State v. Adams

727 A.2d 780, 52 Conn. App. 643, 1999 Conn. App. LEXIS 130
CourtConnecticut Appellate Court
DecidedApril 13, 1999
DocketAC 16738
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 727 A.2d 780 (State v. Adams) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Connecticut Appellate Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Adams, 727 A.2d 780, 52 Conn. App. 643, 1999 Conn. App. LEXIS 130 (Colo. Ct. App. 1999).

Opinion

Opinion

DALY, J.

The defendant, John C. Adams, Jr., appeals from the judgment of conviction, following a jury trial, of manslaughter in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-55 (a) (3).1 The defendant claims that the trial court improperly (1) instructed the jury on his claim of self-defense, (2) denied his motion for a mistrial based on prosecutorial misconduct, (3) excluded as hearsay his statements to the police following his arrest and (4) concluded that the evidence was sufficient to support his conviction. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The jury reasonably could have found the following facts. On the morning of October 12, 1993, the defendant, a sixteen year old high school student, was suspended from school for excessive absences. That afternoon, the defendant went to his parents’ house at 41 Maher Avenue in Hamden with his girlfriend, Teresa Schulz, where they fell asleep on the defendant’s bed.

[645]*645Sometime thereafter, the victim, John C. Adams, Sr., burst through the defendant’s bedroom door, yelling at the defendant for being suspended. The victim left the defendant’s bedroom without touching him. The defendant followed the victim to tell him not to enter his room without knocking. In response, the victim yelled obscenities at the defendant, grabbed him by the neck and threw him against the bathroom door.

The defendant returned to his bedroom where Schulz noticed red marks on his neck and blood coming from his mouth. The defendant picked up a knife from his dresser and put it in his back pocket. The defendant then left his bedroom and became involved in an altercation with the victim in which the defendant stabbed the victim sixteen times. Five of the stab wounds penetrated the victim’s chest, causing his death.

After stabbing the victim, the defendant ran outside to a nearby baseball field. Schulz then went outside to find him. After Schulz found the defendant, they went to a nearby convenience store to call the police. On the way to the store, the defendant threw his knife into a wooded area. The defendant and Schulz returned to the defendant’s house and then took the police to where the defendant had thrown the knife. The defendant was subsequently arrested and convicted. This appeal followed.

I

The defendant first claims that the trial court improperly instructed the jury on his claim of self-defense. Specifically, the defendant claims that the trial court misled the jury by (1) marshaling the evidence in favor of the state, (2) improperly instructing the jury on the definition of the dwelling exception to his duty to retreat before using deadly force and (3) improperly instructing the jury on the “subjective-objective test” of self-defense.

[646]*646Additional facts are necessary to our resolution of these claims. The trial court instructed the jury on the defendant’s duty to retreat before using deadly force in self-defense. The trial court then instructed the jury that “there is an exception to the duty to retreat. Our law says that a person is not required to retreat if he is in his dwelling and he was not the initial aggressor. However, if both antagonists have the same dwelling, the defendant does have a duty to retreat .... Dwelling is defined as a building which is usually occupied by a person lodging therein at night, whether or not a person is actually present. A resident is one who resides in a place, one who dwells in a place for a period of some duration. The definition of dwelling requires usual customary or routine occupancy. In short, in the words of our Supreme Court, occupation for some period of duration.”

“In determining whether 41 Maher Avenue was the victim’s dwelling, you should look at whether he occupied this house for some period of duration at or about the time in question. . . . There was testimony in this case that the victim was married to Jane Adams, that he owned the house, that he had the key to the house, that because of difficulties they agreed that he would not stay there over the long weekends of Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, but that he would stay there Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or would be able to if he wished. Mrs. Adams testified that she did not always know, however, when he was coming or not coming. There is evidence that the incident in question occurred on October 12,1993, which was, I am informed, a Tuesday, which was one of the victim’s agreed days at the house.”

“Our standard of review in cases when the defendant claims that the instructions violate constitutional due process protection[s] is whether the jury instructions were so deficient that it was reasonably possible that [647]*647the jury was misled.” State v. Patterson, 35 Conn. App. 405, 416, 646 A.2d 258, cert. denied, 231 Conn. 930, 649 A.2d 254 (1994). “To pass constitutional muster, jury instructions must be correct in law, adapted to the issues in the case and sufficient to guide the jury in arriving at a verdict.” Id., 417.

A

The defendant claims that the trial court misled the jury by marshaling “the evidence solely in favor of the state and essentially taking away from the jury the factual question of whether 41 Maher Avenue was, in fact, [the victim’s] dwelling.”

Additional facts are necessary to our resolution of this claim. After the trial court instructed the jury on the dwelling exception to the duty to retreat, the defendant objected to the instruction, claiming that the trial court marshaled the evidence in favor of the state. The next day, the jury, after beginning its deliberations, requested a further “detailed explanation of self-defense.” The trial court granted the jury’s request and provided essentially the same charge, but did not marshal the evidence on the issue of whether 41 Maher Avenue was the victim’s dwelling. The trial court then instructed the jury to disregard any facts that it had provided in its initial charge and instructed the jury that only the jury’s recollection of the facts mattered when deliberating.

General Statutes § 53a-19 (a) provides that a person is justified in using deadly physical force upon another person to defend himself when the actor reasonably believes that another person is “(1) using or about to use deadly physical force, or (2) inflicting or about to inflict great bodily harm.” Nonetheless, “a person is not justified in using deadly physical force upon another person if he knows that he can avoid the necessity of using such force with complete safety (1) by retreating, except that the actor shall not be required to retreat if [648]*648he is in his dwelling . . . .” General Statutes § 53a-19 (b). The dwelling exception does not apply, however, if the actor is “threatened by another person who also dwells in the same place.” State v. Shaw, 185 Conn. 372, 379, 441 A.2d 561 (1981), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 1155, 102 S. Ct. 1027, 71 L. Ed. 2d 312 (1982).

“A trial court has broad discretion to comment on the evidence adduced in a criminal trial. ... A trial court often has not only the right, but also the duty to comment on the evidence.” (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Hernandez, 218 Conn. 458, 461-62, 590 A.2d 112 (1991).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
727 A.2d 780, 52 Conn. App. 643, 1999 Conn. App. LEXIS 130, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-adams-connappct-1999.