The defendant appeals from the judgment of conviction, rendered after a jury trial, of burglary in the third degree in violation of General Statutes § SSa-lOS.
The jury could have reasonably found the following facts. On November 28, 1988, Robert Blesso left his condominium at 8 Crown Ridge in Newington and returned at about 3 p.m. When he arrived at his home, he found police officers investigating a possible breaking and entering at his address.
Blesso observed that the front door of his home exhibited signs of having been pried open. Upon further investigation, he discovered that a ring and a gold Seiko wristwatch were missing from a jewelry box that he kept in the second floor master bedroom.
Earlier that day at approximately noon, John Rossier, a self-employed concrete contractor, and his assist
Rossier ran to his truck, which was parked in front of the condominium unit, and pulled it into a position so as to cut off the Beretta. He observed the operator of the vehicle and recognized him as the person that had opened the front door of Blesso’s condominium. The driver of the Beretta rolled down the window to speak with Rossier, giving Rossier an opportunity to observe the driver clearly. Rossier followed the Beretta and obtained the vehicle license plate number. He then went to a construction trailer and asked the developer to notify the Newington police.
Peter Lavery, a member of the Newington police department, responded to the complaint. Lavery traced the license plate number of the Beretta to a vehicle belonging to Budget Car and Truck Rental in Windsor Locks. That vehicle had been rented several days before the incident by Cameron Tappin, the defendant’s brother.
On November 29,1988, Tappin came to the Newington police station at the request of Lavery. He was driving the Beretta. Tappin informed Lavery that on the day of the crime, he took public transportation from his home to his place of employment at the Sage-Allen
On the day following the incident, Rossier returned to Crown Ridge. At that time, he was shown a series of photographs and he picked out a photograph of the defendant, Michael Patterson, as being of the individual that he had seen in the doorway of Blesso’s condominium and as the person that was operating the Beretta.
Rossier made an in-court identification of the defendant as the person whom he had observed opening the door of Blesso’s condominium on November 28, 1988, and as the person whom he had observed operating the Beretta. Blesso testified that he did not know the defendant and that he had never given him permission to enter his premises.
The defendant was found guilty of burglary in the third degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-103, but not guilty of larceny in the fourth degree. He further pleaded guilty to being a persistent serious felony offender. This appeal followed.
I
The defendant first asserts that his conviction cannot be permitted to stand because the evidence produced against him was insufficient, as a matter of law, to sustain a conviction of the crime of burglary in the third degree. We disagree.
A
As a preliminary matter, we first turn our attention to the procedural posture of the case. The record discloses that, at the completion of the state’s case-in-chief,
Under our present rules, when a defendant puts on evidence after a denial of a motion for judgment of acquittal at the completion of the state’s case, he is deemed to have waived his right to appellate review as to the sufficiency of the evidence as it existed at the completion of the state’s case-in-chief. State v. Roy,
The defendant also failed to preserve properly his appellate right to a review of the sufficiency of the evidence at the conclusion of all of the evidence or after the rendition of the verdict of guilty by failing to move for judgment of acquittal at either of these times. See State v. Roy, supra,
The defendant posits, however, that in the event that we conclude, as we do, that he failed to preserve properly his claim of evidentiary insufficiency as to the entirety of the evidence, he is nonetheless entitled to review under a claim that due process of law under both the state and federal constitutions demands that no person be convicted on evidence that is not sufficient to establish each element of the offense charged beyond a reasonable doubt.
The defendant in his claim of evidentiary insufficiency focuses on that part of the burglary statute that requires that the state prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intended to commit a crime within the building. General Statutes § 53a-103 (a). The defendant posits that, since the jury acquitted him of the crime of larceny in the fourth degree, and since there was no evidence of an intent to commit a crime other than larceny, that the defendant could not properly be convicted of burglary since that would, under the facts of this case, be inconsistent with the fact of his acquittal on the larceny count. We are unpersuaded.
We begin our analysis by pointing out that burglary and larceny are two separate and distinct crimes. State v. Little,
‘When we are called on to review a sufficiency of the evidence claim, we impose a two part analysis. We first construe the evidence in the light most favorable to sustaining the verdict. State v. Salz,
The issue of the intent of the defendant is one of fact to be resolved by the jury. State v. Hoeplinger,
“The test for determining whether the evidence is sufficient to sustain a verdict is thus whether the [trier of fact] could have reasonably concluded, upon the facts established and the reasonable inferences drawn therefrom, that the cumulative effect of the evidence was sufficient to justify the verdict of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . State v. Rivera, supra, [
Our review of the evidence satisfies us that the evidence relating to the intent of the defendant to commit a crime within the building satisfies that test.
In considering the evidence introduced in a case, “[¡'juries are not required to leave common sense at the courtroom door”; State v. Maxwell,
In addition, we recognize that “ ‘[gjenerally, intent can only be proved by circumstantial evidence, and, being a mental state, it is proved by the conduct of that person whose conduct is being scrutinized.’ ” State v. Fields, supra,
Our review of the cumulative effect of the evidence and the reasonable and permissible inferences to be
“Common experience tells us that an [attempted] unlawful entry into a dwelling ... is not without purpose. Nor are people accustomed to [attempt] to enter homes of strangers [by using implements to pry open the door] for innocent purposes. To any person of ordinary intelligence, the expected by-product of a surreptitious unlawful entry into the home of another is theft.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 710, quoting State v. Zayas,
Our review of the evidence convinces us that there was more than sufficient evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intended to commit the crime of larceny within the building and that the defendant’s claim to the contrary is without merit.
II
The defendant next asserts that the trial court in its charge to the jury misstated the requisite mental state, failed to apprise the jury of the crime that the state
“Our standard of review in cases when the defendant claims that the instructions violate constitutional due process protection is whether the jury instructions were so deficient that it was reasonably possible that the jury was misled.” State v. Wolff, supra,
We must first determine whether the instructions given by the trial court were so defective as to implicate the constitutional right of the defendant to receive a fair trial. A charge to the jury conforms to the constitutional imperative if it provides the jurors with a “clear understanding of the elements of the crime charged, and affords them proper guidance for their determination of whether those elements were present.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Avila,
When we review jury instructions, we are obligated to view the charge itself in the context of the whole trial. State v. Wolff, supra,
We turn first to the assertion by the defendant that the charge was constitutionally defective because the trial court failed to charge the jury specifically as to the specific crime or crimes the evidence might show the defendant intended to commit and failed to explain the elements of such crimes. We are unpersuaded.
We have already set out the engine that drives our examination of this claim: whether it is reasonably possible, considering the charge as a whole, that the jury was misled. State v. Avila, supra,
Although in this instance the trial court did not explicitly instruct the jury as to the nature of the crimes that the jury could find that the defendant intended to commit within the building, the charge was not misleading. See State v. Smith,
We conclude, on the basis of our examination of the charge as a whole; State v. Avila, supra,
Our resolution of this issue should not be construed as an approval of the charge as given. As our Supreme Court has already pointed out in a similar situation, “[t]he better practice would have been to instruct the jury on the statutory names and definitions of specific crimes for which there was sufficient evidence of an intent to commit.” Id., 220.
We discuss the balance of the defendant’s unpreserved claims together. We conclude that the defendant cannot, with respect to the balance of his attacks on the jury charge, satisfy the third prong of State v. Golding, supra,
We have reviewed the charge as a whole as we are required to do. State v. Avila, supra,
The judgment is affirmed.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.
Notes
General Statutes § 53a-103 provides in pertinent part: “(a) A person is guilty of burglary in the third degree when he enters or remains unlawfully in a building with intent to commit a crime therein.”
The defendant raises no issue on appeal with respect to his plea to being a persistent serious felony offender.
The defendant failed to take a timely appeal from the judgment of conviction. Subsequently, the defendant sought a writ of habeas corpus and, as a result thereof, the habeas court ordered, by agreement of the parties, the restoration of the defendant’s appellate rights. This appeal followed. See Gibbs v. Mase,
Practice Book § 884 provides: “If the motion is made after the close of the prosecution’s case in chief, the judicial authority shall either grant or deny the motion before calling upon the defendant to present his case in chief. If the motion is not granted, the defendant may offer evidence without having reserved the right to do so.”
We note that a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict is not one cognizable under our rules of practice. See Practice Book §§ 897 through 905 for postjudgment motions recognized under our rules of practice and times for filing such motions.
The defendant claims that the insufficiency of the evidence violated his rights under both the state and federal constitutions. See U.S. Const., amend. XIV; Conn. Const., art. I, § 8. Since the defendant has failed to provide us with an independent analysis of the state constitutional claim, we decline to consider the state constitutional claim and shall limit our analysis to the relevant federal constitutional claim. State v. Hamilton,
We have concluded that the defendant failed to preserve properly his claim of evidentiary insufficiency, but that, as an alternative to proper preservation, he claims review pursuant to State v. Golding, supra,
The transcript reflects that the defendant affirmatively said that he had no exceptions to the charge. The record is devoid of any requests to charge filed on behalf of the defendant. See Practice Book § 852.
State v. Golding, supra,
We recognize, as we have previously said, that “[t]he first two conditions [of Golding review] are determinations of whether a defendant’s claim will be reviewed, and the third condition involves a review of the claim itself.” State v. Crosby,
See footnote 10.
