State v. Riccio

678 A.2d 981, 41 Conn. App. 847, 1996 Conn. App. LEXIS 320
CourtConnecticut Appellate Court
DecidedJune 25, 1996
Docket14545
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 678 A.2d 981 (State v. Riccio) 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. Riccio, 678 A.2d 981, 41 Conn. App. 847, 1996 Conn. App. LEXIS 320 (Colo. Ct. App. 1996).

Opinion

FOTI, J.

The defendant, Linda Riccio, appeals from the judgments of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of breach of the peace in violation of General Statutes § 53a-181 (a) (1), (3) and (5),1 and nine counts of harassment in the second degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-183 (a) (3).2 The defendant claims that the [849]*849trial court improperly admitted rebuttal testimony. In addition, the defendant claims that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the conviction for harassment in the second degree. We affirm the judgments of conviction.

The jury heard evidence from which the following facts reasonably could have been found. Sometime in 1991, the victim, Robert Baillargeon, who was renovating his house prior to occupying it, hired the defendant’s father, Giovanni Fabrizi, to install siding. At that time, the defendant was living with her husband and young daughter a few houses away from the victim’s house. During the renovation work, the defendant and the victim met and spoke briefly. After the victim moved into his house, the defendant began calling him on the telephone daily, asking him out on dates. Initially, the victim politely declined and informed the defendant that he was involved in a relationship with another person. The defendant thereafter informed the victim that her only interest was in having a sexual relationship with him. When the defendant’s demands became more persistent and she began yelling at the victim over the telephone and then hanging up on him, the victim’s refusals became less polite. The parties never dated or engaged in a physical relationship.

On the evening of May 16, 1993, the victim, who owned an Enfield deck hockey rink, and was a member of a team, drove to the rink with his fiancee. As the couple were en route to the rink, the defendant passed them in her car, made an obscene gesture3 and quickly drove away. Approximately five minutes later, the victim and his fiancee were walking in the parking lot of the rink toward a teammate of the victim who had also just arrived. As they approached him, the defendant drove her car quickly into the parking lot, stopped near [850]*850the couple, and shouted at them, “I’m going to kill you, you’re a fucking whore and you’re an asshole.”

When the victim arid his fiancee drove home after the game, the defendant drove her car behind the victim’s vehicle and flashed her high-beams on and off. As the victim prepared to make a left turn, the defendant’s car passed his on the right and quickly pulled in front of the victim’s car, forcing him to brake and turn. It appeared to the victim that the defendant was trying to force his car off the road or into the oncoming traffic. The defendant then sped off.

The victim and his fiancee immediately drove to the Enfield police station and filed a complaint against the defendant. Later that evening, the defendant went to the police station and admitted that she had threatened the victim in the parking lot of the hockey rink. On June 21,1993, the defendant was arrested on this complaint.

In the spring of 1994, the victim began receiving prank telephone calls on a regular basis at the hockey rink. These calls consisted of heavy breathing, laughing or silence. The victim lodged a complaint with the police because the calls were disrupting his business. Thereafter, a tap was placed on the telephone line from April 19 through May 4,1994. Nine prank calls were received at the rink during the month of April, all originating from the defendant’s father’s house. During this period, the defendant resided at that address and had access to the telephone from which the calls originated. At no time was her voice specifically recognized from any of the nine calls. Other adults lived at the address where the calls originated.

I

The defendant claims that the evidence is insufficient to convict her of the nine counts of harassment in the second degree because the state failed to prove identifi[851]*851cation, an essential element of the crime, beyond a reasonable doubt.

“We begin our analysis by restating the principles that guide and define the scope of our review. When called on to review a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction, we undertake a two part analysis. . . . First, we construe the evidence in the light most favorable to sustaining the verdict. Second, we determine whether upon the facts so construed and the inferences reasonably drawn therefrom the jury reasonably could have concluded that the cumulative force of the evidence established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Cintron, 39 Conn. App. 110, 118, 665 A.2d 95 (1995).

The issue of identification is a question of fact to be resolved by the jury. State v. Rivera, 32 Conn. App. 193, 202, 628 A.2d 996, cert. denied, 227 Conn. 920, 632 A.2d 698 (1993). Proof of the identification of the perpetrator of a crime may be shown by circumstantial rather than direct evidence. State v. Sparks, 39 Conn. App. 502, 515, 664 A.2d 1185 (1995). The probative force of the evidence is not diminished because it consists, in whole or in part, of evidence that is circumstantial. State v. Somerville, 214 Conn. 378, 390, 572 A.2d 944 (1990).

In assessing the credibility of the witnesses, the juiy had sufficient evidence, albeit circumstantial, to identify the defendant as the person who placed the harassing telephone calls to the victim from her father’s telephone. The jury had before it the background of the bizarre, threatening and volatile association between the defendant and the victim. The jury, as the sole judge of the credibility of the witnesses, heard the testimony of the victim, his fiancee and the defendant’s father. The defendant’s father testified that he did not make the harassing calls and that he had no reason to call the victim during that period of time when the calls [852]*852were placed. The evidence tended to show that no adult in the Fabrizi household, other than the defendant, had a reason or a motive, real or imagined, to make those calls. The victim and his fiancee testified to numerous incidents of harassment by the defendant during the previous two to three years, including numerous telephone calls to the victim after he continuously refused her advances. On the basis of this evidence, the jury could reasonably and logically have concluded as it did.

Our review of the defendant’s testimony discloses a witness, thirty-two years old, living with her father, blaming her father for the calls, comparing the victim and her father as controlling and hateful, and implying that this was a plot by her father to have her institutionalized. Her testimony was contradictory on many occasions and the jury was well within its rights to discredit some or all of her testimony. As this court has stated, “[i]n considering the evidence . . . juries are not required to leave common sense at the courtroom door . . . nor ...

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

James v. Commissioner of Corrections, No. Cv-96-0567683 (Jul. 6, 2001)
2001 Conn. Super. Ct. 9471 (Connecticut Superior Court, 2001)
State v. Vasquez
733 A.2d 856 (Connecticut Appellate Court, 1999)
State v. Ingram
687 A.2d 1279 (Connecticut Appellate Court, 1996)
State v. Riccio
682 A.2d 1011 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1996)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
678 A.2d 981, 41 Conn. App. 847, 1996 Conn. App. LEXIS 320, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-riccio-connappct-1996.