State v. Ervin B.

Citations

• 202 Conn. App. 1

Syllabus

Convicted of the crime of threatening in the second degree, the defendant appealed to this court. The defendant allegedly was involved in a domes- tic disturbance during which he stabbed his wife in the leg. Over the defendant's objection, the trial court admitted portions of his wife's hearsay statement to a police officer that the defendant ''was gonna continue to hurt her more.'' Neither the defendant nor his wife testified at trial. The defendant claimed that the evidence was insufficient to support a finding that he made a physical threat to his wife, a necessary element of threatening in the second degree in violation of statute (§ 53a- 62 (a) (1)). Held that the evidence was not sufficient to support the defendant's conviction of threatening in the second degree in violation of § 53a-62 (a) (1), there having been insufficient evidence to support the conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant made a physical threat to his wife: the state presented no direct evidence to the jury that the defendant had threatened his wife, either through words or some nonverbal expression, with imminent future harm; moreover, the state's argument that the jury reasonably could have inferred a threat from other evidence was unavailing, as the fact that evidence existed from which the jury could have concluded that the defendant had recently assaulted his wife, without more, was insufficient to support an inference that he necessarily made a threat of future violence, his wife's statement that he ''was gonna continue to hurt her more'' did not connect her subjective fear of future harm to any particular act, expression or communication by the defendant, nor was there evidence that she complained of a threat, that other people heard threatening words or observed threatening behavior, or that the police inquired about a potential threat; furthermore, the jury was not permitted to speculate that a threat had been made solely on the basis of her assertion of fear, and, as