State v. Richey

Citations

• 226 Conn. App. 234

Syllabus

The defendant, who had been convicted, following a jury trial, of the crime of threatening in the second degree, appealed to this court, claiming that there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction and that the trial court erred in refusing to provide the jury with an instruction on defense of premises. The victim, P, was a state marshal who had entered the defendant's property to serve the defendant with court documents in a civil matter. P was accompanied by a state trooper, O, whose body camera recorded the interaction between the defendant and P. The defendant repeatedly told P that P had previously been told not to trespass on his property and, after P had returned to his vehicle, stood outside the vehicle door and stated, inter alia, that ''you're going to get a bullet in your head,'' and ''I'll go to jail. I don't give a shit.'' At trial, the state introduced testimony from O and P and O's body camera footage. Held: 1. The defendant could not prevail on his claim that the evidence was insufficient to sustain his conviction because his statements did not constitute true threats: a reasonable person would have foreseen that P would interpret the defendant's statements as a serious threat of harm or assault, as, inter alia, the defendant asserted during the interaction that he was willing to accept the consequences of carrying out his threats, and P's behavior in bringing O with him to serve the documents and in remaining in his car once the defendant became confrontational demonstrated that he took the defendant's threats seriously; moreover, the defendant's assertion that his threatened violence was allegedly not imminent and was premised on a contingent future event was unpersua- sive because those conditions are not a requirement for a true threat. 2. The trial court properly denied the defendant's request to provide the jury with an instruction on defense of premises; the defendant failed to meet his burden of production to provide evidence that