STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. ANDRE GILL
(AC 39841)
Appellate Court of Connecticut
November 7, 2017
DiPentima, C. J., and Alvord and Kahn, Js.*
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Syllabus
Convicted, after a jury trial, of, inter alia, the crime of murder in connection with an incident in which the defendant shot the victim in the parking lot of a nightclub, the defendant appealed, claiming that there was insufficient evidence to prove the specific intent element necessary to support his murder conviction. Held that the state presented sufficient evidence from which the jury reasonably could have inferred that the defendant intended to cause the victim‘s death to support the defendant‘s conviction of murder: the evidence and testimony presented by the state demonstrated that the victim had grabbed the defendant by the throat during a fight inside the nightclub and that the dispute continued in the club‘s parking lot, where the defendant yelled at the victim, got out of his car with a revolver as the victim walked toward the car, and fired the revolver directly at the victim, striking him in his torso, just below the breastbone; moreover, there was ample evidence of the defendant‘s conduct after the shooting from which the jury could have inferred an intent to kill, as the defendant displayed a consciousness of guilt by cleaning the revolver and another gun involved in the incident with bleach to remove any fingerprints or DNA, asking his brother‘s friend to dispose of the guns, and making untruthful statements to the police.
Argued September 13—officially released November 7, 2017
Procedural History
Substitute information charging the defendant with the crimes of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, criminal possession of a firearm, carrying a revolver without a permit, tampering with a witness, false statement in the second degree and tampering with evidence, brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of Hartford and tried to the jury before Dewey, J.; thereafter, the charge of criminal possession of a firearm was tried to the court; verdict and judgment of guilty of murder, criminal possession of a firearm, carrying a revolver without a permit, false statement in the second degree and tampering with evidence; subsequently, the court denied the defendant‘s motion for a judgment of acquittal, and the defendant appealed. Affirmed.
Jennifer F. Miller, deputy assistant state‘s attorney, with whom, on the brief,
Opinion
ALVORD, J. The defendant, Andre Gill, appeals from the judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of murder in violation of
The following facts, which the jury reasonably could have found, are relevant to the defendant‘s appeal. On the night of November 18, 2011, the defendant drove his Acura with his friend Charles Young to a nightclub in Hartford, Mi Bar, to perform rap music. At the time, the defendant lived at his grandmother‘s house with his children and others, including Young. A few days earlier, the house had been invaded, and the defendant‘s daughter and Young were tied up. After the home invasion, the defendant asked his brother‘s friend, Antoine Armour, to bring a gun to the house for protection. Armour provided the defendant with a .38 caliber Taurus revolver and a .380 caliber semiautomatic handgun. Armour also gave the defendant ammunition.
Initially, the defendant did not bring the guns to Mi Bar on November 18, 2011. After seeing people in the nightclub whom he knew to be associated with the home invasion, however, he returned to his grandmother‘s house with Young to retrieve the two guns. They then returned to Mi Bar, left the guns in the defendant‘s car, and reentered the nightclub.
During a performance by Arkeit Iverson, the sound system in the nightclub malfunctioned, at which point a fight broke out. The performer at the time, Iverson, was a cousin of the victim, Fred Pines. Iverson began pushing through the crowd, which included the defendant and the defendant‘s cousin, to reach the disc jockey. The defendant tried to stop Iverson from reaching the disc jockey, at which time the victim grabbed the defendant by the throat. The fight was captured on video, which was played for the jury during the evidentiary portion of the trial.
After the fight, people began running out of the nightclub into the parking lot, where the argument continued. The defendant testified that he was “having some words” with the victim in the parking lot. According to Young, the defendant went back to his car and got into the driver‘s seat, and Young got into the passenger‘s seat. The defendant began to drive out of the parking lot, but stopped to roll down his window and yell at the victim. The victim walked toward the car, at which time the defendant got out of the car. Young also got out of the car with the .380
The defendant and Young met back at the defendant‘s grandmother‘s house, and the defendant called his brother, Morgan Gill, and Armour to ask them to get rid of the guns. The defendant, Morgan Gill, and Armour first cleaned the guns with bleach to remove any fingerprints or DNA. Armour then left with the guns and dumped them in the Connecticut River. The next morning the defendant and Young learned that the victim had died. Harold Wayne Carver, the chief medical examiner at the time of the shooting who had conducted the autopsy of the victim, concluded that the victim died as a result of a single gunshot wound to his trunk.2 The bullet entered the victim‘s trunk close to the bottom of the breastbone, caused damage to the right lung, and passed through the diaphragm.
On November 19, 2011, the day after the shooting, the defendant went to the police station and voluntarily gave a written statement, in which he stated that he saw Young with a gun and that Young “pulled up and fired.” He also falsely told the police during that interview that he went to Mi Bar alone on the night of November 18, 2011, because, he explained later, he “did not want to be associated with somebody who made a stupid decision.” The defendant thereafter was arrested, charged with murder, among other crimes, tried before the jury, and convicted.3 The court sentenced the defendant to a total effective term of fifty years of incarceration. This appeal followed.
The defendant claims that there was insufficient evidence presented at trial to convict him of murder. Specifically, he argues that the state failed to present sufficient evidence that he had intended to cause the victim‘s death, and, therefore, his conviction of murder cannot stand. We are not persuaded.
We first set forth our standard of review and the legal principles relevant to a claim of evidentiary insufficiency. “In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence to support a criminal conviction we apply a two-part test. 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 [finder of fact] reasonably could have concluded that the cumulative force of the evidence established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Franklin, 175 Conn. App. 22, 30, 166 A.3d 24 (2017).
“While the jury must find every element proven beyond a reasonable doubt in order to find the defendant guilty of the charged offense, each of the basic and inferred facts underlying those conclusions need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . If it is reasonable and logical
“Moreover, it does not diminish the probative force of the evidence that it consists, in whole or in part, of evidence that is circumstantial rather than direct. . . . It is not one fact, but the cumulative impact of a multitude of facts which establishes guilt in a case involving substantial circumstantial evidence. . . . In evaluating evidence, the [finder] of fact is not required to accept as dispositive those inferences that are consistent with the defendant‘s innocence. . . . The [finder of fact] may draw whatever inferences from the evidence or facts established by the evidence it deems to be reasonable and logical.” (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. White, 127 Conn. App. 846, 850, 17 A.3d 72, cert. denied, 302 Conn. 911, 27 A.3d 371 (2011). “On appeal, we do not ask whether there is a reasonable view of the evidence that would support a reasonable hypothesis of innocence. We ask, instead, whether there is a reasonable view of the evidence that supports the [finder of fact‘s] verdict of guilty.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Crespo, 317 Conn. 1, 17, 115 A.3d 447 (2015).
The defendant‘s contention on appeal is that, on the basis of the evidence presented, the jury could have concluded that he had committed manslaughter, not murder.4 The defendant seeks to distinguish the facts of this case from the facts in cases in which our courts have found sufficient evidence of intent to kill the victim. He emphasizes the fact that he fired only a single shot and that the victim did not know that he had been injured. He claims that if he really had intended to kill the victim, he “could have fired another shot” after the victim seemed unhurt by the first shot. He further argues that the fight in the nightclub prior to the shooting was not “serious” enough to permit the jury to infer an intent to kill the victim. Lastly, the defendant claims that his conduct after the shooting, including but not limited to cleaning the guns and asking Armour to get rid of the guns, reflected “a consciousness of guilt of assault and, later, of manslaughter, not murder.”
The state also presented evidence regarding the events leading to the shooting from which the jury reasonably could have inferred the defendant‘s intent to cause the victim‘s death. There was evidence of a fight inside the nightclub, during which the victim grabbed the defendant by the throat. Moreover, there was evidence that the argument continued in the parking lot. The defendant testified that he and the victim were “having some words.” Young testified that the defendant had stopped his car on the way out of the parking lot to yell at the victim and that the defendant got out of the car with the revolver as the victim walked toward the car. Although the defendant seeks to characterize the dispute as a “scuffle” and argues that prior cases “have involved much more serious disputes,” our Supreme Court has stated that “[t]he jury is not required to close its eyes to the unfortunate reality that murders frequently are committed in response to seemingly minor provocations.” State v. Gary, 273 Conn. 393, 408, 869 A.2d 1236 (2005).
There also was ample evidence of the defendant‘s conduct after the shooting from which the jury reasonably could have drawn an inference of his intent to kill the victim. The defendant himself testified that he called Armour after the shooting to get rid of the gun.5 Armour and Young both testified that the defendant cleaned the guns with bleach or household cleaners after the shooting. Detective Joseph Fargnoli of the Hartford Police Department testified that the defendant told him that he had cleaned the guns to remove any fingerprints or DNA. Moreover, the defendant acknowledged making untruthful statements to the police after the murder. Our Supreme Court has concluded that “consciousness of guilt evidence [is] part of the evidence from which a jury may draw an inference of an intent to kill.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Otto, supra, 305 Conn. 73; see also State v. Moye, supra, 119 Conn. App. 150 (“[a] trial court may admit [e]vidence that an accused has taken some kind of evasive action to avoid detection for a crime, such as flight, concealment of evidence, or a false statement, [which] is ordinarily the basis for a charge on the inference of consciousness of guilt” [internal quotation marks omitted]).
To the extent that the defendant requests this court to draw inferences contrary to those necessarily drawn by the
Mindful of our standard of review, which requires us to view the evidence in the light most favorable to sustaining the jury‘s verdict, we reject the defendant‘s claim and conclude that there was sufficient evidence presented at trial to support the defendant‘s conviction of murder.
The judgment is affirmed.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.
* The listing of judges reflects their seniority status on this court as of the date of oral argument.