State v. Spells

818 A.2d 808, 76 Conn. App. 67, 2003 Conn. App. LEXIS 144
CourtConnecticut Appellate Court
DecidedApril 8, 2003
DocketAC 22730
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 818 A.2d 808 (State v. Spells) 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. Spells, 818 A.2d 808, 76 Conn. App. 67, 2003 Conn. App. LEXIS 144 (Colo. Ct. App. 2003).

Opinion

Opinion

WEST, J.

The defendant, Charles Spells, appeals from the judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of three counts of robbery in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-134 (a) (4), and one count of conspiracy to commit robbeiy in the first degree in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a-48 and 53a-134 (a) (4). On appeal, the defendant claims that the trial court improperly (1) refused to grant his request for a continuance, in violation of his constitutional right to a fair trial and in abuse of its discretion, (2) denied his motions for a new trial and to reargue, and failed to recuse itself sua sponte from considering the motions, (3) denied his motion to suppress his statement to the police, and (4) refused to instruct the jury to find him not guilty on count two of the information and denied his postverdict motion for a judgment of acquittal on that count. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The jury reasonably could have found the following facts. On October 20,2000, the defendant and an accomplice entered the Cumberland Farms convenience store on Watertown Avenue in Waterbury. Both men were [70]*70dressed in black and wore masks to conceal their identities. The taller man carried a shotgun, and the defendant carried a handgun. The men took $400 from the cash register. The defendant ordered a customer, Edgar Sandoval, to give him his money. When Sandoval did not respond quickly enough, the defendant struck him with the handgun and took the man’s wallet from his trousers. The defendant became angry because the wallet contained only $2 and threw it to the floor.

The taller man ordered the clerk to open the store safe. The clerk, however, did not have the key to the safe. The defendant told his accomplice to shoot the clerk. Lesley Sandoval, another customer, was scared. She gave the defendant the keys to her motor vehicle and informed him that there was more than $300 in the vehicle. The two men took the keys and left in the Sandoval vehicle.

The clerk and Edgar Sandoval could not identify the perpetrators of the crime because the men were wearing masks. They, however, provided general descriptions of the men. Both were African-American. One was about five feet, seven inches tall and in his midtwenties; the other was approximately six feet tall. These descriptions fit the defendant and his accomplice, respectively. The police found the Sandoval vehicle abandoned in a nearby parking lot and Lesley Sandoval’s purse in a nearby street. More than $300 in cash and a laptop computer were missing from the vehicle. The police also found a black neoprene mask that contained several strands of head hair in the vehicle.

On October 24, 2000, the police received a telephone call that led them to consider the defendant a suspect in the case. The police found the defendant at his apartment. He agreed to accompany them to the police station, where he confessed to the crime and implicated [71]*71James Butler as his accomplice.1 In giving his statement to the police, the defendant provided details of the crime of which only a participant would be aware. He knew where the Sandoval vehicle had been abandoned and told the police that the keys had been thrown into a wooded area behind the vehicle. The police subsequently found the keys where the defendant said they would be. Later that day, the police executed a search warrant of the defendant’s apartment and found several black masks. One of the masks was identified by Edgar Sandoval as being similar to the one worn by the person who had robbed and assaulted him. After the defendant gave the police officers his statement, he accompanied and directed the officers to a residence where he believed Butler could be found. The defendant voluntarily provided samples of hair from his head to be compared with the hair found on the mask.

I

The defendant’s first claim is that the court, Damiani, J., abused its discretion and denied him his constitutional right to due process and a fair trial by denying his request for a continuance so that scientific testing could be conducted of various samples of human hair. We disagree.

The following facts are relevant to the defendant’s claim. On March 20, 2001, the defendant filed a motion for a speedy trial pursuant to the statute applicable to sentenced prisoners having charges pending against them. See General Statutes § 54-82c. The jury for the defendant’s trial was selected on May 11, 2001. At that time, the prosecutor informed the venire panel that personnel from the state crime laboratory would testify [72]*72about hair samples taken from the neoprene mask, the defendant and Butler. The prosecutor informed defense counsel that the results of the testing would be made available as soon as possible and before the defendant’s motion to suppress was to be argued on May 18, 2001.

On May 14, 2001, the prosecutor informed defense counsel that he had just learned that the hair found on the mask and the hair sample provided by the defendant had not been sent to the state crime laboratory because the police had failed to obtain a search warrant for a sample of Butler’s hair.2 On May 15, 2001, defense counsel filed a motion to dismiss or, in the alternative, for sanctions against the state for disclosing, after jury selection, that there was no scientific evidence that would demonstrate that the hair found on the mask in the Sandoval vehicle “did not belong to either the defendant or Butler.”

The court held a hearing on the defendant’s motion and denied the motion to dismiss. The court stated that the prosecutor would have to try the case without the results of the scientific testing because the defendant had filed a speedy trial motion and that the court would not delay the trial. The court imposed no alternative sanctions on the state.

Defense counsel then requested a continuance to have the comparative testing performed on the samples of hair obtained from the defendant, Butler and the mask at the expense of the public defender’s office. The court questioned whether it could order Butler to submit a sample of his hair without the state’s making that request in the case against Butler as required by our rules of practice.3 Noting that there was not enough [73]*73time to obtain DNA testing of the samples, the court denied the defendant’s motion for a continuance.

The defendant renewed his motion for a continuance, arguing that DNA testing was not needed and that microscopic testing alone could determine whether the hair on the mask matched the defendant’s or Butler’s type of hair. He stated that the hair from the mask appeared to be Negroid head hair and that the defendant was a mulatto with Caucasian head hair. The court ordered the state to determine whether the hair on the neoprene mask was Negroid or Caucasian. The court denied the defendant’s renewed motion for a continuance.

On May 18, 2001, after the state had rested its case-in-chief, the results of a microscopic examination became available. The results indicated that the sample from the mask was Negroid hair and that the defendant’s hair was Caucasian.4 Counsel stipulated that evidence of the test results would be presented to the jury. After the defense rested, the prosecutor informed the jury that the hair found on the neoprene mask was Negroid and that the defendant’s hair was Caucasian.5

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
818 A.2d 808, 76 Conn. App. 67, 2003 Conn. App. LEXIS 144, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-spells-connappct-2003.