State v. Covington

Citations

• 335 Conn. 212

Syllabus

Under the statute (§ 29-35 (a)) making it a crime for any person to carry a pistol or revolver on his person outside of a dwelling house or place of business without a permit, the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that, inter alia, the barrel of the pistol or revolver the defendant was carrying is less than twelve inches in length. The defendant was convicted of carrying a pistol or revolver without a permit, among other crimes, in connection with an incident in which several gunshots emanated from an automobile that was occupied by the defendant and his friend, R, who owned the vehicle. Two people suffered gunshot wounds as a result of the shooting. Following the shooting, the defendant drove the vehicle to the residence of his girl- friend's family, where the sister of the defendant's girlfriend, C, observed R remove a handgun from his waistband and hand it to the defendant. At the defendant's trial, the state did not present direct, numerical evidence of the length of the barrel of the firearm that it alleged he had used in connection with the shooting, as the firearm was never recovered by the police, and none of the state's witnesses specifically described its barrel length. The jury, however, was presented with circumstantial evidence about the firearm, which included testimony from C and from a firearms examiner, W, who testified about his examination of the two bullets retrieved from the body of one of the victims. The defendant appealed from the judgment of conviction to the Appellate Court, which rejected the defendant's claim that there was insufficient evidence that he was carrying a firearm with a barrel length of less than twelve inches. On the granting of certification, the defendant appealed to this court. Held that the Appellate Court correctly concluded that there was suffi- cient evidence to sustain the defendant's conviction under § 29-35 (a), as the state presented sufficient, circumstantial evidence to permit the jury reasonably to con