State v. Kyle A.

Citations

• 212 Conn. App. 239

Syllabus

Convicted, after a jury trial, of various crimes in connection with an alterca- tion with his brother, A, the defendant appealed to this court. The defendant called A on the phone, and, during that call, A was given reason to believe that the defendant had been consuming alcohol. The defendant expressed his intent to go to A's home, where A lived with his minor daughter. A warned the defendant that he could not come to the home if he was intoxicated because A's daughter was with him. Later that day, while A and his girlfriend, T, were inside of the home, the defendant arrived. The defendant, who did not have a key to the home, banged on the locked front door, and then broke a window on the locked back door and entered the home. A and T fled the home through the front door. The defendant, brandishing a wooden baseball bat, emerged from the home and began to strike A's automobile, which was parked in the driveway, with the bat. The defendant also used the bat to damage property inside of the home. Held: 1. The defendant could not prevail on his claim that the state presented insufficient evidence that he committed burglary in the first degree: the state's theory of the case, that the defendant entered or remained unlawfully in the victim's home, was legally viable as the defendant's entry into the home was unlawful because A, who was occupying the home, testified that the defendant was not a resident of the home at the time of the incident, that A and his daughter resided there, and that A had communicated to the defendant that he was not permitted to enter the home and, although the defendant claimed that he was granted a license to enter the home by J, his mother and the undisputed owner of the home, this claim rested entirely on the credibility of J's testimony, which was challenged at trial, and this court presumed that the jury, the sole arbiter of the credibility of the witnesses, disbelieved J's testi- mony to the extent that she testified that she gave the def