Argued
October 17, 2019
Procedural
History
Substitute
information charging the defendant with the crime of murder,
brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of
Hartford and tried to the jury before Crawford, J.;
thereafter, the court denied the defendant's motion for a
judgment of acquittal; verdict and judgment of guilty, from
which the defendant appealed. Affirmed.
Conrad
Ost Seifert, assigned counsel, for the appellant (defendant).
Denise
B. Smoker, senior assistant state's attorney, with whom,
on the brief, were Gail P. Hardy, state's attorney, and
Donna Mambrino, senior assistant state's attorney, for
the appellee (state).
Prescott, Bright and Sheldon, Js.
OPINION
BRIGHT, J.
The
defendant, Maurice Francis, appeals from the judgment of
conviction rendered by the trial court of one count of murder
in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a. On appeal,
the defendant claims that the court improperly denied his
motion for a judgment of acquittal[1] because there was
insufficient evidence to establish that he caused the death
of the victim[2] or that he had the specific intent to
cause the death of the victim. In the alternative, the
defendant requests that we change our long-standing standard
of review with respect to insufficiency of evidence claims,
so that we review the evidence under a much more rigorous
standard to determine if there is a reasonable view of the
evidence that would support a hypothesis of innocence. We
affirm the judgment of the trial court.
The
following evidence, which was admitted at trial, and relevant
procedural history inform our review. The victim and the
defendant lived together in an apartment building located at
47 Berkeley Drive in Hartford. The victim was employed as a
school bus monitor with Specialty Transportation (Specialty),
which was previously known as Logisticare. She had worked in
that position for approximately four or five years. Her
supervisor was Timothy Gamble. Gamble described the victim as
‘‘happy, always smiling, [and] coming to work on
time every day . . . .'' Gamble stated that when the
victim began dating the defendant, however, she changed. The
victim then began to come to work with cuts, bruises, and
other injuries to her body. Her disposition changed. On more
than one occasion, she arrived at work with a bloodied shirt
and injuries. On one specific occasion, she arrived at work
wearing dark glasses in an attempt to hide her blackened eye.
As time went on, Gamble became so concerned for the victim
that he invited her to move in with him and his wife, an
offer which the victim declined. He also suggested that she
go to a women's shelter, which she also declined.
On the
morning of Saturday, November 1, 2008, at approximately 8:30
a.m., Beverly Copeland, who lived across the street from the
defendant and the victim, left her apartment. As Copeland
went to get into her vehicle, which was parked in front of
her building, she saw a black male standing, looking down at
the grass in front of his apartment building. At first,
Copeland thought the man was looking at a pile of clothing in
the grass. When the man bent down to pick up what was in the
grass, Copeland realized that it was not a pile of clothing,
but, rather, it was the body of a woman, who had braids in
her hair. Copeland then saw the man put the woman's body
over his shoulders. After taking a couple of steps, the man
put down the woman and then began to drag her by the hands
and arms across the street, as her back dragged along the
ground. The woman, herself, did not move. After the man got
to a silver Volvo station wagon that was parked across the
road, he put the woman's body into the front
passenger's seat. Still, the woman did not move. The man
then got into the driver's seat of the silver Volvo
station wagon and began to drive away; Copeland wrote down
the license plate number, which was 110-XDZ.[3]
The
defendant drove the silver 1998 Volvo station wagon (1998
Volvo), with the woman's body in the passenger's
seat, to Sparks Motor Sales in Hartford (Sparks). When he
arrived at approximately 9 a.m., he telephoned Garth Wallen,
the owner of Sparks, who was still at home. The defendant had
purchased his 1998 Volvo from Sparks the previous month, and
he recently had made arrangements with Wallen to exchange
that vehicle for a different vehicle. When Wallen arrived at
Sparks, the defendant was standing beside his 1998 Volvo,
which was parked in front of the locked driveway gate. Wallen
then opened the gate so they could enter. Wallen saw a woman
in the passenger's seat, whom he recognized to be the
defendant's girlfriend, but the woman did not speak or
make any gestures. The defendant then drove the 1998 Volvo
down the driveway, parking it with the driver's side of
the vehicle along the wall of the building, facing a wooden
fence, in an area where a dumpster generally is kept but
which was not present at that time. The defendant got out of
his vehicle, leaving the woman inside. The defendant was
‘‘hanging around'' at Sparks until
approximately 4 p.m., when Wallen obtained a 1999 Volvo for
him to test drive for the weekend. The woman never got out of
the defendant's vehicle during the six or seven hours it
was parked at Sparks, used the bathroom, or looked at the
1999 Volvo when it was brought over. The defendant, however,
at one point during the day, asked Wallen if it would be okay
if he got his girlfriend a cup of water; Sparks had a rented
Poland Spring dispenser with cups.
After
obtaining the 1999 Volvo, the defendant moved the 1998 Volvo
and aligned it beside the 1999 Volvo, passenger side to
passenger side, in the ‘‘back section''
of Sparks. Wallen, thereafter, was busy assisting a customer.
He noticed, however, that the defendant later moved the 1998
Volvo back to where he had parked it in the morning,
alongside the wall of the building. The defendant also took
the plates off his 1998 Volvo and put them on the 1999 Volvo,
hung the keys to his 1998 Volvo in the garage, and drove away
in the 1999 Volvo. Because the windows of the 1999 Volvo were
tinted, Wallen could not see the defendant's girlfriend
inside the 1999 Volvo as the defendant drove away in the
vehicle. The defendant and Wallen had made plans that they
would wrap up the paperwork for the purchase of the 1999
Volvo the following week. They had no plans to talk again
until then. The defendant, however, telephoned Wallen later
that day, after leaving Sparks, and he told Wallen that a kid
in his neighborhood really liked the 1999 Volvo and that he
just wanted Wallen to know.
At
10:50 p.m. that night, the defendant called 911, and he told
the dispatcher he had just returned home when he found the
victim in the bathtub, after having spoken to her on the
phone approximately a half hour or an hour
before;[4] the front door was open when he returned
home and every light was on; he had dropped off the victim at
home a ‘‘couple of hours ago''; the
victim had no pulse when he found her; he did not want to
attempt CPR on her; he did not want to touch the victim; the
victim had been having problems with a neighbor who had
psychological problems; the victim was kind of
‘‘retarded''; the victim had been having
mental problems and problems like ‘‘falling down
the stairs, '' which could be verified by hospital
records; the victim had a cut over her left eye; the victim
had been with him all day; and he could provide
‘‘proof'' that she had been with him from
the owner of a car dealership.
At
approximately 11 p.m., Michael DiGiacamo, a firefighter with
the Hartford Fire Department, arrived at 47 Berkeley Drive.
The defendant, who was standing outside, directed DiGiacamo
to his second floor apartment. Upon entering the apartment,
DiGiacamo saw the victim lying in the bathtub. She was naked,
dry, cold and unresponsive; the bathtub contained no water or
blood. DiGiacamo and another firefighter removed the victim
from the tub and began CPR; the victim still did not respond.
DiGiacamo noticed that the victim had ‘‘multiple
wounds and laceration type stab wounds'' on her body.
Additional emergency medical personnel arrived and continued
CPR. While the paramedics were attending to the victim,
DiGiacamo went into the living room where the defendant was
speaking with a lieutenant from the fire department. The
defendant repeatedly asked if the victim was dead. DiGiacamo
thought this was odd because, in his experience, most people
ask whether a victim is okay, not whether a victim is dead.
In an
interview conducted at the Hartford Police Department on
November 2, 2008, the defendant told Detective R. Kevin
Salkeld that, on the morning of November 1, 2008, after
showering at 8 a.m., he and the victim went to Sparks in his
1998 Volvo. He stated that the victim stayed in the
passenger's seat of the car all day while he did odd jobs
for Wallen until approximately 5 p.m.[5] The defendant told Salkeld
that he brought the victim five bottles of water during the
day, which she drank.[6] The defendant also told Salkeld that he
went to Sparks because he wanted to pick up a 1999 Volvo to
test drive for the weekend, which is the car in which he and
the victim drove home after he did the odd jobs throughout
the day. The defendant also told Salkeld that he unlocked the
door for the victim when they arrived home, and that he then
returned to Sparks to help Wallen clean up, and although it
was the victim's habit to lock the doors, when the
defendant returned home the front door was
open.[7] According to the defendant, he was
supposed to meet Wallen at Wallen's home after the
cleanup, and, although he went to Wallen's home, Wallen
never came;[8] the defendant stated that he waited at
Wallen's home and that he repeatedly telephoned Wallen
until approximately 10:30 p.m., but Wallen did not answer the
calls;[9] the defendant told Salkeld, however, that
he did not remember Wallen's home address. The defendant
told Salkeld that after waiting for Wallen, he returned home,
found the door open, and saw the victim lying in the bathtub;
he then called 911.[10]
At
approximately 7:12 a.m., on November 2, 2008, Detective Ramon
Baez from the Hartford Police Department Crime Scene
Division, began to process the scene of the victim's
death. One of the items Baez processed was a clump of braided
hair that he discovered in front of the apartment building.
John Schienman, a forensic science examiner from the Division
of Scientific Services, performed DNA testing on the roots of
several pieces of hair from the clump that was found by Baez,
and he determined that the DNA found on those hair roots was
consistent with the victim's DNA profile.[11]Baez also
found numerous small blood ...