State v. Schroff

536 A.2d 952, 206 Conn. 182, 1988 Conn. LEXIS 23
CourtSupreme Court of Connecticut
DecidedFebruary 2, 1988
Docket13081
StatusPublished
Cited by25 cases

This text of 536 A.2d 952 (State v. Schroff) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Connecticut primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Schroff, 536 A.2d 952, 206 Conn. 182, 1988 Conn. LEXIS 23 (Colo. 1988).

Opinion

Arthur H. Healey, J.

The defendant, William B. Schroff III, was found guilty, after a trial before a jury, of the crime of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a.1 This appeal followed.

Prior to trial, the defendant moved to suppress all the statements that he had made to law enforcement officials between May 30, 1983, and July 11, 1984. These statements, nine in number, were made on September 12, 1983, September 21, 1983, September 26, [184]*1841983, December 6, 1983, March 8, 1984, March 21, 1984, May 1, 1984, June 29, 1984, and July 11, 1984. The trial court denied the motion as to the statements of September 12, 1983, and September 21,1983, finding, inter alia, that they were voluntarily given. It granted the motion as to all the other statements except as to a portion of the June 29, 1984 statement. In granting suppression, it found that they were involuntary, involving improper promises and inducements by the state police.

On appeal, the sole issue raised by the defendant is that the trial court erred in not suppressing as involuntary that portion of his June 29, 1984 statement given to state police detectives Michael Graham and James Cavanaugh when they showed him photos of the grave site of the murder victim, Laura Hill. We find no error in the trial court’s ruling denying suppression. In resolving this appeal, we find it necessary to go into the circumstances of all the statements given because of the essential position of the parties on this question.

On July 10, 1982, Laura Hill disappeared from the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in West Haven, which she had entered in June, 1982. On June 27, 1984, her body was discovered by the state police buried under a pile of rocks in a wooded area off Mount Parnassus Road in East Haddam.

On May 30,1983, the defendant, while incarcerated at the New Haven Correctional Center on an unrelated charge, approached corrections officer Clifford Ewalt. He told Ewalt that he had been watching television every night and that he “was waiting for them to find the other body,” “that it was about time that they find the other body.” The defendant then proceeded to give Ewalt directions on where to find a body. While the defendant was giving these directions, Ewalt was drawing a map. He told Ewalt that he had buried a body [185]*185there, and that Ewalt was to go out and locate the body and come back and tell him that he had done so. After his shift had concluded, Ewalt, following the directions given to him, ended up in a wooded area off Mount Parnassus Road in East Haddam. When he arrived in East Haddam, Ewalt notified the state police, who responded, and Ewalt gave the map to one of the officers, who searched the area and took his statement. No body was found at that time.

In June, 1983, the defendant, who was still being held in a pretrial status, had been transferred to the Hartford Correctional Center. On June 27, 1983, he asked to talk to deputy warden Frank Crose at that facility to discuss a transfer back to the New Haven Correctional Center. Dissatisfied with an apparent offer by the state of “fifty years” concerning the trial that was imminent,2 he indicated to Crose that “if the state police would give him a five minute head start, he would show them where a body was buried in the woods.”

On July 5, 1983, the defendant, while in the New Haven courthouse to answer other pending charges, escaped from the courthouse but was recaptured later that day by a New Haven police officer. When that officer apprehended him, the defendant said: “[I]f you give me five minutes head start I’ll take you where one of the bodies is buried.”3 He also indicated to this officer that he had observed a girl around the Veterans’ [186]*186Administration Hospital in West Haven and that he had picked her up in his van. They “[wound] up somewhere in Haddam or Higganum” where the girl was buried. He also indicated to this officer that a third person, a friend of his, had committed this murder and that the defendant had assisted with the burial.

On September 9,1983, the defendant was sentenced in New Haven on unrelated charges. State police officers Paul Cusson and William Guida, Jr., were present in the court at the time of sentencing. Both officers went to the holding area to see the defendant who had asked to speak to them. After he asked the officers for their names and where he could contact them, they gave him their business cards. He told them that he was going to give them information on something. Nothing further took place at that time.

On September 12, 1983,4 Cusson and Guida went to the state correctional institution at Somers to see the defendant. They did so because Somers officials had contacted them indicating that the defendant wanted to talk with them. The defendant signed a “willingness to be interviewed” form in order to speak with them on that occasion. On that date, he gave the officers general information about unrelated matters and also inquired whether they knew anything about a Laura Hill, a missing person from West Haven, who, he said, “might [have been] missing in either June or July, 1982.” This was the first time that the defendant had referred to the victim by name. He indicated that he wanted the state to prosecute him “to the fullest so [that if] he had a chance to [escape] at any time during transportation, he would attempt to . ...” At that time, the matter was “left” that the defendant “wanted [the officers] to return with any information concerning what he had told [them] already.”

[187]*187On September 21, 1983, Guida and Cusson returned to Somers to see the defendant. Prior to this date, they had verified that Laura Hill had been at Veterans’ Administration Hospital in West Haven and that the last time that she had been seen was in early July, 1982. In addition, prior to returning, the police, aware of Ewait’s information and in possession of Ewait’s map, had tried unsuccessfully to locate the grave site in East Haddam. The defendant again signed a consent form on September 21, 1983, to meet with the officers. Guida told the defendant that they had verified that Laura Hill was missing; the defendant told them that they could not “find her” unless he was with them. At the suppression hearing, Guida said that it would be fair to say that after this interview he was “interested” in the defendant as a suspect in the Hill case as well as an unrelated case involving the disappearance of another woman.

Guida and Cusson returned to Somers on September 26, 1983, to talk to the defendant. He signed another consent form to permit them to speak with him, as well as a written waiver of his Miranda rights. Unlike the prior interviews, however, this interview was tape recorded; the defendant was not “specifically” made aware that the conversation was being taped. The defendant was upset with the officers because they had not located the body from the information he had already given them. He indicated rather that he felt that they had located it and were not telling him but were more or less “stringing him along” to get more information from him. The officers told him that they had to obtain more information from him to give to their superiors, “something concrete,” to show what he was telling the officers “was in good faith.” The defendant indicated that if he were taken out, he did not want handcuffs or shackles and that he would like to have the “opportunity to escape or take off.” More

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

Related

Commonwealth v. Michael A. Hand
Massachusetts Appeals Court, 2024
State v. Wallace
962 A.2d 781 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 2009)
State v. Luurtsema
811 A.2d 223 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 2002)
State of Connecticut v. Alex Sostre.
2002 Conn. Super. Ct. 13521 (Connecticut Superior Court, 2002)
State v. Sostre
831 A.2d 844 (Connecticut Superior Court, 2002)
State v. Ritrovato, No. Cr00-0080383 (Jul. 30, 2002)
2002 Conn. Super. Ct. 9704 (Connecticut Superior Court, 2002)
State v. Walker, No. Cr96-0090077-T (Sep. 28, 2000)
2000 Conn. Super. Ct. 11974 (Connecticut Superior Court, 2000)
State v. Banks
755 A.2d 279 (Connecticut Appellate Court, 2000)
State v. Johnson
751 A.2d 298 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 2000)
State v. Watts, No. Cr98-525500 (Apr. 13, 2000)
2000 Conn. Super. Ct. 4421 (Connecticut Superior Court, 2000)
Baillargeon v. Warden, No. 538355 (Jan. 31, 2000)
2000 Conn. Super. Ct. 1334 (Connecticut Superior Court, 2000)
State v. Rodriguez
741 A.2d 326 (Connecticut Appellate Court, 1999)
State v. Pinder
736 A.2d 857 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1999)
State v. Correa
696 A.2d 944 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1997)
State v. James
678 A.2d 1338 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1996)
State v. Grant
637 A.2d 1116 (Connecticut Appellate Court, 1994)
State v. Jackson
613 A.2d 846 (Connecticut Appellate Court, 1992)
State v. Roseboro
604 A.2d 1286 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1992)
State v. Curley
595 A.2d 352 (Connecticut Appellate Court, 1991)
State v. Rosado
588 A.2d 1066 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1991)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
536 A.2d 952, 206 Conn. 182, 1988 Conn. LEXIS 23, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-schroff-conn-1988.