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State v. Gill , 178 Conn. App. 43 ( 2017 )


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    STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. ANDRE GILL
    (AC 39841)
    DiPentima, C. J., and Alvord and Kahn, Js.*
    Syllabus
    Convicted, after a jury trial, of, inter alia, the crime of murder in connection
    with an incident in which the defendant shot the victim in the parking
    lot of a nightclub, the defendant appealed, claiming that there was
    insufficient evidence to prove the specific intent element necessary to
    support his murder conviction. Held that the state presented sufficient
    evidence from which the jury reasonably could have inferred that the
    defendant intended to cause the victim’s death to support the defendant’s
    conviction of murder: the evidence and testimony presented by the state
    demonstrated that the victim had grabbed the defendant by the throat
    during a fight inside the nightclub and that the dispute continued in the
    club’s parking lot, where the defendant yelled at the victim, got out of
    his car with a revolver as the victim walked toward the car, and fired
    the revolver directly at the victim, striking him in his torso, just below
    the breastbone; moreover, there was ample evidence of the defendant’s
    conduct after the shooting from which the jury could have inferred an
    intent to kill, as the defendant displayed a consciousness of guilt by
    cleaning the revolver and another gun involved in the incident with
    bleach to remove any fingerprints or DNA, asking his brother’s friend
    to dispose of the guns, and making untruthful statements to the police.
    Argued September 13—officially released November 7, 2017
    Procedural History
    Substitute information charging the defendant with
    the crimes of murder, conspiracy to commit murder,
    criminal possession of a firearm, carrying a revolver
    without a permit, tampering with a witness, false state-
    ment in the second degree and tampering with evidence,
    brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of
    Hartford and tried to the jury before Dewey, J.; there-
    after, the charge of criminal possession of a firearm
    was tried to the court; verdict and judgment of guilty
    of murder, criminal possession of a firearm, carrying a
    revolver without a permit, false statement in the second
    degree and tampering with evidence; subsequently, the
    court denied the defendant’s motion for a judgment of
    acquittal, and the defendant appealed. Affirmed.
    Lisa J. Steele, assigned counsel, for the appellant
    (defendant).
    Jennifer F. Miller, deputy assistant state’s attorney,
    with whom, on the brief, were Gail P. Hardy, state’s
    attorney, and Anne Mahoney, state’s attorney, for the
    appellee (state).
    Opinion
    ALVORD, J. The defendant, Andre Gill, appeals from
    the judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial,
    of murder in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a-54a
    and 53a-8; carrying a revolver without a permit in viola-
    tion of General Statutes § 29-35 (a); false statement in
    the second degree in violation of General Statutes (Rev.
    to 2011) § 53a-157b; and tampering with physical evi-
    dence in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a-155 and
    53a-8.1 On appeal, the defendant’s sole claim is that
    there was insufficient evidence to prove the element
    of specific intent necessary to support the murder con-
    viction. We disagree and, accordingly, affirm the judg-
    ment of the trial court.
    The following facts, which the jury reasonably could
    have found, are relevant to the defendant’s appeal. On
    the night of November 18, 2011, the defendant drove
    his Acura with his friend Charles Young to a nightclub
    in Hartford, Mi Bar, to perform rap music. At the time,
    the defendant lived at his grandmother’s house with his
    children and others, including Young. A few days ear-
    lier, the house had been invaded, and the defendant’s
    daughter and Young were tied up. After the home inva-
    sion, the defendant asked his brother’s friend, Antoine
    Armour, to bring a gun to the house for protection.
    Armour provided the defendant with a .38 caliber Tau-
    rus revolver and a .380 caliber semiautomatic handgun.
    Armour also gave the defendant ammunition.
    Initially, the defendant did not bring the guns to Mi
    Bar on November 18, 2011. After seeing people in the
    nightclub whom he knew to be associated with the
    home invasion, however, he returned to his grandmoth-
    er’s house with Young to retrieve the two guns. They
    then returned to Mi Bar, left the guns in the defendant’s
    car, and reentered the nightclub.
    During a performance by Arkeit Iverson, the sound
    system in the nightclub malfunctioned, at which point
    a fight broke out. The performer at the time, Iverson,
    was a cousin of the victim, Fred Pines. Iverson began
    pushing through the crowd, which included the defen-
    dant and the defendant’s cousin, to reach the disc
    jockey. The defendant tried to stop Iverson from reach-
    ing the disc jockey, at which time the victim grabbed
    the defendant by the throat. The fight was captured
    on video, which was played for the jury during the
    evidentiary portion of the trial.
    After the fight, people began running out of the night-
    club into the parking lot, where the argument continued.
    The defendant testified that he was ‘‘having some
    words’’ with the victim in the parking lot. According to
    Young, the defendant went back to his car and got into
    the driver’s seat, and Young got into the passenger’s
    seat. The defendant began to drive out of the parking
    lot, but stopped to roll down his window and yell at
    the victim. The victim walked toward the car, at which
    time the defendant got out of the car. Young also got
    out of the car with the .380 caliber semiutomatic hand-
    gun and fired two shots into the air. The defendant then
    fired one shot from the .38 caliber revolver at the victim.
    Young heard the victim say: ‘‘You missed. You ain’t hit
    nothing.’’ The defendant and Young ran to the back of
    the nightclub, got into cars located there, and left sepa-
    rately.
    The defendant and Young met back at the defendant’s
    grandmother’s house, and the defendant called his
    brother, Morgan Gill, and Armour to ask them to get
    rid of the guns. The defendant, Morgan Gill, and Armour
    first cleaned the guns with bleach to remove any finger-
    prints or DNA. Armour then left with the guns and
    dumped them in the Connecticut River. The next morn-
    ing the defendant and Young learned that the victim
    had died. Harold Wayne Carver, the chief medical exam-
    iner at the time of the shooting who had conducted the
    autopsy of the victim, concluded that the victim died
    as a result of a single gunshot wound to his trunk.2 The
    bullet entered the victim’s trunk close to the bottom of
    the breastbone, caused damage to the right lung, and
    passed through the diaphragm.
    On November 19, 2011, the day after the shooting,
    the defendant went to the police station and voluntarily
    gave a written statement, in which he stated that he
    saw Young with a gun and that Young ‘‘pulled up and
    fired.’’ He also falsely told the police during that inter-
    view that he went to Mi Bar alone on the night of
    November 18, 2011, because, he explained later, he ‘‘did
    not want to be associated with somebody who made a
    stupid decision.’’ The defendant thereafter was
    arrested, charged with murder, among other crimes,
    tried before the jury, and convicted.3 The court sen-
    tenced the defendant to a total effective term of fifty
    years of incarceration. This appeal followed.
    The defendant claims that there was insufficient evi-
    dence presented at trial to convict him of murder. Spe-
    cifically, he argues that the state failed to present
    sufficient evidence that he had intended to cause the
    victim’s death, and, therefore, his conviction of murder
    cannot stand. We are not persuaded.
    We first set forth our standard of review and the legal
    principles relevant to a claim of evidentiary insuffi-
    ciency. ‘‘In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence to
    support a criminal conviction we apply a two-part test.
    First, we construe the evidence in the light most favor-
    able to sustaining the verdict. Second, we determine
    whether upon the facts so construed and the inferences
    reasonably drawn therefrom the [finder of fact] reason-
    ably could have concluded that the cumulative force
    of the evidence established guilt beyond a reasonable
    doubt.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v.
    Franklin, 
    175 Conn. App. 22
    , 30, 
    166 A.3d 24
     (2017).
    ‘‘While the jury must find every element proven
    beyond a reasonable doubt in order to find the defen-
    dant guilty of the charged offense, each of the basic
    and inferred facts underlying those conclusions need
    not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . If it is
    reasonable and logical for the jury to conclude that a
    basic fact or an inferred fact is true, the jury is permitted
    to consider the fact proven and may consider it in com-
    bination with other proven facts in determining whether
    the cumulative effect of all the evidence proves the
    defendant guilty of all the elements of the crime charged
    beyond a reasonable doubt. . . .
    ‘‘Moreover, it does not diminish the probative force
    of the evidence that it consists, in whole or in part, of
    evidence that is circumstantial rather than direct. . . .
    It is not one fact, but the cumulative impact of a multi-
    tude of facts which establishes guilt in a case involving
    substantial circumstantial evidence. . . . In evaluating
    evidence, the [finder] of fact is not required to accept
    as dispositive those inferences that are consistent with
    the defendant’s innocence. . . . The [finder of fact]
    may draw whatever inferences from the evidence or
    facts established by the evidence it deems to be reason-
    able and logical.’’ (Citation omitted; internal quotation
    marks omitted.) State v. White, 
    127 Conn. App. 846
    ,
    850, 
    17 A.3d 72
    , cert. denied, 
    302 Conn. 911
    , 
    27 A.3d 371
     (2011). ‘‘On appeal, we do not ask whether there
    is a reasonable view of the evidence that would support
    a reasonable hypothesis of innocence. We ask, instead,
    whether there is a reasonable view of the evidence that
    supports the [finder of fact’s] verdict of guilty.’’ (Internal
    quotation marks omitted.) State v. Crespo, 
    317 Conn. 1
    , 17, 
    115 A.3d 447
     (2015).
    Section 53a-54a (a) provides in relevant part that ‘‘[a]
    person is guilty of murder when, with intent to cause
    the death of another person, he causes the death of
    such person . . . .’’ ‘‘[T]he specific intent to kill is an
    essential element of the crime of murder. To act inten-
    tionally, the defendant must have had the conscious
    objective to cause the death of the victim. . . .
    Because direct evidence of the accused’s state of mind
    is rarely available . . . intent is often inferred from
    conduct . . . and from the cumulative effect of the
    circumstantial evidence and the rational inferences
    drawn therefrom. . . . Intent to cause death may be
    inferred from the type of weapon used, the manner in
    which it was used, the type of wound inflicted and the
    events leading to and immediately following the death.
    . . . Furthermore, it is a permissible, albeit not a neces-
    sary or mandatory, inference that a defendant intended
    the natural consequences of his voluntary conduct.’’
    (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Otto, 
    305 Conn. 51
    , 66–67, 
    43 A.3d 629
     (2012).
    The defendant’s contention on appeal is that, on the
    basis of the evidence presented, the jury could have
    concluded that he had committed manslaughter, not
    murder.4 The defendant seeks to distinguish the facts
    of this case from the facts in cases in which our courts
    have found sufficient evidence of intent to kill the vic-
    tim. He emphasizes the fact that he fired only a single
    shot and that the victim did not know that he had been
    injured. He claims that if he really had intended to kill
    the victim, he ‘‘could have fired another shot’’ after the
    victim seemed unhurt by the first shot. He further argues
    that the fight in the nightclub prior to the shooting was
    not ‘‘serious’’ enough to permit the jury to infer an intent
    to kill the victim. Lastly, the defendant claims that his
    conduct after the shooting, including but not limited to
    cleaning the guns and asking Armour to get rid of the
    guns, reflected ‘‘a consciousness of guilt of assault and,
    later, of manslaughter, not murder.’’
    As noted previously, ‘‘a factfinder may infer an intent
    to kill from circumstantial evidence such as the type
    of weapon used, the manner in which it was used, the
    type of wound inflicted and the events leading to and
    immediately following the death . . . .’’ (Internal quo-
    tation marks omitted.) State v. Robinson, 
    125 Conn. App. 484
    , 488, 
    8 A.3d 1120
     (2010), cert. denied, 
    300 Conn. 911
    , 
    12 A.3d 1006
     (2011). There was testimony,
    which the jury could have credited, to support the
    defendant’s intent to kill the victim, including that the
    defendant fired a revolver directly at the victim, and
    the autopsy revealed that the bullet struck the victim
    in his torso, just below the bottom of the breastbone.
    See State v. Moye, 
    119 Conn. App. 143
    , 149, 
    986 A.2d 1134
    , cert. denied, 
    297 Conn. 907
    , 
    995 A.2d 638
     (2010)
    (‘‘a person who uses a deadly weapon upon a vital part
    of another will be deemed to have intended the probable
    result of that act, and from such a circumstance a proper
    inference may be drawn in some cases that there was
    an intent to kill’’ [internal quotation marks omitted]).
    The state also presented evidence regarding the
    events leading to the shooting from which the jury rea-
    sonably could have inferred the defendant’s intent to
    cause the victim’s death. There was evidence of a fight
    inside the nightclub, during which the victim grabbed
    the defendant by the throat. Moreover, there was evi-
    dence that the argument continued in the parking lot.
    The defendant testified that he and the victim were
    ‘‘having some words.’’ Young testified that the defen-
    dant had stopped his car on the way out of the parking
    lot to yell at the victim and that the defendant got out
    of the car with the revolver as the victim walked toward
    the car. Although the defendant seeks to characterize
    the dispute as a ‘‘scuffle’’ and argues that prior cases
    ‘‘have involved much more serious disputes,’’ our
    Supreme Court has stated that ‘‘[t]he jury is not required
    to close its eyes to the unfortunate reality that murders
    frequently are committed in response to seemingly
    minor provocations.’’ State v. Gary, 
    273 Conn. 393
    , 408,
    
    869 A.2d 1236
     (2005).
    There also was ample evidence of the defendant’s
    conduct after the shooting from which the jury reason-
    ably could have drawn an inference of his intent to kill
    the victim. The defendant himself testified that he called
    Armour after the shooting to get rid of the gun.5 Armour
    and Young both testified that the defendant cleaned
    the guns with bleach or household cleaners after the
    shooting. Detective Joseph Fargnoli of the Hartford
    Police Department testified that the defendant told him
    that he had cleaned the guns to remove any fingerprints
    or DNA. Moreover, the defendant acknowledged mak-
    ing untruthful statements to the police after the murder.
    Our Supreme Court has concluded that ‘‘consciousness
    of guilt evidence [is] part of the evidence from which a
    jury may draw an inference of an intent to kill.’’ (Internal
    quotation marks omitted.) State v. Otto, 
    supra,
     
    305 Conn. 73
    ; see also State v. Moye, 
    supra,
     
    119 Conn. App. 150
     (‘‘[a] trial court may admit [e]vidence that an
    accused has taken some kind of evasive action to avoid
    detection for a crime, such as flight, concealment of
    evidence, or a false statement, [which] is ordinarily the
    basis for a charge on the inference of consciousness
    of guilt’’ [internal quotation marks omitted]).
    To the extent that the defendant requests this court
    to draw inferences contrary to those necessarily drawn
    by the jury, we note that ‘‘[i]n viewing evidence which
    could yield contrary inferences, the jury is not barred
    from drawing those inferences consistent with guilt and
    is not required to draw only those inferences consistent
    with innocence. The rule is that the jury’s function is
    to draw whatever inferences from the evidence or facts
    established by the evidence it deems to be reasonable
    and logical.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State
    v. Grant, 
    219 Conn. 596
    , 604, 
    594 A.2d 459
     (1991). ‘‘That
    the jury might have drawn other possible inferences
    from these facts is not sufficient to undermine its ver-
    dict, since proof of guilt must be established beyond a
    reasonable doubt, not beyond a possible doubt.’’ (Inter-
    nal quotation marks omitted.) 
    Id.
    Mindful of our standard of review, which requires us
    to view the evidence in the light most favorable to
    sustaining the jury’s verdict, we reject the defendant’s
    claim and conclude that there was sufficient evidence
    presented at trial to support the defendant’s conviction
    of murder.
    The judgment is affirmed.
    In this opinion the other judges concurred.
    * The listing of judges reflects their seniority status on this court as of
    the date of oral argument.
    1
    The defendant also was convicted of criminal possession of a firearm,
    in violation of General Statutes § 53a-217 (a) (1), which charge was tried
    to the court. The jury acquitted the defendant of the charges of conspiracy
    to commit murder in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a-48 and 53a-54a;
    and tampering with a witness in violation of General Statutes § 53a-151.
    2
    Carver removed the bullet from the victim’s body and provided it to the
    police. James Stephenson, a state firearms and tool mark examiner, testified
    that the bullet had been fired from either a .38 caliber revolver or a .357
    caliber revolver and that it could not have been fired from a .380 caliber
    semiautomatic weapon. Two shell casings were also recovered from the
    crime scene. Stephenson testified that the shell casings were consistent
    with having been fired from a ‘‘.380 auto caliber firearm.’’
    3
    As noted previously in this opinion, the defendant also was convicted
    of carrying a revolver without a permit, false statement in the second degree,
    tampering with physical evidence, and criminal possession of a firearm.
    4
    The jury was instructed on lesser included offenses within the crime of
    murder, including manslaughter, and the defendant makes no claims of
    instructional error.
    5
    Although the defendant testified that Armour had given him only one
    gun, the .380 caliber semiautomatic handgun, Armour and Young both testi-
    fied that there were two guns, the .380 caliber semiautomatic handgun and
    a .38 caliber revolver.
    

Document Info

Docket Number: AC39841

Citation Numbers: 173 A.3d 998, 178 Conn. App. 43

Judges: Dipentima, Alvord, Kahn

Filed Date: 11/7/2017

Precedential Status: Precedential

Modified Date: 10/19/2024