State v. Pollitt

508 A.2d 1, 199 Conn. 399, 1986 Conn. LEXIS 782
Supreme Court of Connecticut·Decided April 22, 1986·No. 12431·Published·Cited by 34 cases

Opinion

Arthur H. Healey, J.

The defendant, David M. Pollitt, was found guilty after a jury trial of the crime of kidnapping in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-92 (a) (2) (A)1 and of the crime of sexual assault in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-70 (a).2 This appeal followed.

The principal issue on appeal is whether the trial court erred in denying the defendant’s motions for a mistrial or a continuance where allegedly exculpatory material, which could show another person committed the crimes charged and which had been specifically requested and wrongfully withheld by the state, was discovered midtrial and the exculpatory witness could not be located on short notice. At trial the principal issue was the identity of the perpetrator of the crime. The defendant also claims that the trial court erred: (1) in failing to instruct the jury accurately on the [401] dangers of eyewitness identification; (2) in its manner of “marshalling” the evidence presented in its instructions; (3) in its admission of the evidence of his blood type; and (4) in denying his pretrial motions to suppress the victim’s identification. Because of our action on the principal issue, we need not discuss the remaining issues at this time. We remand for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.

Because of our determination to remand, a full recitation of the evidence before the jury is not necessary. The length of the trial and the number of witnesses who testified,3 however, does not permit us to capsulize those circumstances adduced at trial that demonstrate the background for our remand.

The following is some of the evidence that was adduced before the jury. On October 17, 1981, M, a twenty-five year old woman, left her Wallingford apartment at about 4:45 p.m. for a bicycle ride. She cycled past the defendant on Grieb Road near Durham Road and he yelled at her asking for directions. M stopped her bicycle, went back to him and asked him what he was looking for. He said: “I’m going to rape you, lady.” With his right hand and arm he grabbed her from “around [her] back” and grabbed her bicycle with his left hand. He dragged her and the bicycle off the road into the field where he discarded the bicycle. He then sexually assaulted her.

After the assault, she ran to the house across the street for help. Gail DeNegris opened the door, [402] whereupon M told her that she had just been sexually assaulted. DeNegris observed M’s disheveled clothing and a cut on the side of her nose and detected the odor of a man’s cologne. After a time, DeNegris called the Wallingford police at 5:39 p.m. Officer Thomas Francolino, who was dispatched by radio, was the first police officer to arrive at the DeNegris home. When he received the radio call to go there, he was approximately one and one-half to two miles away and it took him four minutes to get there. He arrived at approximately 5:43 p.m. He found the victim to be extremely distraught. Police officers located M’s bicycle in the field where it had been discarded. Fingerprints taken from the crossbar of the bicycle were later identified as those of the defendant.4

The police made inquiries in the area of the crime shortly after its commission. Beverly Steinberg, a state’s witness who was an area resident, said that she saw a dark green AMC Pacer automobile “sitting” on Grieb Road just before its intersection with Durham Road at “around 5:00 o’clock” on October 17, 1981.5 Roland Sperzel, a state’s witness who drove a truck transporting fill for construction on October 17,1981, made “fifteen, twenty trips” that day “going up Grieb Road or Durham Road and going around the corner past Grieb.” That day he saw “[a] Pacer, green ’76 to ’78” parked headed west on Durham Road where “usually they don’t park” sometime between 1 and 6 p.m. At one point he saw a “guy walking away from the car with a red flannel shirt on ... a plaid shirt.” [403] Asked to describe him, Sperzel said: “Five-five—six foot. But I was looking down at him so I really don’t know how tall he was. He was medium build” and his hair was brown. The teletype put out by Detective Sergeant William Butka described the assailant as, inter alia, a white male, “five-eight to five-nine with husky build” and with short brown hair parted in the middle. George Mellor and Joseph Stankwitz were witnesses produced by the defendant. Mellor’s home is on the corner of Grieb Road and Durham Road and he can see the 1-91 overpass from his home. He was outside his home on the afternoon of October 17,1981, probably from 4 p.m. to “5:30, maybe 6:00 p.m.” While his activities about the outside of his home did not permit him to view the overpass for all of that time, he never saw a parked motor vehicle on the overpass. Stankwitz, whose home is diagonally opposite from Mellor’s, had left his home on October 17,1981, about 3:30 p.m. and had driven over the 1-91 Durham overpass but did not see a vehicle parked there. Daryl Perkins, a defense witness, who lived on Old Durham Road across from the area known as “Three Fields,” testified that on October 17,1981, he saw a white car parked in Three Fields about “[p]robably 5:00 o’clockish in the afternoon” or “[f]ive or six at the latest.” He did not see anybody around the car and acknowledged that it was not uncommon to see cars parked at that place. He saw hunters “go over there” and that date was during “hunting season time.” Mrs. Agostini, another defense witness, testified that on October 17,1981, she was driving to her home on Durham Road about 5 or 5:30 p.m. from her usual hairdressing appointment. As she proceeded easterly on Grieb Road and before she came to the 1-91 Durham overpass, she noticed a “kind of battered” lime green car that “wasn’t new” parked about five feet off the road near a large cornfield. She also said that she saw no one near the car—that hunt [404] ers go into that particular cornfield and that it was the hunting season at that time. She saw no cars parked on Durham Road as she proceeded to her home.

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State v. Pollitt, 508 A.2d 1, 199 Conn. 399, 1986 Conn. LEXIS 782 (Colo. 1986).

508 A.2d 1 (State v. Pollitt) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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