DocketNumber: File No. 183
Citation Numbers: 368 A.2d 1186, 33 Conn. Super. Ct. 725
Judges: DAVID M. SHEA, J.
Filed Date: 7/9/1976
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 7/5/2016
After a trial without a jury the three defendants were found guilty of reckless use of a highway by a pedestrian in violation of General Statutes
The trial court found that on June 19, 1975, the defendants arrived at the General Electric Company plant on Spark Street, Plainville, at about 3:30 p.m. as the first shift employees were leaving the plant. After the employees of the plant had left the parking lot in their cars and had driven out the exit to Spark Street, the defendants proceeded to distribute to them a newspaper of the United States Labor Party, of which the defendants are members. Spark Street is a public highway3 extending north from the plant exit to route 72 where there are traffic control signals. At the time the defendants arrived two lanes of cars were moving north on Spark Street, bumper to bumper, at a speed of between five and ten miles per hour, in a stop and go pattern as the traffic signals at the intersection of route 72 and Spark Street changed.
In response to a complaint a Plainville police officer came to the scene. He testified, and the court found, that at the time of his arrival the three defendants were running between moving vehicles passing out some type of literature. After the defendants failed to heed his warning to cease their activities in the street, he radioed for assistance. After another officer arrived the defendants were arrested. *Page 727
None of the cases relied upon by the defendants lends much support to their claim that General Statutes
It is also claimed that the application of
The claim that the evidence is insufficient to support the finding of guilty reached by the court requires only brief consideration. The first officer to arrive testified that the three defendants were running between cars and from one lane to another as they distributed their newspapers, that they had stopped traffic coming out of the parking lot gate as they attempted to solicit the drivers, and that the defendant Richard Ennis, who was between two lanes of traffic with cars coming two and three at a time, ignored the officer's command to discontinue that activity because he was endangering his life. The defendant Karen Ennis admitted during her examination that the place where she and the defendant David Peterson were standing, on the traveled portion of the street directly before the main gate as the employees of the plant exited from the parking lot, was dangerous. She said that cars were honking because they wanted to get out and that "there was quite a lot of pressure from other cars for the first car to keep moving, so there was no way you could distribute literature at that site." The second officer, who arrived after Karen Ennis and David Peterson had left the area of the gate and had taken a position near the intersection of *Page 729
Spark Street and route 72, testified that he found those defendants between three lanes of traffic, two lanes proceeding in one direction and the third in the opposite direction. He stated that, in his opinion, their safety was in jeopardy. That evidence adequately supports the conclusion of the trial court that the defendants deliberately exposed themselves to physical danger and risk of injury by walking and running among moving vehicles in "two lanes of bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go traffic." It would also support the conclusion that they deliberately exposed motorists leaving the plant "to unnecessary risk of accident or injury." That inference could readily be drawn from the distracting nature of the activities of the defendants under the heavy traffic conditions described in the testimony. "Recklessness is a state of consciousness with reference to the consequences of one's acts." Mooney v. Wabrek,
There is no error.
In this opinion PARSKEY and A. ARMENTANO, Js., concurred.
Mezzi v. Taylor , 99 Conn. 1 ( 1923 )
Mooney v. Wabrek , 129 Conn. 302 ( 1942 )
Atkins v. Varrone , 127 Conn. 156 ( 1940 )
Goodsell v. Brighenti , 128 Conn. 581 ( 1942 )
Barbieri v. Pandiscio , 116 Conn. 48 ( 1932 )
Cox v. Louisiana , 85 S. Ct. 453 ( 1965 )