State v. Stepherson

Syllabus

Pursuant to statute (§ 53a-3 (4)), serious physical injury is defined as ''physi- cal injury . . . which causes serious disfigurement, serious impairment of health or serious loss or impairment of the function of any bodily organ.'' Convicted of assault in the second degree and other crimes as a result of an altercation at a gas station, the defendant appealed. He claimed that the evidence was insufficient to sustain his conviction of assault in the second degree because the evidence introduced by the state at trial was insufficient to establish that the victim, M, had sustained a serious physical injury, as defined in § 53a-3 (4), when he was struck in the leg by the open passenger door of the defendant's vehicle as the defendant drove away from the scene. Held: The jury lacked sufficient evidence to reasonably conclude that M sustained a serious physical injury on the basis of his having sustained a serious physical disfigurement to his leg, as neither M nor a medical professional testified at trial, the state did not submit evidence of a scar or other marking that existed following the injury, and, as the only evidence before the jury was M's medical records and photographs of his leg that were taken at the time of the injury, any conclusion by the jury regarding whether M's injury resulted in a serious disfigurement would have required speculation or conjecture. The evidence was insufficient to reasonably establish that the injury to M's leg resulted in a serious impairment of his health, as the jury was left to make that determination without seeing or hearing about the outcome of the injury over time or hearing from M or a medical professional about how the injury impacted M's health or standard of living. The state did not present sufficient evidence for the jury reasonably to conclude that M suffered a serious impairment of a bodily organ, namely, his skin, as the jury, in the absence of testimony from M or a medical professional, lacked an evidentiary basis