State v. Mekoshvili

Citations

• 195 Conn. App. 154

Syllabus

Convicted, following a jury trial, of the crime of murder in connection with the stabbing death of the victim, the defendant appealed, claiming, inter alia, that the trial court erred by admitting certain testimony from the victim's wife and the victim's business partner, A. The victim, a taxi cab driver, was stabbed to death during his evening shift on a Tuesday night, and money was stolen from the taxi's glove compartment. During the trial, the victim's wife stated that on the night of the victim's murder, he returned home briefly to retrieve money to pay for his portion of a certain taxi fee and to send money to his family overseas. A testified that the victim regularly placed his portion of the taxi fee in the glove compartment on Tuesday nights for A to pay the following day. Held: 1. The defendant could not prevail on his claim that the wife's testimony regarding statements made to her by the victim was irrelevant as to whether the defendant killed the victim or whether he acted with crimi- nal intent; the wife's testimony regarding the victim's statements reason- ably could have made it more likely that the defendant had a financial motive in killing the victim and less likely that the killing was the result of self-defense, as claimed by the defendant, and the defendant's claim that the victim's statements to his wife were self-serving and backward looking and, thus, did not satisfy the state of mind exception to the hearsay rule was unavailing, as the victim's statement to his wife indi- cated his intention to take money to pay the taxi company in the immedi- ate future, and although the part of the statement indicating that he had taken money for that purpose was retrospective, it provided context as for the expression of his intention to pay his taxi fees and send money to his family, and at the time the victim made those statements to his wife, no crime had been committed nor was one foreseeable. 2. The defendant could not prevail on his claim that the t