State v. Johnson

Citations

• 351 Conn. 53

Syllabus

Convicted of two counts of murder and one count of assault in the first degree, among other crimes, in connection with the shooting of multiple victims, the defendant appealed to this court. The defendant claimed that the evidence was insufficient to defeat his claims of self-defense and defense of others with respect to the murder of one of the murder victims, W, and that the trial court improperly denied his request to admit evidence that another victim, T, previously had been convicted in New Jersey of the crime of arson to demonstrate T's violent character. Held: The evidence was sufficient to defeat the defendant's claims of self-defense and defense of others with respect to the murder of W. The defendant did not contest the sufficiency of the evidence to defeat his justification defenses with respect to his shooting of certain other victims, the evidence plainly demonstrated that those shootings, as well as the shoot- ing of W, were part of a single, continuous episode occurring at the same location and time, and the jury reasonably could have credited testimony that W was acting defensively, rather than offensively toward the defendant, in an unsuccessful effort to protect one of the other victims from the defen- dant's violent assault. Any error in the trial court's exclusion of evidence of T's New Jersey arson conviction was harmless, as that evidence would not have substantially swayed the jury's verdict. There was no evidence that T was armed or the aggressor in the shootings, although the facts underlying T's arson conviction were not reflected in the record, the fact that T intentionally had set fire to a building or structure at some point in time for some unknown purpose did not make it more likely that he would use a firearm with the intent to kill or to inflict serious bodily injury, and there was abundant evidence to support a finding that, even if T had been the aggressor during the confrontation, the defendant had a duty to retreat. Argued Novemb