of the fire. They also concluded that the fire had been started with a liquid accelerant and matches.

At trial, the defendant testified and gave a different account of the incident from that described in his unsolicited confession. He said that he and Blakely were friends and lovers. The defendant stated that Blakely knew that their relationship would end if his wife left Jamaica to join him in Hartford. He believed that Blakely also had relationships with two other men. On the day before the fire, he and Blakely had dinner together in his apartment. He testified that he had three or four drinks between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., but that Blakely drank less. They went to bed about 2 a.m., and the defendant woke up between 5:30 and 6 a.m. Blakely was already out of bed. Both the defendant and Blakely resumed drinking that morning. When he went to the bedroom to get Blakely's Christmas present for her to take home, he felt something hit him on the back. It was a plastic container of lighter fluid that he kept in the kitchen. He picked it up and threw it back at Blakely in accordance with a game they sometimes played. He testified that she caught the container and there was a lighter in her hand and the fire went up. Blakely walked to the sink and turned the water on, which did not seem to help, so she walked past him and went out the front door of the apartment. She did not scream while she was inside the apartment. When the defendant saw the flames inside the apartment, he became frightened and walked out into the hallway without putting on any clothes. A neighbor threw him a pair of pants to wear. The defendant testified that he never saw Pawlina until he appeared in court.

Thereafter, the defendant was convicted on all three counts. Pursuant to State v. Chicano, 216 Conn. 699, 584 A.2d 425 (1990), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1254, 111 S. Ct. 2898, 115 L. Ed. 2d...