State v. Russaw

Citations

• 213 Conn. App. 311

Syllabus

Convicted of the crime of conspiracy to commit murder as a result of a drive-by shooting during which an unintended person rather than the intended victim was fatally shot, the defendant appealed. He claimed, inter alia, that his conviction was legally insufficient because the state relied on the doctrine of transferred intent to prove the conspiracy charge and because it is legally impossible to conspire to kill an unin- tended victim. The state, which also charged the defendant with murder, alleged that the defendant had intended to kill a member of a rival gang but, instead, fatally shot the unintended victim, and the trial court, in its instructions to the jury, stated that the doctrine of transferred intent applied to both the murder charge and the charge of conspiracy to commit murder. Held: 1. The defendant could not prevail on his unpreserved claim that his convic- tion of conspiracy to commit murder is legally insufficient, which was based on his assertion that the doctrine of transferred intent does not apply to the crime of conspiracy, and, thus, he was deprived of his right to due process because it is legally impossible to conspire to kill an unintended victim: the state did not rely on the doctrine of transferred intent, as that theory bore no relevance to the conspiracy charge because it made no difference whether the rival gang member or the unintended third party was killed, and the state alleged and proved the elements of the conspiracy charge, which were the agreement to kill the rival gang member and the overt act of firing the gunshot intended for the gang member in furtherance of that agreement; moreover, the trial court's jury instruction on transferred intent did not transform the state's theory of the conspiracy charge into one predicated on that doctrine, that instruction having been, at most, surplusage that had no bearing on the nature of the state's case or the jury's consideration of whether the state proved its case. 2. The defendant's